(12/7/07) panties for a jealous boyfriend; emotional goodbyes

(Entered in paper journal at 5:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I had come into a building to lead a volunteer event. A woman had brought her boyfriend, out of compulsion. The boyfriend was trying to prove that I was either trying to steal his girlfriend, make his girlfriend feel stupid, or expose him personally for some illegal activity. I had agreed to go off somewhere with the guy while the woman did the event -- to prove that I wanted nothing other than for the woman to do the event.

I was in the boyfriend's and girlfriend's apartment bedroom. There were four beds. The boyfriend lay on one and I lay on another. We both lay so our heads were at the feet of the beds. The boy was black, but he may have had his face painted bright white with cracked, caked paint.

I asked the boy what he did as a job. He squirmed off the bed impatiently and sat on the floor. He said, "I'm tired of you always asking questions. What about you? Why are you doing this event?"

I sat on my knees on the bed. The room had been dim, as if it were sunny outside, but as if the curtains had been blocking the sunlight. Now the room was light with incandescent light, and it was as if there were no windows in the room.

I told the boy my personal story. I was about to finish by telling the boy that I worked at New York Cares (I volunteered, but never worked, there in waking life). But I didn't want the boy knowing too much about my life and following me all over the place. So I just told the boy I did volunteer work.

There was now a woman in the room, a roommate to the girl and boy. The boyfriend had often had sex with this girl behind the girlfriend's back.

The boy decided I was fine to go. We were all getting ready to go back to the event. It was like I was getting out of bed. I wore a blue polo shirt and no pants. I wore pink, satin panties. The woman wore similar clothing. I didn't want the boyfriend to see my panties and think I was gay. But I still did, for some reason, want to show off my panties.

I hurried to get my regular clothes, which were by the back wall, piled on top of a duffle bag. As I got them I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I may have looked like an Hispanic woman. My bottom was huge, misshapen, and flabby. I was disgusted with myself. I bent down to pick up my boy clothes, which were possibly black slacks, a dark grey, button-up shirt, and a tie.

Dream #2

I walked up to the door of the office of my co-worker RJ. The door was only half open. I thought that RJ was leaving our company. She was busy, but I wanted to tell her goodbye. I poked my head into RJ's office. RJ was typing.

I said, "RJ, I know you're busy. But I just want to say I was happy to know you, and I wish you the best of luck."

RJ looked up at me and giggled a little. She said, "Uh... okay," as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She looked at a woman who sat behind the door and whom I couldn't see. I could tell they were both acting serious, but that they would be laughing at me soon.

I backed out of the office, feeling foolish, and walked into the next office. Through the walls I could hear RJ say, "Why did he just say that? Why did he act so sad? I'm only going away for a few days."

I now stood on a small bridge over a wide river. It was snowing heavily. Clouds gathered thick over the water, obscuring my view of the left bank as I walked to the right. The water looked almost black. The clouds were reddish pink, possibly from streetlamps of towns on the banks. The bridge was of white stone and done in a classical style, like one of the short bridges between Boston and Cambridge.

In my head I heard a conversation "I'd had" with TO, a person who'd led a volunteer project with New York Cares that I now led. In the conversation I told TO, "I just thought I'd check in, see how things were going."

TO said, "They're fine. What would you need? Do you need me to help you somehow at the park?" TO's voice was sharp. He sounded upset and inconvenienced.

I said, "No. I was just calling to check in and let you know I was still thinking about you. After all, you are my mentor."

TO laughed and said, "Mentor? How do you figure that?"

I looked at a piece of paper for a moment. On it was written dialogue similar to this.

I now saw an old, black, 1940s-style car drive off a short bank and into a river during the daytime. The bed of the river appeared to be shallow and gravely, but the car sunk right down, all the way into the gravel. I thought, That's how it happens: first you go deep into the water. Then you go deep into the mud. The water fills up the car first. And then the mud fills up the car.

After I thought this I saw from the inside of the car. It was now like the car had fallen into the river I stood over on the bridge at night. The car kept falling deeper and deeper into the dark blue-green water, as if it had fallen into a whale's ocean.

In the backseat of the car were a young boy -- possibly Asian -- with whom I identified, and two Asian men, who sat to the young boy's left. The man in the center wore thin-rimmed eyeglasses. Both men were dressed and groomed very well.

The water had filled up the car. Now I saw traces of mud curling up through the water. But suddenly there was no water in the car. I thought that the passengers would run out of air and die of suffocation. The older men were dying first, since the young boy was smaller and needed less oxygen.

The men were in a state of delirium. At first they were panicked. Then they acted drunk. Now they were calm and still.

The man on the far left said, "It's cold, so cold here."

The man in the center said, "We'll come back here on November fifth."

The man on the left agreed and spoke in slurred speech. Both men began talking in a mix of an Asian language and some other language, very slurred.

I thought, Why can't these men regain their composure around a child? Aren't they worried about panicking the child?

But the child was the first to notice that the car was moving back up, as if something were rescuing it. The child didn't want to stir the men up too much, so he didn't say anything.

There was some turbulence as the car lifted further up and up. Then there was a huge amount of turbulence, which finally got the men's attention.

Now, out of the windows, we saw a submarine. It sat on the floor of the ocean. The captain (?) stood halfway out of the hatch. He wore a grey uniform. He was old, strong, with blue eyes, white hair, and a white mustache. He held a black book like a Bible in his hand.

We floated around the submarine, as if we were actually driving the car around underwater. I thought, We've finally been rescued! But then I thought this didn't make sense. I thought, How can the captain be standing out of the hatch underwater as if he were in open air? And how can we see everything as if there were spotlights all around us?

(4/25/09) building on fire; confronting rude man; boss draws my dreams; message from interviewer

(Entered in paper journal at 8:20 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with a woman like DK (a director of the department I worked in at the job from which I had been laid off in waking life). I may have been laying in the seat somehow, while DK drove. We were driving through a large city full of skyscrapers. I could see up to the sky as if through the roof of the car. It was early morning. The sky looked dim blue, like just a skein of grey clouds were floating below it. The sky was visible in small sections between the buildings.

We were talking about the weather. DK mentioned the forecast, which was somewhat at variance with what I was currently seeing. But then the sky grew deeply clouded. I wondered how the sky could get so cloudy so quickly. It worried me a little.

We then passed a building maybe "seven or eight stories" tall (i.e. there seemed to be seven or eight window-rows, though the building may have been more than seven or eight stories tall. The building was on fire, or, rather, there were huge stacks of black smoke erupting from certain windows. But through the other windows I could see people walking around through undamaged, undisturbed work spaces. The people may actually have been worried, but they seemed to be taking care of their business, anyway.

The office building was maybe hexagonal or octagonal or oddly four-sided and was build on a smaller base. Its top sloped out mildly, so the whole thing was almost cup-shaped, like something Eero Saarinen (?) might have built, but also like a black building I was familiar with from my trips to Boston (???). But I could see everybody in the building as if they were in a row house or a small shop on a small town's main street.

The smoke that came out of the building was quickly making the sky as black as night. We drove past the building.

I noticed that the other buildings were also on fire, in the same sporadic, smoky way as the first building, though fire was visible in some of these other buildings. The streets somehow seemed filled with panic, with people rushing around. The air was filled with smoke, to the point where we couldn't see in front of us. The smoke was tinged orange, as if lit by streetlamps. I got panicked and wondered if the whole city were going to be destroyed.

We drove down another street, like a pristine office park. There were wide, redbrick plazas all around us, lit as if from sparkling white ground lights. The sky was black as night. People were also bustling around in this part of town, though less people were around.

DK turned left (she may actually have turned right onto one of the redbrick plaza walkways) to drop me off at an office. I said, "How can people be working right now? Who knows what's causing these fires? The whole city could be under siege. We don't know what building is going to get it next!"

But DK didn't seem like she was listening to me at all. She was still driving to drop me off.

Dream #2

I was walking down a hallway with a man and a woman. We had come from another hallway and had turned left into this one. The hallway was somewhat wide, somewhat short with dull, white walls, grey floors, and fluorescent lights.

The woman was like an older authority figure. The man was a slightly scruffy, medium-height man. He may have been Indian. He had a stuffy face and short, tightly disarranged hair. His body was a little wide. He wore jeans, a pale tan blazer, and a red and pink, button-up shirt.

The man made some comment about how incompetent I was at my job. The woman made a slight comment, not really regarding the man, to let me know I was alright. The man had turned and walked back down the hallway, as if by walking away after his comment he could make it irrefutable.

I rushed down the hallway after the man, to force him into a confrontation. I caught up to him. He turned away from me whenever I tried to face him. He was almost to the end of the hallway, about to turn down it, which would somehow mean I'd lost the argument with him. So I grabbed the man and forced him to face me.

The man gave me a sour-looking face, like a constipated person might show. I thought the man looked like an idiot. I made whatever comment I'd needed to make to justify myself. The man kind of smirked in acceptance.

The woman, the man, and I were again walking up the hallway. We were heading to a celebration or convention. We walked up to a large event room. There was a cluttering of people near the entrance to the room, like a disorganized group of people trying to get in. I stood near an older woman who seemed to have a huge sense of propriety, who lightly regarded me, like I was an idiot.

I now got into the celebration. At first it was just a large, harshly fluorescent-lit event room lined with folding tables, with people at the tables passing out literature. Large groups of people flocked at all the tables. At one of the tables I saw my old co-worker JM, a person whose intelligence I admired greatly. JM was wearing a light brown suit which fit his slim body a little too loosely, and a cream-colored, button-up shirt. JM was with an Asian woman who was his wife, but not his waking-life wife EC.

I tried to catch JM's attention. But JM walked away from the table, almost as if he were trying to avoid me. I followed JM closely, trying to tag him to get his attention, so I could say hi, but apparently also talking on and on as if JM had already acknowledged me.

We walked through a series of rooms that were organized like a museum exhibition, though they felt more like mock-ups of rooms in a cheap apartment. There were tables everywhere. The tables were cluttered with paper and with people trying to hand out literature.

At one point I may have given up on JM. I walked, possibly with someone with whom I was talking, into another exhibit room. This artwork in this exhibit room was a sculpture of two gigantic books, opened lying pages-down, one loosely piled on the other. The books were maybe six feet long, three feet wide, and one and a half feet thick, with chunks like little cheese wedges, carved out of the pages at certain points. This may have reminded me of something else, which I may have mentioned to the person I was walking with.

Dream #3

I was trying to explain the burning building (from my first dream) to my old boss BS, who was then trying to draw the building. BS was drawing on a horizontal surface, which was alternately a chalkboard and a cardboard or brown-paper surface. BS wasn't quite understanding my spatial description of the building. At one point I may have tried to draw the building for BS. But I realized I couldn't get it quite right, either.

Dream #4

I was working on a computer. Apparently I had a bunch of visual-artistic programs opened. I saw an email from BT, (a person I'd interviewed with for a job in waking life a couple months previous to this dream). I saw the email as if it were on my BlackBerry.

I tried to open the email, but my BlackBerry's screen suddenly started getting flooded with the artistic programs I had open. I had to plow through all the programs to get to the email. I'd close the files but I wouldn't exit from the program. I plowed and plowed through the screens, slowly feeling more and more like I'd never actually get back to BT's email.