(9/24/06) bomb in the desert; lighthouse post office; videotaped beatings

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A huge crowd of people stood before something like a desert at the edge of a city of enormous buildings. The people were separated from the "desert" by police barricades. But I was in the desert. In some place behind me a nuclear bomb was going to go off or be dropped.

I hurried to and behind the barricades, into the huge crowd of people. I had been blind with frenzy. But even now, on the side of the people, I was terrified. I had no idea how everybody thought just standing behind the barricade would save them from a close blast whose destruction would span for miles and miles.

I knew I had to get to a bomb shelter in one of the buildings. I ran through the streets, against the flow of everybody who ran to the barricades to see the blast. I was trying to get as deep into the city as I could. Then I would go down in to a shelter. I could see the deep blackness of the shelter.

Dream 2

It was a stormy afternoon, dark grey. I ran up a hill to a lighthouse (?).

There was a house, a "post office," at the base of the lighthouse. I had sent a FedEx package through this office. I wanted to make sure it reached its destination (which, apparently, was this post office).

I came in out of the rain, soaked. Someone (?) was with me. A nice, oldish, fattish "fisherman's wife" kind of woman sat at a desk in this homey, cluttered, office space. One of us wore a yellow raincoat.

The post office woman handed me a big, thick FedEx package. I tore it open. I believe if there was someone with me, I didn't want that person to see the contents of the package, which (she?) would try to steal.

But it turned out this wasn't the package I was looking for after all, but a package I had sent myself. I wondered if the package I was really looking for (i.e. the one I had sent myself) wasn't being kept from em by both the person with me and the post office woman.

Dream 3

A TV show interviewing a woman who had been severely beaten by her boyfriend. The woman wanted videotapes her boyfriend had of her having been beaten. At first the TV show host and "we viewers" thought she wanted the tapes for evidence during the trial (which was already stacked against the man completely). But then the woman said a whole list of videotapes she wanted from the man, things from before she even knew the man.

The list of videotapes came up on a television screen somewhere in the studio. There was a whole outline of things the man had done to the woman. It was suddenly clear, and the TV show host said so, that the woman wanted all these tapes because the bad things the man had done in the past really turned her on. In fact, the videotapes of the woman being beaten also turned the woman on.

Looking at the list of the man's acts, I couldn't believe the only thing this TV show spoke about was the man beating up this woman. The man had done a lot of awful things.

The TV show host (a woman?) was chastising the woman for getting aroused by videotapes of herself being beaten. But now the woman was a man (?) and was talking about a disease that bent his penis into a Z-shape. There was a view of the virus (?) that caused this disease. Then there was a view of the man's penis, which looked like a white straw bent into a Z-shape.

(8/4/07) supermarket closet; give your friends a break

(Entered in paper journal at 4:50 PM at Barnes and Noble bookstore at Union Square in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with my boss BS. BS asked me to look through some old issues of the trade rag Supermarket News for a piece of data. The issues were in a closet. BS stood inside the closet. I stood outside the closet. The room was dimly lit with greenish, natural light. The closet had an incandescent bulb deep inside it. It was like there were two roughly two-foot-deep sections of the closet partly divided from one another by little section-walls.

There was a huge pile of junk in the closets. The magazines, the old issues of Supermarket News, were scattered and piled throughout the junk. BS wanted me to help him get them. I was afraid, though, that if I did, we would run across some pornographic magazines I had in there.

I also saw a strange and lurid magazine or picture book about black men who beat up white men. I hoped that BS wouldn't find this publication and think it turned me on in the same way that porno mags did -- I was pretty sure it didn't.

I tried to dissuade BS from looking into the pile. But BS wouldn't stop. So eventually I went in and started helping him.

Dream #2

I was in the office of my co-workers DE and EB. (In waking life, DE and EB, the replacement for our old Associate Analyst ES, shared the same office. I sat just outside their office in a cubicle as, at that time, most of the Assistants and first-year Analysts did.)

I was angry at DE for something. He was fighting against me a little, but I was definitely bearing down on him. I finally tore a book out of DE's hand. I accused DE of having done something against me. EB just sat in her seat, watching.

DE choked up a little bit and grew pale. He then burst out crying. I realized I had been too severe, especially with all that was going on with DE's family at that time. (In waking life, from 2007 through 2009 -- though I was hardly sensitive to the issue -- narcissist that I am -- DE's mother and father both experienced some very serious health issues.)

I grabbed DE's left hand and held it with both my hands. EB rushed over and stood by us. DE became less pale. DE was yelling at me, asking me why I couldn't ever just give him a break.