(7/23/07) ill-timed illness; hotmail at work; radio interview; changing flight; slow liftoff; variations on jk rowling

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I lay on a couch in the dark. I was covered in blankets. I spoke on the phone with someone who asked if I could cover the phones for the Analyst MH as well, since he would be out. I saw his extension, 3431 or 2431, in my had. The person said, "MH got sick at a really bad time. When he gets back in, we'll have to have a disciplinary discussion with him.

My boss BS and another Analyst, SM, stood at my feet, on my left, i.e. facing the couch. They walked around to my right and then up past my head. They pulled open some blinds and let in a lot of daylight.

Dream #2

I was in the office, which was different from waking life. The entire floor was only half-lit. There were two aisles of cubicles that went in long rows of six or seven cubicles. Beside that were probably more aisles of cubicles. At the end of the aisles was a little bit of empty floor space and then a brightly lit, tiny elevator bank. My cubicle was at the front right corner, facing the elevator bank.

I turned my computer on. Then I remembered I had an appointment with my psychiatrist A this morning. I told my boss BS, "I know it's spur of the moment notice, but can I leave?"

BS' face turned kind of weak and muttery. BS said, "Well, yeah, go..."

I said, "It's on the spur of the moment, I know. So said no if I can't go."

BS said, "No. I'd rather you didn't go. I'm gonna need you here today."

BS walked away as I said okay.

I spoke with a couple people and then went back to my desk. I had vines like grapevines growing over my desk. My computer was a laptop. It was only about halfway open. I saw Hotmail up on my screen. I couldn't figure why that would be there: employees weren't allowed to use personal email accounts, like Hotmail, in the office.

I tried to shut the Hotmail off. BS walked by and asked what was wrong. I said, "Somehow Hotmail came up on my screen."

Dream #3

I sat in a brightly lit basement. It was a radio station. I was going to be interviewed as a part of my job. At present some outside correspondent was doing something like a traffic report. In the station, we may have seen the man or the stuff he was talking about on a TV screen. The view was of a straight road in a green field on a grey day.

I thought, Am I going to be late doing this interview? It was as if, on some level of reality, I wasn't really in the studio yet.

Dream #4

I stood before the counter at an airport. The counter and room looked more like an old, cozy hotel. A tall, gaunt, white, bald man with a grey mustache and heavy eyebrows stood behind the counter. The man said, "I don't recognize you. Do you have ID?"

I showed the man my ID and said, "You can ask people if you like. I come here all the time. All I'm trying to do is see if I'm late for my flight. I was scheduled to leave at 12:20 PM. And now it's --" (I craned my neck forward to look around at the man's computer screen) "-- 1:02 PM?! Oh, no!"

I started crying. I said, "I missed my flight! Is there any way I can get a ticket for a different flight?"

Two or three people, maybe two guys and a girl, roughly twenty-five years old, walked around the old man cheerfully. They spoke happily about my problem and how it could probably be fixed. They walked away. The old man started wandering off.

I asked, "Aren't you going to see about getting me a new flight?"

The man said, "We have other things to do. We'll get to you." He left.

The young men and woman were now bringing out plates of food from a bar and grill that was off to my left. One of the plates was big chunks of meat covered in sauce that looked like ranch dressing.

Dream #5

Black and white, grainy view like old film footage. A narrator spoke about the first space flight, which had been made by the Russians.

I watched a "space shuttle" launch, then travel parallel with the ground, maybe only a couple hundred feet above the ground. The "shuttle" looked like a sci-fi spacecraft, or a child's drawing. It was like two cylinders in the back which ended in rockets and which joined in the front to one cylinder which pointed at the front.

The craft began lifting as it flew over the ocean. It lifted so slowly I at first thought that it was getting ready to lose control and crash. The view was momentarily from behind it as it rose above a patchy plane of clouds. I knew now that the craft wouldn't crash. But watching it rise (view from in front of the craft, looking back at it) so slowly, at such a gentle angle, I doubted the craft could ever actually leave the earth.

The craft slowly increased its angle and speed. I now wondered if the view was going to catch the craft traveling so quickly and steeply. I didn't think the view would actually be able to travel with the craft.

Dream #6

I was in a bedroom (?) with a few people of different ages (probably up to my age). Everybody was in a slighty frenzy, not angry, just unsettled. They were all talking about the new Harry Potter book. At the same time they were passing around the previous Harry Potter books. The covers of these books looked weird, like cheap second editions -- or rather like the old sensational film posters (i.e. L'enfant de Paris) that were (at the time I entered this dream in the paper journal) on display in the MoMA film center.

I got a good enough look at all the volumes, as they were rapidly passed from hand to hand, that when someone called out, "It's too bad we don't have all seven volumes right here," I could shout out, "But we do!"

Someone yelled at me, "No, we don't!"

I said, "Yes, we do! Look!" As I pointed to each book as it transferred from hand to hand, I counted out the volumes. "One, two, three, four, five, six. And there's seven!"

I now saw a copy of the book like a wide-opening coffee table book. The right half of the cover was the cover of the new Harry Potter book. As I "heard" some TV or magazine story about J.K. Rowling my view slowly moved to the left side of the cover.

I thought, I've heard a lot of people talk about how much of a bitch (???!!!) J.K. Rowling is. I wondreed what she looked like. On the left side of the cover was a photo of Rowling. She looked like an Italian mother from Brooklyn -- black hair, blue sweater, kind of no-nonsense expression. In the photo, "Rowling" was painting some huge, abstract mural, looking back and smiling at the camera.

Now there was a view of her (not on the book, but like in life) standing behind a glass-paned front door. The view was in front of the door, to catch the glass' reflection of a field of flowers, bands of color -- yellow, purple, and white, with a vague green band -- and a feeling of mountains and sky in the distance.

In this view "Rowling" looked a lot older. Her hair was cut short and was reddish-brown, very tough. "Rowling's" face was round; her nose, nubby; her eyes, pale blue. I think I felt a wish in her that she could become young again.

(8/12/07) dream analysis by stock analyst; my name is preemie

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on the phone with my boss DO. He was with my psychiatrist A. I "saw" that they were in a room like my great grandmother's living room. DO had rushed to the phone when I had come on. He told me he had read the letter I had given to my psychiatrist.

Trying to help me somehow, as if everybody were panicked about my condition, DO said, "I see what the Dark Girl and the girl with black eyes mean." I "saw" that the Dark Girl was a Mexican or Native American girl with very dark skin. The girl with black eyes was like classic grey alien, except maybe only waist-height, and somehow childlike.

DO said, "The Dark Girl means you want to control things. The girl with black eyes means you have no knowledge of history."

Dream #2

I walked into a gigantic, K-Mart-like store with my family. AN, a temporary assistant at my company, was with us. We all went our separate ways, but AN kept following me. I was trying to shake him off. He was trying to gauge where I really wanted to go, but he was acting like he wasn't trying to follow me at all.

AN said, "I'm going up to the electronics section." So I walked up there with him to put him where he said he wasted to go and thus "oblige" him to stay there and not follow me.

When we got to the electronics section, in the back of the store, I said, "I don't have any interest in electronics. I'm leaving." I headed off toward the left wall of the store. I felt like AN was still following me. I ran faster and faster and wove in and out of aisles to throw AN off my trail.

A kid pulling a cart stacked almost to the ceiling (maybe fifty feet high?) with boxes got in my way. I jumped and flew over the boxes and onto the top shelf of what looked like an aisle of "big-box" warehouse shelves. I ran along the top shelf toward the entrance of the store and the cash registers.

When I got to the end of the aisle I could see down (way down) to the entrance and cash registers. This whole area was moderately busy with people. AN ran, crouched, from behind a display case island, like a counter of watch displays, and hid behind one of the unused cash registers. I could tell, by the way AN was moving and hiding, that he was waiting until he saw me come back around to this part of the store so he could start following me again.

I leapt down to the cash register. I pulled AN out from behind the register. I yelled, "Why are you following me?!"

AN ignored my question. He was about to call out to some partners of his who weren't necessarily following me but were lurking around, just in case they needed to help AN with stalking me.

But before AN could call out to his partners, I covered his mouth and nose. I held AN's mouth and nose for so long that AN died.

AN was now my brother. I held him in my arms. I carried him through the store, trying to find my family. The store was now a restaurant set up as some kind of beach bar. It was humongous. The place was full of people. Some people sat on couches.

I couldn't believe I had killed my brother. I also didn't want to be accused of it -- even though I was obviously guilty!

I got to a completely dark corner of the bar-like area. There were still, apparently, people sitting in this corner of the bar. For a moment I thought I could see the faces of the people. But when I got up to the people I couldn't see anything at all.

I called, "Is my family still here?"

The people all replied. They all sounded young, like they were in their mid-twenties. They said, "No, not here." I turned around. I still couldn't see anything. The people called, "Hey, wait a minute. Who are you? We don't even know who you are to help you."

I said, "M... m... my name is Preemie."

(9/15/07) diseased ruins and marshy river; yelling at brother; psychiatrist baggage

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM at Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn Heights.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.

On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.

I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.

I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.

I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.

I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.

Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.

To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.

Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.

In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.

I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.

I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.

A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.

I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.

Dream #2

I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.

My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.

My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)

I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.

Dream #3

My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.

A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.

We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.

(9/18/07) the expansion of central park

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I rode through a suburban street at night with my mom and sister. As we passed one intersection one man walked diagonally through a corner yard to our left. We continued on. My mom drove. I sat in the passenger's seat. My sister sat in the back seat, on the driver's side.

I said, "That's why I like being out at night: nobody ever comes out."

My mom said, "I wish nobody even had to live in these houses. That way no lights would even be on."

I thought, Why would you want no lights to be on? You wouldn't be able to see the different kinds of houses.

The houses were lit brightly, as if there were lights pointed all over the houses and yards. For some reason this reminded me of Christmas.

At the end of the block the road curved left. Facing the curve was a tall, wide house. It had a wide, triangular, solid roof with a longer slope on the left than on the right. The wood of the house seemed to be as polished as in a Greene & Greene interior. The front of the building had some grid design in the wood. One vertical strip of the house-front was rough like the trunk of an enormous tree, but it was colored red and blue.

We drove into a massive tunnel or "garage" on the left side of the house. The tunnel also, like the house-front, had polished wood walls with grid designs. The tunnel turned left. At the turn was an enormous bench, maybe twenty feet tall, built into the wall, with seat and back cushions proportional to the height of the bench. (I think the only thing the bench could fit would be the statue of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.)

We continued, as if floating along, though perhaps no longer in a car (my vision was a lot more mobile), through a room full of books. I told my mom that this was a library I knew. The room was intimate. The walls were lined with books, and there were books all over the tables.

We continued floating/driving into a much bigger room which was just as full of books. Both rooms were very nice and comfortable, but they were both simply piled and piled with books.

I lay on a couch. My mom and sister sat in two chairs behind me. They were reading. My mom had a wide but thinnish book which, I thought, was probably an interesting picture book.

I turned forward. In front of me was a big, thick, dark, rectangular, wooden table piled with books. I pulled a large, pale blue-covered book off a pile. I was slightly disappointed to find that I had chosen a picture book on the history of Central Park. I had wanted something with subject matter a little "weightier."

I looked through pictures about how (some time in the 1950s?) the park had been expanded. There was a map of the park "as it is today." The park was long, oval-shaped with uneven edges. The parts of the park that existed before the expansion were in color. The parts of the park that came into being after the expansion were in black and white.

But if this book was right, then before the expansion the park was in two sections which, given the size of the park, were quite separated. I thought, How could people have called these separate sections one park? What's more, how could they have called these sections "Central Park" if the sections were so far apart?

I then saw that the two parks had been connected by a walkway, at the midpoint of which was an oval-shaped rest area. For some reason this made things a little more sensible.

(I imagined that, before the expansion, the area between the two parks was really like vacant dirt lots,, just barren, pale, dry soil, not streets, buildings, or anything implying a city. There may even have been patches of trees out on these vacant lots.)

As I justified the name of Central Park to myself, my psychiatrist A stomped into the room from a doorway to my right and beyond my feet (i.e. beyond the direction of my feet as I lay on the couch). A shouted, "What in the hell are you doing in my place? You don't just come into people's places like this!"

I was caught off guard by A's surprise, shocked by how mean A could be. I stammered to say A's name, but I couldn't. I looked at a page in the book. There was a photo of a Hindu snake woman from Erich Neumann's The Great Mother. Below the photograph were three numbered paragraphs, each of which described a title. The first two were titled "Snake" and "Religion." The third was a word I didn't understand.

I tried again to call out A's name. But all I could think to say, as if it wanted to burst out as a revelatory speech, was, "Snake!"

A looked pale and worn-out. She wore big, smoky-lensed sunglasses which made her face look like that of a classic grey alien. At some point A stood half-straddling me, so her right leg knelt by my left side while her left leg stood, on the floor to my right, before the couch.

I muttered, "B-but w-we, we weren't saying a single word."

A said, "I don't give a damn what you were saying. You don't go into places when you aren't invited."

I said, "But I was invited. I have it in writing." I felt like this was true. But I also felt like A wouldn't care about that. She was too mad.

(11/8/07) lesbian kissing joke; bowling green jacket; the shortest bio; brother's suffocation

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A movie preview. Two women kissing in dim light, outdoors, possibly in a courtyard or near a pool. One woman was blonde; the other, brunette. The blonde woman eventually started up a relationship with some big man, whom I dont think I ever saw directly.

The kissing scene started over, except now this was where the man first met the blonde woman. The blonde woman was kissing the brunette and then waved over the brunette's shoulder (still holding the brunette's hands -- they seemed to be kneeling and holding hands while kissing.)

In another scene the blonde woman was in a swimming pool with the brunette, convincing the brunette that the relationship with the man would soon be revealed as a joke.

I sat (on a trunk or a box?) in a bedroom filled with grey natural light. Against the wall facing me was a desk. On the right wall, the near the wall facing me, was a doorway to a big movie theater full of people.

I could hear the music for the preview for the movie Walk Hard. I thought a point would be coming up soon where everybody would laugh. But only a few people laughed. I thought, Oh -- well, the big laugh must be coming soon.

Dream #2

I walked out of some place like a subway stop and into a grey, cold day. There were people rushing all over. The area was all torn up, like the construction area around Bowling Green.

I was cold. I pulled a black jacket out of the back pocket of my book bag. It suddenly occurred to me that I had had my jacket in there for a long time. I was afraid to put on the jacket -- I didn't want my boss BS to think I was a wimp for wearing a jacket so early in the cold season.

I walked along torn up sidewalk and a wall (to my right) of scaffolding. People even seemed to be walking in the street. Two people walked past me -- first, a woman on crutches missing her left leg; second, a man on crutches, possibly using both of his legs to walk.

Dream #3

I sat at a pale, wood table. I sat across from my boss BS. He sat a little to my left. I was resting my head on the surface of the table. The wood was thick but not very dense. It was polished, but there seemed to be little, grey nicks all over the surface.

I was explaining to BS that I had actually lived alright while I was in the Americorps volunteer programs I had been in, regardless of having made around six dollars an hour at the most recent position and -- (I tried to mention the position I'd had in New Mexico, but I got sidetracked somehow).

BS decided that he and I should have a contest of who could write the shortest bio.

Dream #4

I was in an empty room with my psychiatrist A. The room was white with pale wood floors. A sat against a wall. I sat just right and forward of the center of the room. We both probably sat in folding chairs. A may also have been my mother. We were discussing some day-to-day activities.

My brother lay before A now and pulled a big, clear, plastic bag over himself. He stuck it up like a tent. Even though he said very little, he made it clear he would try to suffocate himself. He was seriously trying to get our attention. I could feel my brother dying at points, but I simply hoped he would be alright. A/my mom seemed also to be doing a good job of ignoring my brother.

We stood up and walked out the door, now plainly talking about day-to-day activities, as if to show my brother we weren't worried about him at all. We walked down the hall. A/my mom lay on a couch. I headed toward the front door.

I saw my brother had now laid himself on a basket full of used, white towels. The basket was small, so my brother, fitting in the basket, must have been small as well. My brother held the plastic bag over himself again, as if he were going to suffocate himself.

(11/15/07) five year plan; fire escape; shell game

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I sat in an audience. My view was partly like I was there and partly like I was looking at a photograph. The audience was to see something like the presentation of the new five-year plan for China. This presentation was in China. The auditorium was modern, softly lit, and had white, scalloped "panel" ornamentation on the ceiling. I noticed a lot of blonde, white people in the crowd. I thought, They like the Chinese culture, so they move over here. Then they get involved with the policy, like they're part of Chinese society.

 A group of Chinese officials, maybe three men, sat down at a table on stage to begin. A woman in front of me began singing. At first I thought the sound came from somewhere else. Then I saw the woman singing. She looked white, with long, red-brown hair with streaks of grey in it, like my mom's hair. She had a strange look, like she was tall and skinny, but also fat. I could never see her face.

At first I thought the woman was singing a Chinese song to begin the ceremony. But the song soon became raucous, like an American country song. I thought the woman was disrupting the presentation as a protest and that she would be arrested. But now everybody was standing up, as if standing to revere the song.

The auditorium was all dark except the stage, which was lit very harshly. The woman moved to my left. As she did, a black businessman, in my row, came up to me from my right. He wanted me to move, but he wasn't asking to be excused, or saying anything at all, really. I moved forward, but he edged me out of my seat. I thought that was fine. Maybe he just really needed to get away from the woman's singing. (I didn't consider that he had moved left, in the same direction as the woman.)

There was an empty seat just to my right. With telekinesis, I moved my bags over to this seat and the bags in this seat over to where I had previously been sitting (as if the businessman had now disappeared). I thought, Now the Chinese officials are going to think I'm Falun Dafa because I've used telekinesis. They'll persecute me.

We were all sitting. The auditorium was greyish, with wood seats and lit with bland light or daylight through dirty windows. A tallish, slightly overweight, bald, Chinese man with blue jeans and a too-big striped shirt spoke. At first he stood in the front row. Then he stood a few rows back from me.

The man said, "We are purposely losing the bank money. We want the bank to feel a loss of five billion dollars now so they will be prepared for the loss of ten billion dollars in the future. We are purposely doing bad jobs to make this happen."

Dream #2

There was a fire announcement at my office. I didn't quite understand it at first. When I finally reacted to it, two people (my co-worker SV and another person) were already running down the fire escape stairwell. They yelled up to me, "Can't you smell the fumes? It's dangerous!"

I yelled for them to come back, that we all needed to leave together. But they continued running away. I did smell fumes, as if the danger were some gas being released in the air from some structural breaking or disintegration in the building, not from fire.

I ran around on my floor, trying to get some people together so we could get out of the building. The floor looked a little bit nicer than usual and was lit very nicely. The people I saw weren't paying any attention to me. But eventually everybody was in offices, with their curtains pulled. I ran around, not panicked, but trying to get people organized, yelling for them to come out of their offices.

I was in a lobby that for some reason looked like a department store.

Dream #3

I stood in an old, dark-wood-walled room with an old, fattish, tired-looking man. The room was small and emptyish, but it felt dirty and dusty. It felt like a high-up floor in an old Manhattan apartment. The carpet was probably deep green.

The man told me about a woman who led some organization, which perhaps we both worked for. At some point during the man's talk, the woman (who looked like my psychiatrist A) moved in and out of the room, carrying items like old wood boxes in and out, and also into and out from a hole in the wall behind either a set of shelves or a grandfather clock.

The man said, "Do you smell that?" He breathed in. I did, too. There was a dusty smell. The old man continued, "Don't fool yourself. It's part of what she doesn't want to tell you about. They have a whole system down there, and they do bad things. Have you ever wondered what she does on her trips to XXXXX?" (Some tropical place.)

At this point the woman (A?) was working behind a curtain dividing this room from another room, to our right.

The man said, "They take boxes there. And, going in, the boxes look very innocent. But do you know what they do with those boxes?"

A interrupted. We now stood near her, possibly as if she had pulled open the curtain between the two rooms. A said, "Do you know that these boxes are just the right size to fit old Turks who don't know how to keep their mouths shut? Maybe books can fall out of one box and a Turk can fall into it -- and then fall underground! -- if he doesn't shutup."

The old man was shocked into silence. I watched A stack old magazines into the dark wood box on the table before us. The box was large enough to fit a person. I was fascinated by all the old, beautiful magazines.

We now stood at something like a bar in a big, empty, dark wood room which was dim and quiet. It was me, A, and my co-worker MD. We were looking at seashells, which may have been in an open drawer before me. I pulled out one seashell that had a narrow, spiral shape. It had stripes of maroon accented with stripes of bright pink.

MD and A commented on a shell that had the shape of a river cobble. The shell was white and smooth. It had red material like glitter all over it, punctuated by little diamonds. (So... white and smooth, eh? How so?) MD and A wanted me to take the shell. But I thought touching the shell would do something bad to me.

MD said, "It's not dirty. It's clean and smooth. Touch it." So I did.

I was at the end of a long hallway, heading back to the room where MD and A were. I held two small shells. The shells were all white, but on the inside of the shells were things written in blue and green magic marker. The shells were thin. I kept trying to hold the shells in the right like so the magic marker wouldn't show through. But I couldn't.

I could hear MD and A talking about where they had found the big shell. Now I was back with them. I had an interesting though about one of the shells, but I didn't say anything: I didn't want A and MD to think I was obsessed with the shells.

I now saw a shell, also like a big river cobble, which had been drawn over with a picture of flowers blooming below a blue sky. The drawing was a gift from the people at the New York City taxi-cab art project called Gardens-in-Transit. When I touched the drawing I got paint (?) from the picture all over my fingers.

(11/25/07) the one-bedroom two-bedroom; my mom's law

(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was bright day. I stood on the roof of a tall, white apartment building. The roof was a little tiered and covered with gravel or small stones. I walked down a little tiered area to meet my real estate agent, CH. CH was going to show me a new apartment.

As I approached CH, my psychiatrist A came from my right. A called, "I need to go to the bathroom! I need to go pee!" To my right was now another apartment, the door opening directly to a toilet. I thought, Well, if A isn't using the one I'm looking at, I may as well go in.

The apartment I was going to be moving into was a two-room, I had been told. I was going to find a roommate. I wondered if A was supposed to be my roommate. The place was more expensive, but I almost thought I could still afford to live here by myself.

The first room I walked into was a bathroom. The second was a kitchen. The third was a bedroom. The fourth and fifth were another bathroom and kitchen. All five rooms were in a straight line with each other. I wondered where the second bedroom was.

I walked back into the bedroom. When I got there, something made me think I had walked through the second bedroom without having paid attention. I turned around and walked back. But all there were were the second kitchen and second bathroom again.

At the end of the second kitchen (the last room) was another door. It was a thin, fake wood door. There were little stickers on it, showing words in different "cool-girl" styles and colors. One word may have been the name "Tony" in a thick, pink cursive. The door had a tiny slide-lock on it. The door was unlocked.

I opened the door. It looked like another apartment, probably with a family of a mother and children living there. The place was littered slightly with papers and things.

I closed the door. I wanted to believe that this place was also mine, but I knew it wasn't. These were my neighbors. I thought I had escaped having neighbors like these people, who would probably make me miserable with all their noise. And I still had only one bedroom!

I couldn't insulate myself from the noise of these neighbors. It struck me as odd that the door was unlocked from my side. That meant the people in the next apartment had probably been running around in this apartment. Since the new place was practically mine, I locked the door.

I walked to the front door. As I got to the front door I was once again certain that I had seen a second bedroom, or perhaps a living room, without having paid attention to it.

Dream #2

I lay in a living room with my mom and my brother. My mom sat on a couch and my brother lay somewhere beyond my bed. To my right was a buffet, on top of which was a TV, probably turned on. The room was dim.

My brother asked my mom, "Don't we have to get to XXXXX?" (This place was something like a city council meeting.)

My mom said, "Oh, no. I don't feel like going."

My brother said, "But they're going to propose your law today!"

We now stood out on a familiar road near the house where my family lived during my last years of high school. To our right, along the road, was a blocks-long bake sale.

My brother said, "You made all that fuss to get them to put the law in. Now you don't want to go support it up to the next level?"

I stood looking at a bunch of weirdly frosted cupcakes -- they all had white frosting on the centers, but other frosting (like chocolate) on the outsides. They looked like they would be disappointing.

I got mad at my mom. She had made the law? And now she was too lazy to care if it failed? I told my mom, "You are an idiot! I've been able to hold it in for a long time. But this is so stupid, what you're doing now."

I stood in a courtyard. The ground was redbrick. The walls and columns were redbrick. The place had a spacious but intimate feel. I was apologizing to a woman my age, as i what I had said to my mom had been said to this woman instead. I wasn't physically speaking. It was like I was walking around by myself in the courtyard, remembering the apology while also letting bad thoughts about my mother work through my head.

I now embraced a woman who looked like MH, a colleague from New York Cares. I held MH close and realized how good it felt. Now it was like I had said all the bad things about a nearby friend of MH. MH's friend was very severe. MH and I were standing, arms around each other, saying apologies as MH's friend approached us from a distance, as if we were preparing what we should say to MH.

(1/3/08) telekinetic lights

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in the basement apartment of a house. It must have been late afternoon. I was writing, kneeling over a bed or couch that was lit by the grey light of a window above me. The bed/couch was cluttered with all kinds of things.

I sat my pen down. I motioned at the pen, but didn't touch it. The pen flew against the back of the (couch?). I was amazed that I could do something like that. It seemed like telekinesis.

I lifted up my hand. The pen stood, again without my touching it. I dropped my hand. The pen fell. I lifted up my hand and thought for the pen to come to me. It flew into my hand.

A woman like my psychiatrist A, with big, dark glasses, was looking in through the window. I thought she was spying on me and would report me if she knew I was practicing telekinesis. When I caught A's face in the window, A hurried away, toward a fence, keeping her back to me, and trying not to look suspicious.

Hoping to cover my trail, I now tried to act like I hadn't been performing any telekinesis.

Suddenly I noticed how dark this room was. There was a specific light in the room I thought should be turned on. I walked around, but I couldn't find it. Other lights in the room turned on. But they weren't the one I was looking for. They all lit the room in portions or only in shifts or blinkingly. I was looking for a solid light. It must have been completely dark outside by now. A lot of lights had beautiful, Rococo-style ornamentation around them.

I heard a conversation in my head between me and A, who was now something like my landlady. The conversation may have been about the lights. But I felt the conversation was mostly fabricated by me, to make A forget that she'd seen me perform telekinesis.

(1/14/08) injured superhero; submarine library; frozen burrito; lingerie shortcut; domestication; dirty panties; dirty blanket

(Entered in paper journal at 6:07 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a locker room. The scene might have been cartoony. A few people were in with me. There was some kind of narrator talking about a superhero who had been injured. The narrator said something like the hero had been hurt by a trick played on him while he was under the Green Lantern's tutelage.

The narrator then said something having to do with flying jets, like how if you go above nine thousand (???), you either need to prepare to land, prepare to hit fourteen thousand, or know that you're going to crash.

Dream #2

I stood outside, at the top of a hill at night. I may have been on a cobblestone walkway beside or near a building. Below me were openly spaced trees maybe a one-hundred-foot slope, then flat land which became a river to my left (?).

There was a weird, bluish light slightly glowing on the tops of the smaller vegetation. The light seemed to be coming from the left. I walked toward the left to see what was making the light.

Where the river began there was a small submarine, its top part barely sticking out of the water. A blue light glowed at its top. The beam of blue light was very strong directly in front of the submarine. In front of the submarine was a man only visible in silhouette.

There was some weird pipe coming out of the submarine. It seemed to hear people, possibly even their thoughts. Then it would call out mean things to those people, which was a sign you were in trouble. I hoped the pipe wouldn't say anything mean to me.

The blue light was now gone. I saw the submarine in dark shadow. The man seemed to be smoking a cigarette.

I was in a city area, walking down a slight hill to a library. A tallish, young, white man was barreling toward me from the other direction. I rushed toward the library: I felt like the man had wanted to beat me to the door. But after I reached the door, the man kept walking.

I walked down some steps and into the basement of the library. I was looking for a specific book, but I got sidetracked by a shelf full of books by "my favorite author." I was surprised. The library had so many of the author's obscure works, including one book in particular that I din't think anybody had.

The library also had a couple collections of the author's plays. I reflected that I hadn't ever really been a fan of the author's plays. He'd try to be funny in the plays. But the humor would just be kind of flat.

I reminded myself that I needed to focus on the specific book I'd come here for. But now, as I was putting all "my favorite author's" books away, I found a pile of magazines, like People magazine. They were all "special issues" with the weird theme of the top-25 (?) people you don't want to make fun of just because they're dead. A few of the celebrities were familiar to me.

One of the magazines began with Gilda Radner. The second interview about her was with Gene Wilder. For some reason the picture of the interviewee, though, was of a pretty, elegant, blonde woman wearing a black hat and net-like veil.

I thought, I already know what Gene Wilder thought of Gilda Radner. I flipped to the first article about Radner. The theme of this article was that you shouldn't make fun of Gilda Radner, because after she got pregnant she lost a lot of weight.

There were pictures "Radner's" back in successive shots after she'd had her baby.The shots were supposed to show how much weight she'd lost. But the only difference, to my eye, from photo to photo, was that the topless "Radner" wore different skirts.

Dream #3

I was in an SUV with my family. We drove through an area like the foothills on a bright morning. I sat in the front passenger seat. My mom drove. My sister sat somewhere in the back.

I had possibly been cut from my job. Maybe my whole department had been cut. But I still had a company laptop with me. Clients were still requesting market data from me. My mom and I were laughing about how people were still interested in Nielsen market data even when they didn't have jobs anymore.

We stopped at a gas station. My mom told us to pick up something for ourselves to eat. I didn't want anything sugary. I wanted something with protein in it.

The store was maybe three times the size of a normal gas station convenience store. I went to a freezer section. There were frozen burritos. I thought, I've always liked these, and they're cheap. I looked at the price. Seventy-one cents.

I was looking for a spicy beef burrito. But I couldn't find the right box. I began shoveling through all the boxes. I started throwing all sorts of frozen-food pouches on the floor. But I still couldn't find the right burrito.

But now I looked at what I'd thrown on the floor. I found a coupe bagel sandwiches. I thought I might like one of the sausage sandwiches. I thought, Well, that's really what I was looking for all along.

Dream #4

I was in a store in a basement with my mother and sister. A lot of sunlight came in through the window. The store sold lingerie. There were two rooms.

My sister was now gone. My mom was in the other room, talking with the man who ran the store, possibly about buying something for me. I looked at the stuff in the front room. I found a lot of stuff I liked. I wanted to try it on, but not in front of my mom or the man. I didn't want them to know about my lingerie fetish.

In some other area was a small hallway with a door at the end. Mexican workers would come in and out of the door. At one point they left the door open. I saw that beyond the door was a coin-op laundromat.

I thought, I could just come to the laundromat when my mom and the man aren't here. Then while I'm doing my laundry I can come in here and try stuff on. I can use this back door, so nobody will even know I've come in here. They'll all think I'm still in the laundromat!

I walked into the laundromat to make sure it was for the public. It now seemed like the place was a big grocery store. I walked around in the store for a while. But then I started flying around.

At some point I was laying down on the grey, concrete floor. I had blankets and maybe even something like baggage all around me. To my left were a line of people, a metal-detector gate, and an airport terminal sign listing airlines. I realized this area was an extreme shortcut to one of the New York City area airports.

I thought, I could just come here to get to the airport. It's so quick! At first I was pretty sure the shortcut was to the LaGuardia Airport. But now I looked closer at the sign. It said this was a shortcut to JFK Airport.

Dream #5

I was out walking in the woods on a sunny day. I was heading to the head of a trail that went up to the top of a smallish mountain and then along the crests of a range of mountains.

From the opposite end of the trail came a middle-aged man and his son and daughter (?). The man wore a red t-shirt and pale khaki shorts. The kids were probably blonde.

I could tell the man had sped up on seeing me to cut me off a the trailhead so he could slow me down going up the trail. But I hurried to get in front of the family. The area we had been on was a clearing, mostly grassy and shrubby. But once we turned onto the mountain trail, the area was densely covered with pine trees.

The dad was still trying to get ahead of me. But  was walking too fast for him. He finally gave up and told his kids, "Let's turn around and head on back."

I was walking on the ridge of the mountain range. I was a worker at this national park or forest. It was night. There was a lot of snow on the ground. I was thinking about how I would describe my job to people.

I stopped and looked out at a point where the trail edged over the slope at a sharp point. A lot of the landscape below -- probably where the trail headed -- was visible.

When I looked back at my footprints in the snow I saw that for a while I had veered off the trail and down the slop a little way. I was back on the trail now, but I couldn't figure out how I had gotten off the trail in the first place.

I walked down to the footprints then continued backwards, back up to the trail, and then back to a gate-like set of rock walls through fell which a shaft of incandescent light.

I was about to walk back through this gate, as if I were now continuing backward. But when I turned right and into the gate, I started a white wolf. The wolf jumped up and trotted down a path that went straight down the slope from the gate. I noticed that the wolf had small patches of grey fur on its sides.

The wolf stopped trotting away at a certain distance. It turned to look at me. There was no incandescent light. The light was now just moonlight.

I was about to start walking forward instead of backward. But now  saw another white wolf, this one standing and facing me on the trail, except straight and past the gate. It trotted after me a little quickly. I was afraid. But I soon figured there was no reason to be afraid. If the wolf attacked me, there was nothing I could do about it. Now the other wolf came after me, too.

I was moving backward along the trail, along a rock face, as quickly as I could to get some distance between me and the wolves but also to continue facing them. But they overtook me pretty quickly. They started nuzzling me and licking me like domestic dogs would. They seemed happy more than anything else.

I was now probably in an apartment living room or kitchen. I could look out the window and see the snow-covered mountain range in the moonlight.

The wolves, now more like dogs, ran around a kitchen table and toward me. Then they continued licking me and playing with me. The more the dogs licked me and played with me, the more they lost their whiteness and the more they turned into domestic dogs. This upset me, as if I were watching a disease in them progress.

Dream #6

My psychiatrist A was in "my apartment." She was having a session with me. But she was actually or also redecorating my house. As A went to my closet she got a call on her cell phone. She had the closet door open. She was distractedly flipping through some things (books, clothes, etc.) as she spoke on the phone.

I hoped A wouldn't notice the dirty panties in my closet. I wanted even to tell A not to file around in there.

A spoke to some man about getting some stuff for my place. In particular she mentioned some kind of wallpaper. I imagined my walls having a weird wallpaper on them. The wallpaper seemed to be flecked with gem crystals: long, thin, pale blue crystals. I was touched by such a kind through from A.

I lay on "my bed." A was off the phone. She sat in a folding chair and was arranging a wall-wide, single-shelf bookshelf. As A did this she might have been talking to me distractedly about how we needed to deal with the dirty panties in my closet. They just didn't fit in with the rest of the design.

I got a call on my cell phone. It was possibly my brother. We were probably making some kind of arrangement for seeing each other.

Dream #7

I was in a big, dark, indoor area. There were a lot of people around. But there was one group of people in particular focused on me. The people in the group seemed to be Latino. There were maybe ten people in the group. Most of the people in the group were women. In particular there were three really pretty girls.

I had been sleeping under a blanket that may have been thirty feet long. The group of people were helping me fold the blanket. I was trying not to let them help me fold up my blanket. I knew there were semen stains all over the blanket and that the blanket smelled like urine and sweat. I didn't want to let the people know that I was the kind of person who would get a blanket all dirty like that and not do anything about it.

But I couldn't stop the people from folding the blanket. I had to resign myself to the fact that they'd see how dirty my blanket was.

The blanket was now folded. The women were kind of giggling to one another about the stains on my blanket. But they didn't seem to care too much. They might have made a statement about needed to get me a new blanket.

(3/21/08) snap decisions

Dream #1

I was in an office, telling people I probably couldn't see that I was leaving to work at another firm. I surprised a lot of people by making this decision. I felt bad for upsetting people. But I felt I had to stick to my choice.

I was in a dim bedroom. I was waiting for "my psychiatrist" to arrive. I had also made a surprising decision that I had to tell her about.

I walked around alone in the room. On one of the walls was a pink curtain or a set of pink curtains. The fabric was thinnish and bright. Behind the folds of each curtain, I found, were columns of snapshots.

(4/3/08) between china and america; you can't just think he's alright

(Entered in paper journal at 5:19 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I may have been in a nice ballroom with a lot of other people. I heard that a ship was in danger nearby and wasn't being allowed to dock. The whole situation struck me as very sad.

I could see the ship on tumultuous waves. The ship must have been large. I could tell that the passengers were Chinese. They weren't aware that they weren't going to be allowed to dock.

I was now on the ship. I was trying to be as cheerful as possible, to make the news less harsh when it was finally discovered.

We were now all on a bus (? -- still felt like we were walking in the cabin of a ship) in China. I asked someone a question like, "Have you ever read any Chinese law?"

Someone said, "Oh, yes. The five-year plan. Everybody reads that."

The bus stopped in front of a structure like a tollbooth mixed with a library desk. We had arrived back in China, having had to turn back from the United States because of some danger. But now that we had arrived in China, we were heading back to the US.

But something had happened to our passport, which was a piece of paper shaped like a foot. I got out of the bus to see if the women at the desk could issue us a new paper. I pulled our old one off the dry, dusty ground, as if the thing had fallen out of or off the bus.

When I handed the paper to the women and requested a new paper, the women convened among themselves. They told me they would get back to me soon. I knew they wouldn't. There was something my group had done to break the rules. My group was now not going to be allowed to leave China.

We were told to wait. We all milled around in a big living room that was probably lit with fluorescent light. Soon there were only a few people, all of whom were probably American.

One woman stood before a Chinese map (brown and tan, showing something like provinces) and spoke about the Falun Dafa. She said that at first the protests were very impactful. But now they had gone too far. The woman didn't feel bad that the Falun Dafa were no longer allowed in China.

The woman then told the story of the man who had organized the bus trip. I turned and saw the man behind me. He was tallish, of average build, maybe in his thirties, possibly of Asian descent. He wore a white t-shirt and glasses and stared straight forward, as if thinking of something great.

The man had arranged yearly trips for impoverished people in China, possibly for them to visit family members in the United States. The trips had been running smoothly for years. But now the man had to fight to keep them going.

I thought, Well, he should be able to do that. I remember working with him in the very beginning, when he had to fight tooth and nail to get the project off the ground at all. I thought back to then. I had been a kid. The man had been very skinny.

Now the man's daughter ran into the room. She was maybe a teenager, dark-brown skinned, with long, black hair. The man laughed and said to her, "You probably won't remember him" (me) "It's been such a long time since we've worked together."

Dream #2

I stood in a bedroom with grey carpet and natural light. "My psychiatrist" lay on an enormous, messy bed, at the foot of which I stood. "My psychiatrist" may have been an old, pale, fattish, woman. She shifted beneath the covers of her (pale pink?) blanket in a kind of slimy way. I was trying to tell "my psychiatrist" things. But eventually I felt like I was talking to no purpose.

"My psychiatrist" started telling me really awful, ugly, stupid things. I got mad and began yelling at her like crazy. She now wrote in a notebook and showed me the page. She now looked like my psychiatrist A. She said, "We can't work together anymore. I have to find someone else to work with you."

The page A showed me was a list of requirements for my new psychiatrist. The page was full, written in smallish, very precise lettering. There were some small drawings or diagrams. The ink was blue, and wide, like from a gel-pen.

The only requirement I remember being written on the page was something like, "He's very intelligent and requires intelligent work. He may seem alright, but he's not. You can't just think he's alright and let things go. He will explode in a rage if you do."

(6/30/08) decks and roofs

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was part of a group of people in a class or on a project. We may all have been the same age, though I may have been slightly older. We were split up and were running through a building. We had to find a door that led out to a deck on the building.

I had run through a small room like a cafeteria or a library which looked out onto a small deck. The door out to that deck was locked. I found a door in another part of the building and opened that up. It went out to the roof of the building. Everybody (there were maybe ten people in the group) met on the roof. Our teacher, who may have looked like my psychiatrist A, taught us some lesson about what we had done.

We were inside again, possibly in a different building. Now I was following a black man through the building. We came to another small room like a cafeteria or library that looked out onto a deck.

The black man opened the door. We walked out on the deck. There were a couple other people there. I felt like this wasn't the right place, even though we were out on a deck. I felt like we should have been higher, out on a roof, perhaps.

I was in an office with my psychiatrist A. She was scolding me about my lack of progress in our sessions. She told me she couldn't see me anymore.

(4/2/09) killing the spider; anime library; chasing the ceo

(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was night. I lay in a wide bed like a hotel bed, with a synthetic-feeling coverlet over me. To my right was a sliding-glass door, which was messy with soild and showed pale, electric blue light, like from a car's headlights, somewhere in the distance (though the door opened to a backyard, not to a front yard with a road).

I looked over the right side of the bed and saw a spider crawl under the bed. The floor was a mess, cluttered with dusty items like cushions and boards. The spider was like a daddy long legs with a metallic, blue-purple body.

I "remembered" my psychiatrist A having told me at our last session, "Now, don't you kill any spiders."  (In waking life, my psychiatrist had actually told me to make sure I didn't get another job until my "inactive" period with my current job -- where I was technically still an employee, though I was already basically laid off and no longer coming into work -- was finished and I was finally unemployed, i.e. about mid-April.)

But for some reason I thought, Well, killing one spider isn't all that bad. I couldn't stand the thought of having a pest in my room. I rolled off the bed and looked under it to see where the spider was. I saw it near the wall, near the head of the bed

I stood up and walked to the bathroom to grab something to smash the spider with. I came out with something, probably an unwieldy, dark square of material (when I'd meant to get a bit of toilet paper).

I turned on my bedroom light. The light was just a table lamp, dim, at the opposite end of the room from me, at the head of my bed, on its left side. Most of the room was still dark. The place was cluttered and dusty. There was another bed to the left of my bed. That bed was cluttered with stuff, including a foam mat that lay half on and off the bed. But the left side of my bed was also cluttered.

I was afraid to step in the space between the two beds. I thought the floor under the left bed was so dirty that mice probably lived under it. I was afraid that if I caused any vibrations in the floor, the mice would come out, which would be really annoying and would dissolve my sense of "having a clean room."

I walked between the beds, anyway. I kneed my way up onto the right bed. I thought the spider would eventually crawl up the wall, at which point i could smash it. But looking at the head of my bed, I now saw that the right pillow, on which I had laid my head, had a blanket of cobweb from its corner to the wall. I knew this cobweb was the spider's web, and that it had been here for a while.

I couldn't stand the thought that I had lived so long with the spider so close to my head while I slept. I thought something like, Well, it's too late now. But I still tried to convince myself that somehow I hadn't slept with my head so close to the spider, and that the web couldn't have been there for very long.

I thought that I should at least pull the web out, now that I saw it. But when I reached at it (parts of it now looked like a web), I noticed that the spider, now smaller and greyish, was posed in the bottom half of the web. I was afraid that by pulling out the web I'd make the spider angry. But I knew I had to do it, anyway, to start to make my room clean again.

I pulled the web off the wall. It now hung down off my pillow. I might have pulled the web the rest of the way off my pillow. But I now saw that the spider was angry. That was enough to scare me. But now I also saw that the spider was thing and long-legged, like before, and that its body was jet black with a red hourglass on it. I thought, It's a black widow!

I stood off my bed and backed away from it. The spider now charged down the bed and onto the floor, coming after me. The spider had stubby legs and a squarish, crab-like body, black with red mottling. It had red jaws and two big, round, black eyes. It was maybe three-quarters of an inch wide. I backed all the way back to the bathroom doorway. The spider and I may then have been at a standstill.

Dream #2

I was in something like a library or bookshop that had a cafe in it. The place had a very "strip-mall" feel -- white-walled, tall, wide, with thin carpet and wide-spaced shelves. The cafe area was just a few tables spread out in an open space among shelves. The place was moderately busy.

I stood at a revolving carousel of books. The shelves were clear and plastic. The carousel was about seven feet high.

My girlfriend H sat at a table with a friend. They may have spoken back and forth in both Japanese and English. They were talking about me and the books I was looking at. I was probably looking at manga novels, though I may also have been looking at anime DVDs.

I was looking, H and her friend said, at some classic manga, but also at some manga that either H or her friend was not familiar with. One of the two began to explain to the other what this anime/manga was all about. The person then sang the theme song, which sounded like a song from a recent (in 2009) anime about a boy who dresses up as a girl so he can go to a girls' school. I was ashamed that H and her friend liked this anime. But H and her friend didn't seem to worried about the fact that I liked the anime.

The top shelf of the carousel had tiny books, maybe two and a half inches tall and one and half inches wide, and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. The rest of the shelves were now filled with DVDs. A couple of DVD cases were patterned with orange and black tiger stripes. These cases were for DVDs of an anime show I really liked.

H and her friend now spoke about this show and how much they liked it, mostly because they wanted to sound like they were interested in me, so I would get interested in them. The more H and her friend spoke, though, the more, I noticed, the DVDs for the show filled the carousel. Now almost all the DVDs on the carousel were DVDs for that show.

At some point H and her friend were discussing specific words in the show's theme song. I felt weird, again, about what the two girls were discussing, as if those particular words would reveal something about me that I didn't want known.

Dream #3

I was in a restaurant with a friend. We sat at a booth table which was like a large car's interior set into a very small bedroom. The room had white walls and a window on one wall, almost the height of the entire wall. There might have been blinds over the window.

The table area had no table, but something like a grouping of gear-shift knobs and levers encased in black plastic and slightly metallic, green imitation leather. The booth seats were like bench seats, although somehow it was also possible to sit and look forward out the window, as if sitting in bucket seats.

I sat across from (or, sometimes, beside) a pretty, young woman who possibly had olive skin and brown hair. We were waiting for guests for a business meal, probably breakfast or lunch. In particular we were waiting for the CEO of the company from which I had recently been laid off.

Through the window I could see beyond the "restaurant's parking lot and across a street to a tan-bricked office building in a business park. There were green mounds of grass before the building and blue sky over it.

I saw the CEO outside the building. I explained something to the woman about how all the guests would be late, but how a lot of them would make it. I was particularly sure that the CEO would make it. I didn't feel like I sounded too convincing. I now sat "forward" in my seat, like I would sit in a bucket seat.

I now saw the CEO walking just outside the window. I said, "Ha! The CEO is just outside! That means he's coming really soon." I got up and ran outside to meet the CEO. I knew he was with a group of tall, young, strong businessmen, who accompanied him just about everywhere.

But when I got outside, I couldn't see the CEO anywhere. I was with a group of people outside. The parking lot was like a strip of asphalt road among dusty desert hills, dirt roads, and chain link fences, all under a clear, blue sky.

We all looked up and down the road for the CEO. Now the CEO came speeding down the road, from our left, heading toward the "restaurant" in a pale, metallic blue, Porsche-like car. We were all happy that the CEO was finally here. We all started walking back toward the building. I may have been at the back of the line of people walking back.

Now the CEO sped away from the building. I realized that the CEO couldn't find a parking space, which was equivalent with not being able to locate where our group was meeting. I ran after the CEO so I could tell him where we were.

But now the CEO's car sped back toward the "restaurant." I ran back to the "restaurant" so I could find the CEO and lead him to where our group was meeting. I ran through the building, which was now like a mix of warehouse space and office hallways.

I opened one of the doors in a hallway. The whole group was sitting at the booth table. I asked everybody if they'd seen the CEO. They said they had, but that he'd walked past this booth as if he hadn't recognized that this was where he should be.

I ran back in the direction I had come from, to catch the CEO before he got back in his car. I ran through a large warehouse space (actually like the loading dock area at the Manhattan Houston Street UPS building, where I worked for a while in 2000 in waking life).

I now saw one of my friends or co-workers running outside the gates. The man was tall and tan, with flowing, red hair and a short beard. He wore a green t-shirt and jean shorts. He was muscular.

The man "told" me (as if he was speaking from just behind me and to my right) something like "I guess we're in this together if no one else wants to look." But I felt like the man was running "with" me only to compete against me. I ran even faster and was now outside. The man was just ahead of me, but I was catching up. But then I really started to lose my breath.

We ran along a dark, black asphalt road. We saw the CEO run or drive over a large, lawny hill before us. The man easily ascended the hill. My lungs felt shot, and my legs were barely controllable. I kept going, just out of determination. But the man easily gained ground over me.

(The next part may possibly be a loose imagination after I woke up.)

The man got up to the top of the hill. A football hit him from the right and knocked him over. I knew that the CEO had thrown the ball from down the hill.

I stopped, still a little distance behind the man. I now heard the CEO joking with the man, saying, "Well, sounds like you couldn't stand being in that meeting, either, huh?"

I felt like the CEO was kind of, but not really, including me in the conversation. After all, I hadn't made it to the top of the hill first. But I also thought, like I was speaking to the CEO, It's not that we couldn't stand being in the meeting. We were looking for you, to try to get you into the meeting!

(4/4/09) empty psychiatric office; mae marsh in color and sound

(Entered in paper journal at 8:21 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked up an outside stairwell for a small apartment complex in a lonely, dirt parking lot. It was a sunny day. The complex had white siding in horizontal strips. The stairwell was white.

I walked into an apartment on the second floor. The first room was like a kitchen, though it didn't have much in it besides a counter. The floors and walls were white. They looked yellow in the sunlight. I may have seen "my backpack" somewhere.

I walked through a doorway to my left, into a room like a psychiatrist's visiting room, which was, like the kitchen, empty. The carpet was darkish blue and looked unkempt, worn down.

I was here to meet my psychiatrist A. But she wasn't here. I then remembered I was supposed to meet her here at 3:15 PM instead of our usual, later, time. I walked back into the kitchen and saw that A had left something like a business card that was also a letter.

The letter explained that A had left when she hadn't seen me. She'd had to leave. The letter also said something about my backpack, which I'd left here for some reason, like safety. The letter asked me to take my backpack home.

Dream #2

I was watching a "D.W. Griffith movie." One of Griffith's key actresses, possibly Mae Marsh, was walking through a long promenade and plaza, and also possibly along some beautiful, farm-like countryside full of floers. The sun took all different levels in the sky.

The film was in color, which surprised me. The color was realistic, but it felt applied, not colorized, but something more like an extreme version of a William Eggleston photo. It was all very beautiful, and Mae Marsh looked beautiful in color.

Mae Marsh was walking past something like covered booth-tables along the garden plaza. The booths seemed to be set into the stone of a cliff or hillside. Their tops would be exposed, but they were covered over with something like wicker mats. The light was the deep blue of evening. All the booths were candlelit, lighting Mae Marsh's face as she walked past them. Mae Marsh now had curly, black hair and a tan robe. She may also have carried a dark shawl with her.

Now the film took on sound. Mae Marsh's voice was lowish, musical, but slack, like Chloe Sevigny's voice. I thought of how many actors lost their careers when films began being produced in sound, because of their voices. I hoped that Mae Marsh's career hadn't been ruined. I didn't think her voice was spectacular, but I also didn't think it was awful.

(9/21/09) bathroom painting; sharks and whales

(Entered in paper journal at 7:51 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in an auditorium, at least halfway back in the rows of seats. The lights over the seats were off. The lights over the stage were coldly bright. I'm not sure I could see the stage. The seats were about average height, but it also seemed like they were too high for me to see over.

The audience was milling around, getting into their seats, the auditorium only half full and not populated in any orderly fashion. The row I sat in was taken by a group of people of which I was a part.

To my left, either right next to me or one seat removed, was a black woman, probably in her early or mid twenties, with straight, blonde-brown hair. The woman told me that this meeting was a rally against cancer. This excited me, and I expressed my approval, after having previously thought we were here for something silly.

But when I expressed my approval, the man sitting to my right, who looked like one of my old Americorps co-workers, SC, told me, "Hey, why don't you go to the bathroom? Didn't you say you needed to go?" I knew the man was just doing this because I had just connected with the girl. The man was jealous of me and wanted to get me out of the picture.

But I acquiesced and went to the bathroom. For a moment I was in the bathroom by myself. The bathroom was kind of run-down, possibly painted in somewhat vivid sea-green and tan-orange, and lit by incandescent light. I may have urinated in a urinal the base of which was on the floor and the body of which extended up the wall to about chest height.

I was now in a room with my psychiatrist A. The room was like an artist's studio. The floor was concrete. The walls were greyish white and maybe thirty feet tall. There were two large paintings: one, lying propped against the wall in front of me; the other, hung high up on the same wall.

A stood on a big, thick, wooden ladder, level with the painting that was hung on the wall. The painting may have had a lot of reds and oranges in it, as well as some purples. A was pointing to the painting and asking me something.

I kept worrying that A would fall off the ladder. The rungs of the ladder seemed wobbly, like bicycle pedals or buckets (?) on the wheel of a watermill. It didn't look like they'd be easy to stay balanced on. I felt bad that A should put herself at such risk just to show that she had this kind of artistic sensibility, and that she was doing this all just to show that she cared about my emotions and what I said.

Dream #2

I stood out on some cliff overlooking a beach. The sky above may have been a buzzy grey, with low, warm, pale clouds. The whole place felt very lonely. There was some kind of storm happening, even though it wasn't raining. But now the level of the sea rose greatly, almost overtaking the cliff I stood on.

I may have seen a weird sea creature swim, belly-up, in the water. I may have thought of the creature as a shark or a whale. But its flesh was all torn and pink, like that of a mutilated animal.

I may now have been in the water, looking back at the cliff, which was a wedge of boulders. The cliff looked like it shouldered above the water pretty well now.

The water was grey and slick. Waves would surge up and slam over me. The waves seemed large in the distance. But by the time they got to me, they seemed much smaller. But each wave that hit me seemed to be larger than the last. The last wave that hit me was just as large as it had been in the distance. I was very scared watching the wave loom over me.

I now stood in some futuristic room, looking out a bubble window at the night sea, possibly from a vantage point near a port. A pretty, blonde woman, a little taller than I, stood to my right. She was talking about the fact that people had been seeing a lot more creatures in the sea lately. As she said this, a whale's back humped up above and then back down below the surface of the water.

I said to the woman, "Look! A whale!"

The woman said, "Yes, I know. I've seen them before."

The whale's tail now broke above the water, coming straight up, then flapping back down, almost on the window.

"The same" whale now jumped out of the water, maybe twenty feet above the surface of the water, revealing itself to be a killer whale. It didn't make sense to me that this could be the same whale. The whale we'd seen before had been much larger than this killer whale.

We looked down into the water, as if the bottom half of the bubble-window were now below the surface of the water. We saw a shark. Another shark, which looked like a small whale, swam up to the window -- as if the whole window were now underwater! The shark laughed at us in a human, high-pitched voice, to scare us.

Another shark, with lobed shapes along its body, in shadow (?), swam straight up the window and beyond -- as if we were now deep below the surface of the water. I called this last shark a hammerhead. This shark also laughed a very scary, human-sounding laugh as it passed us. This laugh was a hunting tactic, used to scare prey out of hiding, perhaps.

The woman and I were now speaking about something, possibly about the killer whale and the sharks and something about differentiation.

I was now scuba diving underneath a futuristic sea vessel or submarine. I was with three other people. all of whom were ahead of me. The floor of this part of the sea was just below us, and the underside of the vessel was just above us. I swam with my belly up toward the vessel.

I was still speaking, somehow, with the woman. I said something about being able to prove the differentiation we'd been speaking about. Just then a shark that looked like a small killer whale floated over me. I thought, That proves it. But I was also afraid that the shark had passed so close to me. I thought, But if you aren't afraid of the sharks, aren't the sharks nice to you? Don't they even play with you sometimes? But now the shark was gone.

I swam forward, looking down to the floor of the sea. I knew that the person directly ahead of me was an older man, thin, tall, with longish, grey hair and pale, blue eyes, possibly wearing glasses as well.

We were now all apparently swimming down here without oxygen tanks. The man ahead of me was running out of air, but he didn't want to make this known to the two people ahead of him: a woman (maybe the one I'd been speaking with) and a young, black boy.

The man said he had to go back and check on something. But I knew he was going back to the entry hatch to get some air. I saw that before he turned around he stuck his mouth to a white and yellow device that looked like a water fountain.

The man was now gone. But I was now running out of air. I turned to head back to the hatch. As I did I saw the device the man had used. It was basically an "oxygen fountain." When a person stuck their mouth to the device and released a valve, the device would release oxygen, which the person could then breathe in. I noticed that these little valves were placed at pretty even intervals along the bottom of the vessel, so that oxygen could be obtained as needed.

But looking at these fountains, which were like white, plastic shields or basins with yellow, plastic nozzles, I noticed that they were dirty, grimy looking, or grown over with algae. I thought, I'm not going to stick my mouth around that! I thought I'd go back to the entry hatch and try to find something that would enable me to preserve my oxygen so I wouldn't need to use these oxygen sources.

For instance, I remembered a packet the old man had: a metallic-pink, thin, square package, like the shape of the wrapper for Pop-Rocks candy. The man had opened this package and pulled out a pink tissue that looked like a wet-nap napkin. He had then chewed this tissue like gum, I remembered. This tissue had then either produced oxygen or allowed the old man to preserve the oxygen already in his system.

I thought that using this tissue was kind of like cheating on the man's part. But I also thought it was reasonable. I wondered if I couldn't find something like that to use. But I also wondered how the woman and boy could just keep on going and going without needing oxygen. Why were they so good? Or what was wrong with me?

I was now in the entry hatch, which looked somewhat like the stairwell up from the basement at the house my family lived in when I was in my last three years of high school (and when I was seven and eight years old), except that it was painted in a warm, tan-orange color.

I looked around for a while for oxygen tanks. I couldn't find anything, and I felt like even I actually did find oxygen tanks, I'd probably feel to guilty and ashamed to wear them, anyway. I thought that I'd look for some of that oxygen gum, or smaller "devices" like that. If I couldn't find anything like that, I'd at least wander around here for a little while and catch a few breaths before going back into the water.

I wandered into a messy kitchen. There were a few people, mostly young kids, in the kitchen. A motherly woman sat before the stove with a young, black boy. There was some kind of barrier, almost like police tape, around the stove and the area where the woman sat and the boy stood. The boy sat in a wooden chair, his feet against the door of the oven. On the front right burner boiled a pot of chocolate. The chocolate was being prepared for fudge.

The woman, who might now have been my mother, and the boy both looked at me as I entered the room. Another small, white child placed, possibly in a crib, near my right leg. I knew the woman and boy knew me. I waved at them. The boy just looked at me like I was a piece of shit that didn't deserve his attention. He looked back to the stove.

I was so scared by the boy's look that I shyly walked past the boy and the woman. I thought to myself, Great. Now I can't even come to see my mother without some black guy getting in my way. (???) I walked through the kitchen, to the other doorway, which would probably have led to a living room or dining room.

(12/30/09) psychiatrist needs payment

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in my bedroom, standing up and talking on the phone with my psychiatrist A. A told me that she needed to pay her rent very soon, so she would need me to pay off my bill for my psychiatry sessions. I told her okay.

I looked down at the floor and tried to figure out how I would be able to pay A and still have money for the following weeks. I may then have gotten a phone call from my girlfriend H.