(3/1/09) venus and mercury linked; outed as gay

(Entered in paper journal at 8:35 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked through the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. I was at the north end of the north wing. The overhead lights (?) were all turned off, and it was dark outside, but some or all of the table lamps were on, giving off a pale light, almost like the lights of a flashlight or headlights. People were shuffling around a lot.

I saw a senior co-worker, BF, getting ready to sit down. Instead of looking like his normal, handsome self, he was in disarray. His hair was somewhat well organized, as usual, but it was maybe twice as long as usual. BF wore a big, black, puffy, hooded jacket -- something I'd never see him wear in waking life. BF's face looked dry and wrinkled, as if he were made up to resemble an aged man.

I waved at BF, not knowing whether he would recognize or even like me. He waved back, slowly, with an exaggerated, O-mouthed smile, as if he were pantomiming happiness, although I felt like he was genuinely happy to see me.

I may have sat down in a seat somewhere. For some reason I was now mad at some young man who sat a few tables in front of me. In front of his table was a big structure -- not like the usual central area of the reading room, but a big stone wall with something on it.

I was trying to make the young man understand who I was (???). The young man sat in a chair while I knelt on both knees to his left and crouched over the table with my full arms and elbows, like a child coloring in a coloring book.

I had been yelling sweat-brainedly at the man. But my angry attempts to show the young man why he shouldn't be bothering me kind of faded away. I was now crouching over the floor, drawing with chalk. It was like the table, from the portion I had knelt at and all the way to the left, had vanished, leaving the floor, which was like concrete, wide open.

I drew two images. Both were rectangles, around six feet long and three feet wide. They both had solid backgrounds with stringy line-designs in one or two colors, outlined with one or two colors. One rectangle had a yellow background with green and white designs. The other had a white background with blue and red designs.

I can't remember the design of the yellow rectangle. But the white triangle had something like two Venus signs (or two Mercury signs, or a Venus and a Mercury sign) linked together, with shapes, like line-pentagrams, scattered throughout.There might also have been words.

When the young man saw this, he understood.

Dream #2

Some presentation, possibly for work, had just finished. Everybody was in an auditorium. We were all funneling out. I may at first have been walking in a crowd of people along the right wall, heading up toward the back of the auditorium. I was now walking along the left wall. I was with a group of friends.

We got to the back wall, on which may have been a cork board bulletin board on which was a grid of photos with tidy, little paper rectangles with captions below each photo. I had been listening to a conversation everybody around me was having, possibly about girlfriends and boyfriends.

My co-worker NF stood right behind me. She was much skinnier and better looking than she had been the last time I'd seen her in waking life (in 2007). She asked me, "How's your boyfriend doing, Preemie?"

I thought, Boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend. But NF said, "Don't be shy. Everybody knows you're gay."

I thought, Is that what everybody thinks about me? I didn't seem to worry about it too much. If everybody thought that was the case and they had been treating me just fine all along, it didn't matter if somebody said it out loud.

(5/29/09) garden sanctuary

(Entered in dream journal at 7:40 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a large building like the New York Public Library's Schwarzman building. I was with a couple other guys, who may have looked, at some points in time, like Ancient Greek philosophers. We had been running from or attacking some evil entity or evil group of people, possibly like zombies.

At some point I got separated from the other men, possibly on purpose. I may now have been trying to find the men again.

I was in a weird area like an atrium in the center of four staircases. The area was like a garden, with patches of vegetation, soil, and pebble-paved paths. There was a skylight letting in grey-white light. The place had been sunk down at the bottom of the short staircases on which I was standing. The area was probably half a story below ground level. I'm not sure how I got down there -- jumping, floating, etc.

I ran through that garden and jumped over some waist-high, marble railing and into a balcony-like hallway, which was also set up like a garden. As I walked through these gardens I heard voices call for me. They were probably the voices of my friends. But I no longer trusted my friends. I thought that by now the zombies had gotten them, and that they were now just trying to lure me to them so that they could infect me, too.

I was now trying to figure out how to walk through this garden. The path wasn't set up in some places, so that I'd get my feet dirty in walking through this area. This was something I couldn't do. But possibly, as I walked forward, squares of pebbled pavement would appear under my feet, keeping my feet clean.

(1/23/10) the weak door; large, empty room; two drug dealers

(Entered in paper journal at 9:50 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen, looking down toward the back door. The place was dark. There was light coming into the house through the backdoor window. I noticed that the door was open a crack. It didn't seem to be able to click shut. The door itself felt soft, like a flexible piece of fiberboard. I saw a deadbolt on the door. I tried to lock the deadbolt, but that was just as weak and ineffective as the door and doorknob.

I got afraid. I knew that there were thug-like kids in the neighborhood. As soon as they found that the door was unable to close, the kids would "break in" here to cause trouble with me.

I tried again to lock the door. But my great grandma now said (from behind me, probably not actually present, but palpably audible), "Oh, I never even try to lock that door. I just let it stay open. And whatever happens, happens."

I tried to keep my great grandma's frame of mind, the peaceful, or resigned, sense of equanimity. But I just couldn't. I couldn't stand the thought of those punks coming in and causing trouble with me.

Dream #2

I was in a large room, something like a gym set up for a high school dance. There were a lot of people dancing and mingling. The room was dark, not extremely crowded, and kind of noisy.

At some point a group of us decided it was time to leave the dance. We walked through an emptyish, high-school-like hallway (possibly with the floor checkered with red and green squares) and then into another room.

It was now like we had been part of some show, something like a theater performance. The room we were now in was enormous. It was like a dining hall, full of round, eight-seat tables. The room was wide and tall. It looked nice but run-down and dirty at the same time. It looked like a mix between a fine dining hall, a college dining hall, and the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library (possibly because the ceiling was dark wood). The only light in the room was fluorescent light which came into the room through the doors from the hallway.

We all stood by the wall. Also by the wall sat a young man who was a lot like me. he sat by a table, his back against the wall. To his left was a rectangular table with a couple tallish, brown, plastic coffee-tanks atop a thin, white, tissue-paper tablecloth. It seemed like there had been an even here just a little while ago. The young man was reading a paperback novel.

I looked around the room, at all the space and quiet. I thought to myself that I would like to be like the young man. I preferred this huge, dim, empty room to the dance hall full of people.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom in an apartment with my brother. I sat on the bed. My brother sat or stood before the door. The room was smallish and brightly lit with incandescent light. My brother left the bedroom. I followed him. He walked through a short hallway to answer the front door. I followed him. The light in the hallway was dimmer than in the bedroom.

Two young men entered. Both were white. One was about my height. The other was very tall and thin. The shorter one wore a big, thick coat and had a shaggy head of blonde hair under a wool cap. Both young men carried plastic bags full of huge, barrel-like jugs of Poland Spring (?) water. One of them may have been carrying one jug with no bag.

The shorter man bustled past my brother and into the kitchen, which was through a doorway before me and to my right. My brother followed the man. I looked into the kitchen. The kitchen was dim, no light on, kind of dirty, but not small -- actually large enough to have a table at the back of the room about as large as the bedroom. The shorter man put some of the bags on the kitchen counter, on the right side of the kitchen.

I felt like these two men were drug dealers. They were actually bringing my brother drugs. But the drug was so powerful that as soon as my brother took it, he'd need to start drinking tons and tons of water. So part of the cost of the drug included the jugs and jugs of water.

I kept trying to watch the two men, to see when they'd slip my brother the drug, which I imagined to be in a white paper bag like from a pharmacy. But I also felt like these guys weren't just drug dealers. They were trying to cause serious trouble with my brother. They were trying to gain his trust and then hurt him somehow. I was going to stop them before they started.

The shorter man took some water to the refrigerator, which was on the left wall. He opened the refrigerator door. The fridge looked full of food, too full for the water to fit in.

The tall man stood across the doorway from me. He leered at me from the corner of his eyes as he stood facing the kitchen. He wore a thin, pale-beige, windbreaker-like jacket. His hair was thin and shaved short, reddish-brown, and a little spiky. His cheeks were lightly dotted with pale-pink acne. The shorter man may have been talking to the taller man. The taller man may have responded only in slow, slick grunts, like he was too good to take the trouble to answer.

I had to find out what was going on here. I tried to be polite and introduce myself to the tall man, but I ended up stuttering in fear, barely getting out words, and sounding quite sheepish. The tall man turned his head toward me, gave some sign that he didn't need to regard me, and turned back to the kitchen. He lifted an eight-ounce glass of orange juice to his lips, took a drink, and lowered the glass.

I was upset that the man had treated me so rudely. I was now angry, and I figured I'd get something out of him. I got up close to him and started yelling. He walked into the kitchen. I followed him, yelling at him, trying to get him either to answer or make an aggressive move. There was now a light on in the kitchen.

The tall man walked back toward a sink, on the left (now?) side of the room. He leered at me over his right shoulder. He was trying to figure out a sneaky, chicken-shit way to do something dirty to me. I could tell. I figured he was going to dump his orange juice on me. I could imagine the juice and pulp on me.

I saw the cup. The man tried to pour it slowly. But I grabbed the cup with my teeth and steadied it as the man let it go. I may have drank some of the juice. But I now held the glass in my right hand. Not a drop had spilled on me.

The man was walking back toward the hallway. I was still yelling at the man. I thought I would throw the glass of orange juice at the back of the man's head.