(3/1/05) bathroom studies and lazy rescue

(No place/time info for paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I had been in some place like a college dormitory, studying, perhaps. But the place got claustrophobic. So I headed down to study in a huge bathroom in the basement. There were two bathrooms, possibly a men's and a women's, but possibly a women's and a unisex. The unisex was closed, so I went to read in the women's bathroom. The room was tall and narrow and long with stalls on the left side.

It was bright white with small tiles on the floor and bigger tiles on the walls. I slouched at a school desk by the doorway to the bathroom. I read some "educational" comic book.

Now some class ended. I could see in my mind's eye a herd of folks heading to this bathroom from down a narrow hallway.

I thought, Nobody will think I'm weird when they catch me in the women's bathroom. Since the (unisex?) bathroom is broken down, everybody will have to use this bathroom like it's the unisex one. But now I realized that the class that got out was an all-women's class. So this bathroom, even if it currently was unisex, would momentarily be a women's bathroom.

I couldn't get up before the first people came in. I stayed sat and just tried to act inconspicuous.

Suddenly the bathroom was full of women. My friend and NYC Americorps crew mate KB walked up to me with two of her friends. She said, "Hey, XXXXX!" and offered a high-five, which I sloppily and flailingly failed to match. My hand was messy with some cold slime, I think, and I only wanted to touch her hand with the very small corner of my hand that was dry.

As KB and her friends walked off I remembered she had seen me reading in the bathroom before, just yesterday. But that time I had been in the unisex bathroom.

I called after KB, "I don't want you to start thinking I just study in bathrooms all the time! It's just that my room is getting way too claustrophobic."

It was then like I looked away and then glimpsed back. I could see KB and her two friends down a way, amid a lot of women, laughing heartily like I had said something endearingly geeky. Then my glimpse of them fleeted silently away.

I turned back to my comic book and thought I should really get to some more serious study. Then one of KB's friends tapped me on the shoulder. I couldn't see her. She murmured in my left ear, "Maybe we should go for a while. Would you like to come with me to Nantucket Chicken?"

I knew KB had put her friend up to inviting me out for a meal just to get me out of the women's bathroom so I'd stop looking silly. But I thought maybe the girl would really end up liking me. So I went.

We now walked up the final two or three wide, luxurious, wooden steps into what looked like a beautiful, enormous trading post/ski lodge with an octagonal visitor information booth in the center of the busy, bustling day-blue-grey-dim room. Before the booth were a coupe of wooden cubicles like office areas.

I had been carrying either my or the woman's suitcase, which had a telescoping handle and wheels so you can cart it along on even surfaces. Now the girl told me to stop ere and watch her bags. She said she would be right back. She walked right on out the front the door. This was the first time I'd seen her, and I only saw her from behind. She was about my height, bronze-tan, with brown-blonde hair, thin and yet curvy, wearing blue jeans that were only slightly tight and a delicately tight, fluorescent pink, sleeveless shirt.

As the woman walked she was mumbling something like, "Come on, stick together. Don't leave a man behind." I didn't know whether she was calling for me. But I couldn't go because I was obligated to stay here and watch her luggage.

Now it occurred to me that we were both right now starting our work shift. We were volunteers at this place, which was a national park. There was some river just outside. The girl was heading to get a vehicle. We had to drive along and patrol the river to make sure nobody was drowning.

But this girl slacked when nobody was looking. I knew she left me here so she could laze around a bit before getting the vehicle. She only pretended to be my friend just to keep me from talking.

I walked to the window and looked out at the river. It was wide, flat, bordered on the other side with reddish-tan plateaus and bluffs. I remembered walking through an almost Martian, barren canyon somewhere around here. There was almost no vegetation. Surfaces were all smooth, sandy stone and no dirty soil. And the sky was almost a dusty amethyst.

I wondered why I had wasted my whole day just reading an "educational" comic book.

But now the river was suddenly more raging and down maybe fifteen feet from me and at the end of a slight ledge of grasses, shrubs, and junipers. And two rangers -- first I saw only their hands -- drifted along, carried, half-conscious, by the raging river. I recognized the rangers as B and XXXXX (who I just learned in waking life yesterday is now working at Inwood).

I knew I'd have to go rescue the rangers, or at least make an effort. But first I'd have to call the emergency crew via radio, to get some better-experienced people out here.

I ran to the radio, brought it back with me to the window, and called. "Hello, emergency. This is XXXXX. I am at... at..." (I forgot and had to look at a pin on my right shoulder.) "Bultler" (sic) "Park, at the visitor center and by the river."

Now a ranger, L from Inwood, drove up in an National Parks Service ranger jeep like the window for the visitor center was a drive-thru window. She looked at me as if to ask silently, What's going on?

I spoke into the radio and looked at L. "We have a 9411. The two people involved are rangers from this park. They just went past the visitor center only thirty seconds ago. Please send help. A ranger here just arrived. I'm going with her."

L now asked me, "Why didn't you just go after them?"

I said, "I was taught to call for help before I made any attempt at a rescue. But we can go now."

(4/16/05) this seat taken

(Entered in paper journal at 5:20 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in some lobby area or an exhibit area for some museum. The room was wide, tall, polygonal, with window ceilings. To my back and left were a group of children in seats looking up to a cashier's desk or a podium, all so incongruous (even dim, where the rest of this lobby area was lit by window light) with the lobby area that it itself seemed like a museum exhibit or a movie set.

In the rest of the lobby area were black and white photographs blown up and printed on thick pieces of display board ranging from three to ten feet tall. Each photo had a state name titled into its side. These photos were from some book remembering a certain important area from the viewpoint of all these states. The only picture I remember at all is Arizona's. It looked like a model of an atom or molecule mixed with a cell dividing or the early processes of the human life cycle.

I saw somewhere a yellowed newspaper photo of a speaker who had become extremely successful at something. He was a short man, rather plain, with a Gerardo hairstyle and mustache and in a suit and tie that looked about twenty years out of date.

Now I was in the audience of one of his lectures. The auditorium was huge and packed. The stage was some kind of white, polished material, barren except for the guy. I was in some seat a few rows from the front.

Now I was at the back of the stage, as if seats went all around the stage and the stage was circular, with steps down all the way around, all of that white, shiny material. I sat on one of the steps and folded my arms on the stage and my chin on my arms. There was some technical gear back her, as well as a makeshift aluminum stand for lights.

Some woman near me and to my right remarked jokingly how the speaker stuttered so awfully, as if that was a mark of his true character, and not all the stuff he lectured about. Some guy up on front stage and to my left and the lecturer's left said, "Don't talk about our respectable lecturer that way! Don't you know the power he has?"

But the lecturer turned back to the woman and said, "Don't worry about making jokes. I think it's kind of funny, too." I thought, Of course he'd say something like that. He's so kind and generous.

Now, for some reason, I felt ashamed to be this close to the stage, like I was hogging the stage. So I found a seat in the back area abut four or five rows from the stage and all the way on the right.

But one of the NYC Park Rangers, GR (who in the dream looked like a grizzled, pale, white mountain man with boiled blue eyeballs), and MS (who was also a little unshaven and crazy-looking) walked up to me and said that I was in their seats. They walked right up to me, almost against me, like they were planning to sit even while I was still sitting in the seat.

Trying to be polite, I said, "Oh, I didn't realize these seats were reserved for you. Here. Let me move. But I was so intimidated that I actually fell out of the chair (tipping the chair) and stood and walked away even as I said all this stuff.

I was now in the front row, which was all a bunch of high, backed wooden stools. I turned around and almost sat in one. Then I realized there was something in it. I stood, turned, and looked. It was a purplish piece of something like wax paper with a scrawled message like, "THIS SEAT TaKeN."

So I got up and looked for another stool in the front row, walking from right to left. I thought maybe I'd just sit up by the stage, stage left this time. But I thought again how rude that was.

Every chair in the front row had that same wax paper. and at the top of the wax paper was some iridescent, rainbow colored, piece of plastic, like a charm for girls, and maybe a pencil with colorful painting around its barrel.