(12/18/08) all that's left of the lion

Dream #1

I stood across the street from a big building like Grand Central Station. The face of the building recessed about midway along the building.

From within this recess there pointed out the nose of a craft which looked to me like an SR-71. Judging by the nose, however, I assumed the jet must have been enormous. I got very excited.

There were a couple people with me. One woman, who was about my age, was to my left and just behind me. I told the woman we should walk farther along to look directly into the recess of the building. The woman didn't seem to be as excited as I.

I now saw the whole recess directly. The "SR-71" stood at the bottom. It was enormous and may have been grey. A number of other jets hovered, as if hung by wires, all the way up along the height of the building, within this recess. There may also have been a few jets standing atop the building, just peering over its sides.

I thought, There's a jet show! I forgot all about it! I hope I'm not too late!

The woman and I went inside the building. The woman wasn't excited about the jets at all and made me feel ashamed for being excited.

The inside of the building was, like the outside of the building, like Grand Central Station, except with display cases everywhere, like the jewelry and perfume sections of a nice department store.

I may have been looking down at some jewelry. The woman called from behind me, telling me she had found a lion. I thought, Well, we were here to look for jets, but perhaps they also have (stuffed) wild animals here as well.

I turned. The woman, whom I still couldn't see, directed my view to an old, rich-looking woman. The woman wore a fur coat. On the fur coat was a circle, maybe six inches in diameter. The circle had white plastic backing and was inlaid (?) with pale, golden-blonde hair/fur. The fur was kind of short, maybe one inch long. The top of the circle of fur had three oval, pale purple, polished stones lying on it. The whole thing seemed to look as if it were under a magnifying glass.

I thought, This is all that's left of the lion? I felt like the woman (my friend) was trying to mock both my excitement about this event and the lion itself.

(9/22/09) joy to see the woman dead; customer and co-worker

Dream #1

I was in a place like a stage version of an old, European city at night. There were a lot of people milling around here and there. There were a couple of buildings with their ligts on inside. In the center of the street was a tall, wooden staircase.

I had watched a rich man (and a rich woman?) do something awful to one of my friends. The rich man and woman were like bosses of a company for which all of us on this street worked.

For a moment I may have been in some large room or large field, virtually alone with the rich man, with a chance to tell him that I didn't like the way he'd treated my friend. But I was too afraid to tell the rich man how I felt. I feared he would hurt me somehow.

I was back in the street. I was climbing up the wooden staircase, which also had people milling about on it, like they were in a line for an amusement park ride. I might have seen or heard the rich man laughing, either on the staircase or in the distance on the street, exulting over the cruel act he had committed. The rich man may have looked like a well-groomed, slightly softened, version of the blind accordion player from Fellini's Amarcord.

I reached the top of the staircase. I now stood in a mezzanine or balcony in a very nice hotel or mansion. The place was well-lit and clean, with white walls and railings. People were crowded all throughout the floor and all the way down the stairs. I worked my way through the crowd, as if I were walking on a railing over all the people, and arrived at the head of the staircase (although, apparently, I had just come from the staircase).

I saw, in one corner or the balcony, the rich woman lying face-down, dead, on the floor, crowded around by a thick huddle of people. The woman was dressed in a beige or tan robe and an ivory-white head-covering, like a Muslim woman might wear.

I stood or knelt or perched on a corner of railing and began laughing. I felt such relief, almost joy, to see the woman dead. It felt like a payback for what the rich man and woman had done to my friend. My laugh was so loud and so obviously, defiantly happy that the packed, milling crowd, which had been mumblingly noisy before, now became completely silent and turned to stare at me.

I could tell that the rich man was somewhere near me in the crowd. I could tell he'd be angry with me. But I now called out, "She's dead, isn't she? But it looks just like a cartoon. I wonder if we flipped her around, if she'd have X's on her eyes!" I began laughing again.

Dream #2

I was at a testing center (which I had as a temporary job for a couple months in between my permanent jobs). I sat on a desk, and my boss, NJ, stood beside me. I had had some troubles with a customer, possibly technical issues, and I was now really upset. But NJ told me to get back to work. I had to stand up and sit back down at another desk.

The person who had been my customer now sat down beside me. He was a black boy, maybe ten years old, with light brown, smooth skin, a very thin frame, and a head of huge, frizzy hair. He wore a white t-shirt that was just a little too large. The boy was now my co-worker, not my customer.

I was a little worried, thinking how the boy had been so difficult before, as a customer, that he'd now be even more difficult as a co-worker. I pulled out something, possibly a black binder, and began shuffling through either white pages or photographs that were in plastic sleeves.