(5/2/06) you got something to say?; the big joke

(Entered in paper journal at 5:51 PM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood by "my door" in "my bedroom." I looked through the peephole. A roommate, a black man with long dreads and a mean look,  walked toward my door. At first he seemed unaware of me. Then he looked straight at me. I thought, Fine. If he knows I'm looking at him, let him know. I'm tired of ihm thinking he's got everybody scared.

The man walked straight toward me as if there were no door. Then there wa no door. He had been changing into a woman as he approached me, even though "she" was still a "man." "She" looked at me with an ugly face. "She" was somewhat dark, round, with thin, eyes, a white tank top, and a palish blue, denim skirt.

"She" asked me, "Why are you staring at me? You got something to say?"

I told "her," "Yes. You always make all this noise when everybody else is going to bed. It's rude and mean and you need to stop."

We now stood before a doorway outside like at a suburban house with a front yard. She told me, "I've been proud of you for making it this long through all the noise. It's a type of lesson for you. are you complaining about your lessons?"

I didn't feel defensive or threatened. But I did try to justify myself.

Somehow both the woman and I got sidetracked and had a conversation about something outside.

Dream 2

I was on my bed. I heard my landlord in the hallway outside. The landlord was getting ready to leave.

I sat up, jumped off the foot of my bed, and opened my door. My room and the hallway both had an opulent wood and gold glow in the morning sunlight. The hallway was enormous, with plush, green carpet and thick wood walls. The ceilings were high. A stairway went down to another visible level and then back up, like this.

My landlord was on the lower level, but I could see him. A few people, all black, hung around the hall, telling the landlord there were no problems and he could go home.

I yelled at the landlord, "P! P! I have a complaint! Everything's not okay!"

Everybody looked at me, angry. I ran down the steps. It occurred to me this guy's name was PR XXXXX. I couldn't remember his last name. It struck me I might not be able to contact him if I didn't have his last name.

I yelled at him, "The man in this room" (I pointed to a room on the lower level) "makes noise all night long. I'm tired of nobody doing anything about it."

I knew that I was putting myself in danger for what I was doing. But I had to do it.

The landlord said, "He's just a poor Hispanic." (Or Mexican?) "You can't just get mad at him after one incident."

I took the landlord's statement to heart. But I couldn't figure out why I did so. First of all, the man was big and black. He wasn't a poor Hispanic. He wasn't a poor anything. And he had done mean things to me ever since I'd gotten here.

It was night. I was in bed. Suddenly my door was bashed in. Two short Mexican men burst in. I jumped to the foot of my bed, which was now tall.

The second Mexican man pulled a shaving razor

on me, yelling, "You got my friend in trouble! He's just a Mexican" (?) "who can barely speak English!"

The men weren't trying to get sympathy. This was all just another part of their big joke. But when the second man shoved his razor at me I grabbed the man's wrist and then the razor. I pulled the razor out of the man's hand. But when I tried to slash the man I was somehow ineffectual.

(9/23/06) contact graveyard; task for boss; smashed up blinds; killers in my car; tarot girls

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I made a drop-down menu of names on a weird contact list computer program. One of my boss BS's contacts didn't want to be on the list anymore. But I had to create the drop-down list and put her on it to take her off. The background behind the menu looked like a graveyard drawn in oil pastels. I was confused whether the contact wanted to be on or off the list.

Dream 2

I had to perform a task for my boss EB.

Dream 3

I had just moved into a good-sized, nice apartment in a suburban-feeling area. The apartment was on the ground floor. I sat on the back porch, reading something. I figured I would come inside for some reason. I would read in the living room.

I closed all the blinds, not wanting to be seen by anybody in the complex (kind of townhome style, with a winding road through it and lawns before the apartments). I knew if the people saw me, they'd cause trouble.

But somehow some kids got close to my windows. They smashed up my blinds -- or they actually didn't, but their presence did. I started talking with the kids. Apparently they were nice. They faded out.

I was by a side window, boarding it up and putting a blanket over it to keep people from seeing me. I was talking (in my head) to someone, a friend. I thought perhaps I should unlock my window so I could see my friend. But I became absorbed by the sliding configuration of the white boards I had used to block my window.

Dream 4

I walked down a suburban street, in the road, on the right hand side. I was walking past nice houses, but they were also like the backs of apartments or business buildings, with short staircases leading up to heavy, dull-painted doors.

Two Mexican kids (one of whom I never saw and who eventually faded out of existence (?)) were following me, annoying me. I tried to pretend they didn't bother me. They would run up to the doors, pound on them, and scream. The one kid I saw would beat on the door with a red balloon. Then he would charge at me, bouncing the red balloon in my face and growling.

I turned the block to see an incongruous, stately building made of stone, in a very classic style, i.e.

except somehow very smooth and seamless. It didn't fit in with this semi-upper-class, suburban neighborhood.

The kid with the red balloon was nicer to me, hugging me and talking.

In the distance I saw a hill with a lot of buildings. I thought to a block there with some nice restaurant. But I couldn't figure how I would get there.

I was in a big house. There were windows all around, showing a mountainous scene under a greyish sky with maybe a little snow. Some other houses were here and there.

There was a road. Two teenage Mexican guys were taunting me and trying to break into my house. But I did something that got them to leave.

I knew the cops were now following the Mexican guys. I knew the Mexican guys were mad at my mom and were going to kill her. They had gone to her house before coming to mine. But she had sent the police to follow them. The police, coincidentally, caught up with them after they had come to attack me.

I was in front of my mom's house as the guys pulled up -- both in the backseat. They had come to do a drive-by shooting on my mom's house. But I ran to the car (a dull gold, 1980s-style car) before they could do anything.

I challenged the guys to a fight. They wouldn't get out of the car, so I jumped in through the back passenger side window. The guy on the left pulled out a beautifully polished, silver "switchblade" that reminded me of a curling iron or a comb (though now it obviously seems like a shaving razor with no blade, only a hinged, silver casing).

I put my neck right where the black should have been, wondering why it wasn't sharp. I wanted to take a cut to prove I wasn't afraid and then fight back.

My mom was driving the car. I sat on the driver's side, beside the two guys. We drove through a nice, mountainous area. We were all laughing.

I told the guys, "I like you both. But sometimes you, you in particular," (to the one to my right) "can be assholes." The one to my right was sweating. We all laughed. I was a woman for a second, making flirtatious glances to my right and left.

My mom sat in the front passenger seat. A blank "chauffeur" drove. The two people beside me were a man and a woman, both naked. They said, "Well, we'd better be going now. We'll see you later." They pulled up a blanket over themselves to go do sleep.

But the woman, who sat next to me, first making sure the jealous man was asleep, turned to me and hugged me warmly, saying, "I'm glad you visited. It's always nice when you make us laugh and make us feel special."

Dream 5

Two women sat at a table, battling with something like tarot cards. One woman put down a card of a brown, orange, and gold landscape and said to the other woman, "Do you have anything to match that?"

(3/4/10) shave your face!

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

Dream #1

I sat in an office room. The room was small, unlit, with a little daylight coming through a window, from which I was separated by a tall, bookshelf-like partition between desks. There may have been four desks in the room, in pairs, the pairs partitioned by these tall, desktop "bookshelves." The space was cluttered with papers, and it all had an old feeling to it, like the old back office at a National Park.

I sat angled (in a swivel chair?) so that I could see the door. Through the door and across a fluorescent-lit hallway was a smaller room. In that room, my boss CR (?) stood talking with an old boss of mine, PG. I was surprised and happy to see PG here, and I hoped she would come talk to me.

She finished talking with CR and came over to talk with me. She looked a little different: her hair was paler than its usual dark red-brown. And somehow she looked larger than before. She sat down and spoke with me for a moment. I was so happy to be able to show her I'd gotten this far along in my career. PG stood up and walked past my desk, toward the windows.

A man now walked into the room. He was tallish, wide-framed, fattish, with a wide, bald head tufted with a grey and white cloud bank of hair on the sides. He either sat down or stayed standing and addressed me. He  handed me a big pocketknife. The knife was maybe six inches long. The handle/case was some kind of wood-colored plastic or stone material, capped at the ends with metal.

I pulled out one of the blades in the case. It was an old-fashioned shaving razor. The man told me, "Now use it! Shave yourself! Shave your face!" He told me to do so as if that was what the next phase of my career depended on.