(12/14/04) raw chicken cat; unprofessional poor boy

(Entered in paper journal at 7 AM at Utica and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a dim living room with my friend R. I feel like I was lying sideways on a couch that was kind of ragged and worn and rough. A cat was jumping from table to table and R's dog was somewhere around. I don't know if I could really see R.

R spoke about feeding his dog raw chicken meat all the time. He said the dog was acquiring more and more taste for raw meat. I told him, "I hope she doesn't eventually mistake the cat for a piece of raw chicken meat and kill her to eat her."

The cat was now long and thin, stringy, as if she had been starved or as if she had starved herself. I thought something like, That can't be the cat. Before, she had been full, and her fur had been bright orange, not dull and short.

The cat jumped at me, to attack. I feel she may even have jumped into my mouth.

Dream 2

One of the NYC Parks supervisors, DT, told me he would give me a ride home. It was night. I was in some lonely downtown area of a place, like Denver's downtown area had been a few years previously. I walked down some sloping streets with buildings and empty lots or parking lots.

I'd promised DT I would bring him water to repay him for helping me home. So at some point I carried two glasses, a tall glass and a short glass. The short glass may have been wider. The tall glass was upright. The short glass was upside down and held base-to-base with the tall glass.

The tall glass was almost full of water. I was supposed to have bought DT some bottled water. For some reason I couldn't do that, so I had just brought the glass of water.

As I continued walking I spilled the water and got the glass a little messy. Now either DT pulled up or I walked to a strangely shaped parking lot, possibly all asphalt or part asphalt and part dirt. I think there was also a hill I walked up.

I gave DT the sloppy cup of water and told him my situation. He acted like it was all okay and drank part of the water. He then made some excuse so he wouldn't have to drink the rest.

I got into DT's SUV. As we drove the time switched to midday. We drove along an area like Colfax Avenue in Denver, near my mom's house. We stopped at a smallish, kind of run-down house. All the way there and while we were in the house I told DT about my Americorps experience, living stipends, etc. DT said he understood, but couldn't do much, etc.

I continued talking as we stood in a horribly messy kitchen. DT spoke on the phone. He interrupted me to tell me he could no longer have me here. Wasn't someone going to come pick me up? I said yes, that XXXXX (MP?) was coming in his SUV.

I could tell DT only wanted me gone because I had been unprofessional. So now I tried to act more balanced and professional. But DT wasn't listening. He just said he'd consider what I'd said.

(9/25/05) tents and sprinklers; dangerous design

(Entered in paper journal at 9:10 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield Street and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was changing or moving sprinklers early in the morning on a sunny day. The place was a park. I think it was wide open, but it was also like a labyrinth. It felt uncannily lonely.

There were hundreds of sprinklers running along the hose. I was proud of the way many of them had been set up.

The park developed into a labyrinth of tents The sprinklers became just streams of water shooting out of spaced holes in the hose. I wondered how water could get around the whole lawn, but I was also amazed at how high the stream went.

The tents were dull green and house-shaped and had an overhanging flap in front of the door. I went under a flap and saw my college friend SA laying with her head toward the door. She looked tired and weak, but she waved at me and smiled. I smiled and waved and walked away again.

Dream 2

There was a design like on an Olmec plate, something like this.

There was also a glowing woman in bright white clothing and black hair. I couldn't step on some part of the design, either the one-circle or the two-circles, or something would happen to the woman.

(9/29/05) not bad workers; pond analysis; pyramids around the world; weed removal

(Entered in paper journal at 9:55 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield Street and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I sat in a large room like a gymnasium with seats and booths like at an exposition. I sat with some people "from my NYC Americorps program," one of whom looked a little like HE. To my left sat a woman I could hear but not see. She was a good worker.

We were talking bad about the bad workers. At some point we said something that seemed to imply something about the workers in HE's group. HE asked who we were talking about. I said her name and another girl's name as if HE wasn't the person asking me the question. HE's eyes got big.

My friend said, "No, no. He wasn't talking about you."

I realized now I had mentioned HE and her group of friends. HE acted like she wasn't HE and told me to continue naming people and saying bad things about those people. I could tell she was going to tell on me to her friends and get my ass kicked.

Dream 2

I stood knee-deep in a wide pond or stream. I was with a lot of people "from my NYC Americorps program." We stood scattered so the wide area looked busy with people. I apparently stood with my back to a cabin that served as a research office. We were rescuing or surveying large water animals, something like fish and eels with bright coloration.

I was wary of standing in the water too much longer. I thought I'd catch some disease, possibly from stuff homeless people and junkies might throw in the water.

I looked back to the office. A couple people, an older man and younger woman, spoke to me congenially about people really getting out in the water and collecting data. They said the data was almost completely collected.

I felt silly now for being in the office instead of out with all the other good people collecting data in the water. But I also felt like I needed to prove myself to the office people, to prove I could do the intellectual and analytical work as well as they could.

To prove this (don't know why) I walked back outside. The water was a lot shallower and there was rock outcropping to my right, and right of that, a lawn or park setting. I was pretty much the only person still in the water.

I picked up a turtle, as if we were now saving turtles instead of surveying strange water creatures. I put the turtle down on a rock. it wasn't moving. It needed a lot of moisture, and I had put it in a dry spot far from any wet spots. I picked it back up.

A few people from the office were coming outside. The area was now totally dry. They were heading to a picnic down a hill to my right. I carried the turtle a few steps and put it down in a spot that I hoped the office people would thing was less stupid. The spot was like a landslide of pumice-like rocks. Down the slope was a lawn with some pine trees. A group of picnickers sat by a pine tree.

The turtle crept down the rocks. I couldn't see any water. I knew the turtle would die if it didn't find water in a short time. But I just assumed the turtle would find water. I felt lazy and stupid.

Dream 3

I was traveling in something like a train's dining car mixed with a science lab or office. We traveled past an area that looked like a pyramid in half-repair. Parts of the walls were smooth. Other parts had a crumpled concrete or uncut stone look like on some brownstones. It also seemed like the pyramid rose out of a quarry or mining area, surrounded with bulldozers and electrical wires.

A woman (who now looks like the mother on Arrested Development) showed me a ground plan having to do with the pyramid and some other sites around the world.

A group of people were around me. The woman liked me and not them. I took some snide pleasure out of this. but I also saw that they did not take me or the woman seriously, and that they thought the projects were bogus. I tried to vindicate the woman by listening to her.

The plan of the pyramid was in blocky-inked design. the pyramid's base was L-shaped with a circle in the upper-right quadrant where a main portion of the pyramid had been replaced with something like enormous pipes. (The image looks like some abstract representation of a Super Mario Bros. game.)

I saw "in my mind's eye," a few other sites all around the world. They were all monumental and somehow mystical, and they all were surrounded by bulldozers and electrical lines or modern technology.

At last I saw a long river, in a site almost identical with the site where the ruined pyramid had been, at the bottom of a quarried-out or mined-out slope littered with ore. Now a long, tall concrete wall stood along the far side of the river, blocking the slope and also concealing a town which seems now like Venice to me.

I called out to the woman, calling from the distances within my mind's eye, "Oh! Look at that hideous wall! What are they doing to all our old structures?"

I noticed that the wall had thick, rusty steel beams at close intervals and was also webbed over with electrical lines. It also seems like running up the tall wall, almost to the top (i.e. an absurd height), were water stains, marking high and low tide levels, but also staining the walls with a beautiful array of dredged, rusty colors.

Dream 4

I stood about calf-deep in some water at the edge of a marsh or bog deep in a forest. My friend and NYC Americorps coworker KB stood up on a dryish hump of land.

I pulled a turtle out of the water. It had a beautiful face, bright green spattered with deep black. I called this turtle a Norway Maple, and I wondered why people couldn't recognize these turtles, even after the people had spent so long out in the field.

I put the turtle back in the water. Now the marsh was dry, the turtle was gone, and a few more people stood on the island with KB. I had planned come out here to remove some weeds myself. But then, I guess, KB had come along. Now it was a project with a few people.

I noticed how few weeds there were for this many people -- just a ten-foot by seven-foot patch. I looked to my left. A few hundred grass plants had been put into a cleared area. I was a little encouraged as well as discouraged that there was so little work left to do.

I pulled a few weeds to show my friends I could work. Then I saw some Phragmites stalks. (Phragmites is a tall, invasive grass that was very common throughout New York City's parks. I can't recall, but it may have had a tough root system, which needed to be pulled out altogether, or else the grass would sprout right back up.)

I thought I should go get some loppers. But I tried pulling by hand first. The plant came out easily. I thought, Well, obviously. The marsh soil is still soggy. But it also seemed dry.

(2/26/06) my outburst; the reject rejects; "my mom" and my mom

(Entered in paper journal at 9:07 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a room like an elementary school cafeteria/art room with plenty of windows and construction paper cutouts somewhere. I stood before a woman. I was yelling at her because she hadn't informed me of something or had left me out of something.

The woman kept a blank expression. I regretted a little that I had made the outburst, since the woman probably was now planning to use her power to punish me.

I had a Styrofoam container of a Halal rice dish and "salad," all in white sauce. I was shoveling all this food into my mouth. I almost finished the salad, which may have been the only thing left.

Dream 2

I sat in a dim, natural-lit room that may have had grey walls. There were two couches, one against the back wall, one against the right wall. I sat on the couch against the right wall.

Someone, maybe my senior coworker DB, was interviewing me for a Parks position. The man said something that made me realize I didn't want the position. I told him so.

Now I sat in a strange position facing the couch, watching while in my old position sat my friend (and a coworker from my time with Americorps in the NYC Parks) KB, except that maybe she was a man.

This person and "DB" got along really well. The person asked all kinds of questions I should have asked during my interview. I was welcome with the other two, but I could tell "DB" was happy he had gotten the other guy instead of me.

I tried to justify myself, saying, Well, I rejected the job, anyway. But I knew that really didn't matter.

Dream 3

I was with some of my family and maybe with my mom's friend TH's family. We were in the woods. It was night. We all sat on a barren or pine needle-strewn patch of ground bordered by a couple cars and before either a movie screen or a car with a movie screen on it. A movie was about to start.

TH and a person who was supposed to be "my mom" were bringing us plates of lasagna. But my mom (i.e. my actual mom) and some (?) members of the family weren't there. I suddenly felt a dread -- my mom was in extreme danger. I had to go to her. But TH and "my mom" (?) wouldn't let me go.

I was now in a kitchen like at the house my family lived in through my junior high and early high school years. It was dark, with lightning outside. "My mom" (different person again) stood above me as I, like a little kid, lay on my stomach. I then sat cross-legged. I still had to find my mom. But I at least felt that putting myself here got me closer to the heart of the danger I had to save my mom from.

"My mom" and I were making lasagna. I held the pan in my hands. We were half done. Chunks of seasoned sausage in the grease released by cooking filled the pan halfway. I may have eaten some of it.

(2/9/09) amphicletes' treasure; a vanful of lesbians; whose hours are longer?

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Thirty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my office," turned away from my computer, to a portion of desk to the left of it. My desk was somewhat cluttered. I was writing on a piece of printing paper which was turned sideways.

A word had been printed on the paper. I was tracing that word in pencil. The word seemed foreign, like it was written in a non-Roman style of lettering. The word started with a "p"-like letter and had a lot of "o"- or "a"-like letters following.

My senior co-worker and sometimes supervisor SK got my attention. I turned to see him standing by my cubicle, to the right of the computer. He asked me if I had a second to help him. I said yes and got up. We walked down a few cubicles to his desk.

To break the silence, I asked SK how everything was going for him. He said, "Oh, good. Just trying to get this" (initiation? launch?) "out." He said it like he was being nice, even though he didn't have to, and that he'd much rather stop talking with an idiot like me and just get down to business.

SK's desk was completely cluttered, and in the bright light, the pages all seemed so sparkling white. SK sat down. I stood behind him, to his left, as he sat facing the screen.

SK turned a little toward me and said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something a little different from what you're used to doing for me." For a moment I wondered if I hadn't performed well enough on the things SK had been asking me to do.

I saw a view under dark blue water, apparently in the ocean. My view was following directly behind someone, possibly me, in scuba gear.

I heard SK say, as if he were still in the office, "There was a man named Amphicletes (?). I am going to ask you to go down to the bottom of the ocean (?) and retrieve his treasure." I could see a giant, golden ring and a pink, Venetian-style corset.

Dream #2

I got into a big van, like the van used by the crew I'd been a part of when I'd worked for the New York City Parks Department. The inside was icy, pale blue-grey, and the light coming in was grey like mid-morning on a cloudy winter day. I sat in a row of bench seats two rows back from the front seats. There was plenty of aisle space and leg space. I sat on the aisle side, the right side.

To my left sat a tomboyish girl. The whole van may actually have been full of boyish-looking lesbians. Either I or the girl who sat next to me (or both) started playing on a phone (or phones) that looked like the new thin BlackBerrys, or else like the LG Gravity phones.

My parks co-worker and good friend KB now got into the van. I may have seen her at first as she'd walked in front of the front windshield as she'd approached the van. I was surprised to see her. I didn't want her to think I'd been ignoring her all this time, but I also didn't want her to think I had come to this meeting (apparently this was a meeting of some kind!) because I was stalking her or something.

KB seemed a little negatively surprised when she saw me. She acted nonchalant, but also a little cold, as if sh'ed rather pretend I didn't exist. She may have sat in the row in front of me, in the space just to my left. I hoped she wouldn't think I was at this meeting just so I could hang around a bunch of lesbians, like I had some kind of lesbian fetish.

I myself wasn't sure why I was here. I tried to break the ice by saying something to KB. But I may have ahd the feeling that she didn't want me to talk with her at all.

Dream #3

I was at the top of a staircase and looking into a room like a large classroom or a lunchroom in an early-twentieth-century building. I stood huddled with a group of people who were about my age and a little bit younger.

The crowd around me was pretty active, moving here and there and standing still, talking with each other, and trying to talk to the same person I was trying to talk to: an Asian-American man who was a little heavyset and square-faced, with short hair, a slightly receding hairline, squarish eyeglasses, and possibly wearing some kind of uniform.

I was talking to the man through the intrusive crowd, asking him about a job opening he had. I said, "How do the hours sound compared to this? When I was in my Americorps program with the New York City Parks, I worked from" (10 to 5? 8 to 10? 8 to 5?) "Monday through Friday and then from 9 to 5 (?) on Saturday and Sunday." I thought the amount of hours I worked per week would really impress the man.

But now a tall man, maybe five years or more younger than I, Asian-American-looking, wearing a puffyish, black jacket and thin-framed eyeglasses, with fuzzy hair, like he'd shaved his head a couple months ago but wasn't styling it now that it was grown back, interrupted me. He said, as if he were already familiar with the older man, "Hey, like I said, man, I worked from XXXXX to XXXXX on Mondays through Fridays and from XXXXX to XXXXX on Saturdays and Sundays. I'll see you later, man." The young man then walked away through the crowd and down the stairs.

I was completely at a loss. The hours this man just said beat my hours by three hours a day on Mondays through Fridays, and his Saturdays and Sundays were just as long as his Mondays through Fridays. I thought, This guy has the job. There's no way I can beat him at those hours.