(3/31/09) string pods; sorry for being an ass

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at Starbucks at Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was down in a basement with my co-worker NN. The basement was like a stage, or perhaps like a workshop under the stage of a theater. We were preparing for something like a feast or a ritual.

I had long, thin, green tube before me. The tubes were like bean pods, but maybe three inches long. They were slightly hairy. I thought of them as something like ears of corn, which I had to shuck. I didn't know how to do this, so I asked NN, who stood about fifteen feet to my left. NN was also working on some of these pods.

To NN's right were some boxes or shelves and a tall, cardboard box, rectangular vertically and square horizontally, which was lined on the outside with white paper and divided into a number of sections (possibly three -- two squares on the right side and one rectangle on the left).

NN showed me one of the pods. She snapped it open maybe one third of the way from the top. There were apparently three kinds of material inside -- all stringy, to some degree.

One material, the kind we were most interested in keeping, was on the very outside of the pod. It was very silky, but was also very slimy, and the hardest to hold onto without breaking. The second kind, nearer to the center, was like boiled pasta, a little mottled, the strings mostly yellow, though some were orange. And in the very center was a stringy material like dry, unboiled pasta.

NN explained what pile she put the string into. There was a lot of detail or explanation in this. Then NN might have told me about the box she used, and how it made things easier for her. She asked me if I understood everything now. I said yes.

I walked back to my area. I didn't understand everything, and I didn't exactly feel comfortable with what I was doing. I hesitated in starting. I thought I'd call to NN and ask her if she had, or knew where I could get, one of the boxes she used for storing the strings. But I felt ashamed to ask a question after NN had explained everything.

Dream #2

At first I was in an office building. Then I was out in the walkway before the building, like the building was in a business park. I lay in some small, rolling mounds of lawn, between two small pine trees.

People walked out of the building by two doorways: one just "behind" me (or beyond my head as I lay on the ground), the other just "before" me (or just beyond my feet). The people exiting before me crossed a small, wooden bridge over the small mounds of lawn. There might have been something like a chain link fence around the small lawn area.

I recognized a lot of people as workers or former workers at the job from which I'd recently been laid off. I thought out the name of each person as he or she passed. In particular I remember (after waking) my co-worker SC.

Now a group of people who looked like my old friend R's friend CS walked over the bridge. I thought one of them must be CS. I didn't want CS to recognize me and tell R that he'd seen me. I lay low, hoping to melt out of sight.

But CS saw me. He stood over me and spoke to me, asking me how I'd been doing, then asking if I'd seen R. CS And I were now standing inside some place like a hotel restaurant or hotel lobby. We stood in a small space of room that had white walls and natural light. A bar or concierge counter stood a way off in front of us.

We stood before a tall, square, dark wood table. CS told me, "You know what you really need to do? Is tell R, 'I am sorry for being an ass.' Because he is really hurt."

(2/10/10) leaving a contrary woman

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM, on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was down in some place like a deep basement. The basement looked like the basement of a house, but I feel like it was taller and wider, and like it had been made for some kind of institution, perhaps a university. I sat on a couch.

A woman sat to my right, against the right arm of the couch. I may actually have been laid out on the couch, leaning my head against the woman's arm or lap. The woman was probably tall, blonde, very beautiful, and mature looking, maybe in her mid-thirties. She may also have been my girlfriend H.

The woman was flipping through a big picture book that was maybe eighteen inches wide and two inches thick. I feel like there may have been other people in the distance, watching us from some dark room, a room with walls painted black, like on a stage.

The woman began complaining about not doing well at some task. I may have tried to tell her she was doing well. But she yelled at me like I was stupid.

I looked up at her book. It was open to a page that looked like an ad (possibly set up to be part of an artist's portfolio in a journal like Artforum.) The left page may mostly have been white. The right page had a silvery wave shape which opened to a silvery rectangle, out of which drove a silvery, somewhat sporty-looking car. Below the car the word "SOLAR" was written in smooth, modern, sporty-looking letters, either blue or silver.

The woman continued yelling insults at me for having tried to make her feel better. Finally I was fed up with it. I yelled sharply at her to stop. She was surprised and silent for a moment. But now she spoke, in a somewhat gentler tone, telling me that she really didn't need to stop, after all, and that she could do whatever she wanted.

We had now stood up. We walked through a small, dark hallway and thn up into a sloped parking lot around a building. It was a sunny day, but we were shaded by trees. The building was white brick (?), maybe three or four stories tall. It seemed like a complex of doctors offices in a suburban neighborhood. It seemed to be at the top of a wooded hill (hence the trees and the rolling, sloping nature of the parking lot).

The woman continued talking about how she could do whatever she wanted and I'd always be there for her. But now she was younger, Asian, with coppery-tan skin and long, pale-coppery-blonde hair. She wore a blue summer dress with thick shoulder straps and white trim. She seemed very youthful and happy.

I was mad about the woman having said such things about me. We were walking (or just near?) a couple of black boys and one or two black women. The black boys were tall, skinny, dark, with closely shaved heads. they wore black t-shirts with prints on them, photos, probably, from a movie like Scarface. The black guys and girls all seemed to crowd around the woman.

We rounded left around a corner of the building, following a ramp- or road-like stretch of asphalt. At the end of the stretch I saw an exit off to my right, which appeared to go to a suburban residential area. I decided to take that exit, leaving the woman to herself. I didn't think she'd notice; she seemed pretty unaware of me already.

I was a little worried about the guys crowding around the woman. I was afraid they didn't have good intentions. But for some reason I decided to let her go anyway.