(7/28/06) a place as nice as this should be full by now; my feminine hairstyle and identity

(Entered in paper journal at 9:10 AM at Starbucks at 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I and a group of people went into a very quiet restaurant/bar. The place had yellow, stucco-like walls and a Latin feel. A few of us walked up to the bar. The bartender, a woman, said she was surprised we had the place all to ourselves.

I turned to a friend (who looked like my coworker DE, except with long, black hair and skater clothes) and chuckled to him that what the bartender said was kind of quaint.

"DE" got indignant and said, "Well, it is surprising! A place as nice as this should be full by now. I mean, it's a bar!"

Dream 2

I was in a "barber shop," which was like a basement of some old, Latin-style, cathedral-like building, very plain, dank, etc. I sat in a barber's chair before a plain, arched entrance to a hallway full of arched hallways and stairways. The barber brushed out my hair and styled it in a feminine style. I stood and walked to a woman and hugged her.

Now it was like I watched myself standing (again) and walking to and embracing the woman. "I" was supposed to be a beautiful, skinny woman. But I didn't have a great body, and my face and hair were kind of dumpy. My hair was enormous, below my waist, frizzy, messy. "I" said something romantic to the other woman.

Now (seeing from "her/my" point of view again) I looked to my left, up to a TV on a stairwell wall, to watch the whole scene. Now I saw the woman ("I") standing where the TV had been. She was dressed in a rough robe like a prisoner or a resident in an old insane asylum.

I thought, Well, my hair didn't get cut at all. I have to get it cut.

I sat back down in the barber's chair. A guy stood behind me and began cutting my hair.

(2/19/09) butt imprints; baby alligators

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Forty-third street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a big room like a restaurant or a stage version of a restaurant. There may have been two levels. The walls and floor were brown, but brown like pale brown paint, not like wood.

There was a pool table somewhere. I may have been plaing pool with a few tough-looking guys. At some point I may have bent over to make a shot (or because I was afraid of something and was trying to avoid it).

My bottom hit agaisnt the wall. Some of the tough guys, ho were standing behind a bar, but standing up a couple feet, as if they were on a small stage, gradually began making comments on the marks my bottom had left on the wall. The gradual comments became laughter.

I felt ashamed for having let my bottom hit the wall, which I felt was a very feminine thing to have done. I looked at the wall. There were two circular marks on the wall -- separated, with some wrinkling around them, so the marks looked like archaic "drawings" of owl eyes.

I wondered how my buttocks could have made such an image -- especially now that I had gained weight. It looked like the circles were made by the tops of my femur bones -- like I was so skinny that the tops of my femur bones were poking through the flesh of my buttocks.

The image was now projected, large as a movie screen image, on the wall behind the tough guys.

Dream #2

I was in a wide and spacious, but low-ceilinged, room. The light was dim, as if at the edges of the room were wall-height and length windows which let in the only light in the room. The feel was like (my conception of) the interior of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water house -- stone floors, polished, and sparse furniture. But it also felt like some kind of kitchen or school area.

There were people all over, of different ages, probably up to their late twenties. We were all taking care of different tasks, like school projects. I sat a little off to myself.

There were blankets scattered near me, and maybe all over the room. Before me was a little box, like a dog's bed for inside the house. But there were "baby alligators" in the bed, under some small, soft pastel-colored blankets. The baby alligators were green, almost plastic-looking. Their heads were wide, maybe three inches wide and four inches long, and their bodies, including tails, weren't much longer. There were maybe three baby alligators.

A woman, who was like our teacher, had walked away from me. She may have looked like a zookeeper, with a tan shorts-uniform. She may have had pale skin and short, feathery, red hair (like brown hair dyed red). I may have resented the woman, like I'd resent some worker in a mental hospital who didn't think I, as a patient, was of any consequence.

I wasn't left with any instructions, and I didn't have any idea whether I was supposed to wait with the baby alligators or if the woman was coming right back, so that if she returned and saw me here, she'd accuse me of being lazy for just sitting around.

I looked up. Now, instead of there being a ceiling, there was a strange structure of framing that reached up pretty high. It occurred to me that one of the baby alligators had been lost. The woman was going looking for the alligator. But now I knew the alligator was at the top of structure, which was mattress on a structure like loft bed.

I climbed up the structure. The sky was blue and the day was warm. The structure was made up of things like sheds, bedframes, roofs, and ladders. All around the structure was a run-down area of weeds and trees, like a back lot or an unkempt backyard.

I climbed up one last ladder and was now on the top mattress. Laying, I scooted to the very edge of the mattress and peered over. Below me was a city scene, as if I were at the top of a very tall building. I got a little giddy. But the alligator wasn't here.

Now a group of people were calling for me. I looked down the structure, to the house (maybe one hundred feet below, at most). The house's ceiling had a big, rough hole in it, from which this junk structure seemed to spew.

The woman and a few other people, including some pale, hippie-like guys, all stood looking up, calling for me. One of the guys was shielding his eyes from the sun with his (right?) hand. The guys now called out to me, "You dumb ass! You were supposed to wait down here! All the alligators are down here! What the hell are you doing way up there?"

I could see that the woman cradled a baby alligator in a pastel blanket in her arms. I felt like an idiot -- I was supposed to watch the baby alligators after all!

I climbed down the ladder. I was almost to the bottom of the ladder when the bottom end started pivoting upward. I knew that the ladder was only connected to the structure by a pivot point in the middle. If there wasn't a balance of weight, the side with more weight would pivot down, pulling up the opposite side. For some reason (even though I stood on the bottom of the ladder and nothing else was on top), the bottom end had less weight and was pivoting upward.

My end now stood high in the air, a few feet (in arc) from the mattress. I looked down. It was a long was down, like from the top of a skyscraper. But the way down was all composed by framing, like that of the bridges for subway trains when they go above ground.I got extremely giddy again -- so giddy that I woke up with the shakes.

(3/2/09) lingerie over my pants

(Entered in paper journal at 8:33 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a building that was supposed to be the offices of my old job. I'd been up on a floor, probably with a group of my co-workers. I had gone down to the first floor, possibly having even left the building. I had come back into the building now. The walls were blue marble with white veining. The ceilings were very high. The place felt like a fancy restaurant. The room was long and rectangular.

I was alone in the room. I may have been hovering swiftly, maybe about one foot above the ground. I wore a sweater and jeans (the sweater maybe horizontal stripes of various colors). Over the jeans I wore a woman's half-slip.

I turned left into another room, which was like this room. At a nearby set of tables to my left were executives from my job, including the CEO K. They all looked over at me. I could tell they thought I was weird because I was wearing a half-slip.

I turned right and went up a thinnish, curving staircase. I thought, But can't the executives see I'm not just wearing this half-slip? I'm wearing jeans underneath. And besides, even if I look weird, aren't the executives impressed that I'm flying instead of walking up the stairs?

I was on an upper floor which was a cavern of walls of green marble with white veining. I couldn't remember what floor I was actually supposed to go to.

I was back at the first floor again. I may have stood in front of some computer kiosk, which was just a keyboard and a screen on a thin pole. I had to enter my name or user ID and password to get past this point in the building. But the computer would tell me what floor I was supposed to go to. But I was drawing a complete blank. I couldn't remember my password at all.

(5/9/09) time poisoning; protected rather than stolen

(Entered in paper journal at 7:05 AM on Q-train into Manhattan from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with my mom and my brother. I possibly sat in the backseat, on the passenger side. It was a darkish, grey day. We were driving through an area of rolling, lawny hills, like in a cemetery.

On our right was a tall wave of green hill, atop which were structures like crypts. I called these structures buildings and was pointing them out as if they were famous buildings in New York City.

There was one "building" that seemed to have a Greek/Egyptian style and seemed to be made out of gold. The next "building" we passed was very strange and thin. It seemed to be made in two sections. The section on the left was like a half-cylinder, encrusted in dark stones (?) which had an iridescent glaze and may have been broken up somehow, with traces of gilding. The section on the right may have been something like a stone pedestal on which sat a statue of a jackal.

I pointed out this building, maybe to my brother in particular, and said that the building was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But as we passed to the next buildings, I thought back to the museum. It suddenly truck me that this building no longer existed. It used to be the building which housed the museum, in the 1960s. But the museum had been moved to a bigger building. I tried to get my mom to back the car up so we could see the building again.

We were now in a kitchen. My mom was busy with something. The kitchen was smallish, with a lot of wood-tones and earth colors. It was lit with a cold, incandescent light. I had climbed up onto a countertop and was probably pulling big books, like art books, off the top of a cupboard. I was trying to show my brother that we had driven past a building which no longer existed.

(At this point I got off the Q-train and walked over to the Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, where I resumed my paper journal entry.)

I was trying to show that we had gone back in time or had been a part of some kind of anachronistic phenomenon. My brother didn't quite understand, or didn't quite seem to be paying attention. I took him back outside to try and illustrate the point.

When we got back outside, I may have had no idea how we were supposed to get back to the museum. We stood before a wide, green field which sloped slightly downward to something like a wide square of concrete, like the floor of a demolished building.

Just beyond that, though somehow obscured, was another building, which looked like a 1970s style building, and which may have had a section like a half cylinder lined with vertical wood slats. I knew that something about this area was also very different from what it "presently" was (wherever that "present" may have been).

I asked my brother, "Don't you recognize that building? Don't you remember what it was, and that it isn't there anymore?"

I now stood back inside the kitchen. My maternal grandmother walked into the kitchen. She looked a little upset. She told me that the son of XXXXX (a mutual friend of my mother and her best friend, though I can't remember her name) had just died. The son seemed to have been doing fine. But one day he drank two glasses of liquid at once and died.

The beverages were like water and chocolate milk. The cause of harm might have been, I knew, drinking two different beverages at once. But it might also have been the fact that the boy (young man, now) had been poisoned, and possibly by his mother.

My grandma had mentioned the boy's death as an explanation for why we would be delayed in getting out of the house and going where we had planned to go (to the museum?). I may have hugged my grandma to comfort her.

We walked through a small but dark hallway at the end of the kitchen and into a wide, emptyish living room lit by a single harsh, cold, incandescent light. There were a few people in the room, all relaxing as if this were one of my mother's holiday parties.

Two large couches sat against the front wall and the wall to my right. My mom's friend sat on the couch to my right. She seemed to be sad but alright. But I thought of the woman as a poisoner. I thought I would have to be careful around her.

Dream #2

I was possibly in an airport. I walked into a buffet-style restaurant. There was a huge, maze-like set of wood railings set up to form a line before the buffet. The place was almost completely empty. The atmosphere was red, as if lit by a red neon light.

I may have been waiting for a friend to arrive, or I may have been trying to figure out what I needed to pick up for a friend's meal. I was walking toward the buffet, possibly cutting through the "maze," when a couple big guys, both like white businessmen dressed business casual, cut in front of me. One of the men may have been a short, Indian man.

I caught back up to the men at the buffet. The men spoke back and forth with one another casually, like they hadn't even noticed having cut in front of me. I did something to bully them so they'd at least have to pay attention to me.

I may have been heading toward a seating area in the restaurant. The seating area apparently had no or very little light in it, lit only by natural light coming into the room from the windows in the concourse outside.

A voice now called over the loudspeaker. There was going to be some kind of fire drill or emergency evacuation drill for the building. The voice (a polite, female voice) said, "We would appreciate it if the customers could also please participate in this drill."

I figured I'd have no trouble participating. But I needed to go pick up my book bag before I did the evacuation. Before I had gone into the restaurant, apparently, I had been reading at a large, circular table, like one might see in the food court of a common area at a university.

The concourse now seemed to be a mostly windowless hallway full of these large, circular tables. I was running to find my bag. I could see the area where I had been sitting, but I couldn't see my bag. I was certain my bag had been stolen. I felt like I wasn't getting to the table fast enough.

I began flying. At some point I may have been pulled backwards. Then, possibly, I had been given my bag back by a security guard, a black woman. I was relieved. My bag had, apparently, been protected rather than stolen. But for some reason I now couldn't believe that this was actually my bag.