(3/27/06) my stuffed dad; brother electrocutes himself; high chair dad; my work ID

(Entered in paper journal at 6:09 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

It was night. I was outside an official-looking building with a bustling group of people. Some police were bringing "my dad" -- a tallish, grey-haired businessman -- into the building for a trial. He was being investigated for doing two bad things. One was murder. The other was something political and sinister. I didn't want to believe he could do either thing, though the murder didn't bother me as much.

I called after him, but he never turned to me. (I never saw his face through the whole dream.) I ran up to him and grabbed his beige sport jacket. I pulled him back toward me, thinking, I know the cops will be made. But they'll just have to wait. I want to hear my dad tell me the truth.

But quickly and seamlessly my dad became a stuffed figure. I was running through the halls of the official building with "my dad" in my arms like a big musical instrument. the halls were dark with lights coming from "the classrooms." I ran into one and saw a friend there. I ran out.

I was now pushing "my dad" up steps like in a fire escape stairwell. He was a little more alive now -- at least alive enough to stand up as I pushed him.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I was with my brother in an urban plaza. We worked together and were here to count something about some buildings that stood at a distance, maybe across a river, from the plaza. We walked to the barrier of the plaza. I got the feeling my brother was angry at me for not doing my fair share of the work.

I looked out at the buildings -- it was night now -- and began counting, hoping I was doing the hard work to make up for what my brother thought of as my cheating him. But as things went along I felt like I was still cheating him.

My brother now stood on the other side of the barrier. He was in something like a small rail yard or a tight grid of steel rails and power lines. He said he was going to grab one of these lines for sure, to prove something to me. I screamed at him not to. But I couldn't stop him. I plugged my ears and closed my eyes.

I was in a stand of bleachers behind the barrier. I lay down with my face on the ground as if I were expecting a bomb blast. I knew that when my brother touched a wire, I'd feel his pain, too. Even closing myself off completely wouldn't stop it.

My brother grabbed a wire. I could feel him dying.

Dream 3

I was with "my siblings" and my dad and some other man. We were in a room like a thin hall lined with chairs. The "hall" was actually part of a larger room like an airplane hangar made to look like a living room and breakfast bar. The chairs stood about four and a half feet high, with long legs. They were pale wood. The chairs faced each other and were about eight feet apart.

My dad sat in a chair to my right. The other man sat a couple of chairs off to my dad's right. There were at least fifty chairs per row. My sister and brother (?) were running around and sitting in chairs.

I asked my dad if I could sit in the chair he was sitting in. It seemed to me like he had chosen to sit in this chair just because he knew I'd wanted to sit there. I knew he'd move around anywhere to sit in any chair I'd indicated wanting to sit in. I asked my dad if he could move. He just laughed at me and said something snide to me about the other man.

I'd had enough. I wasn't going to let my dad upset me anymore, especially when his friend was around. So I left the house.

Now my brother and sister were with me. Then my mom was driving a car away from "my dad's house." But they forgot me. I ran  after them. They stopped in a driveway not too far away. I reached the driveway as my mom and my sister spoke with some boy (maybe twelve years old) about how good a job he'd do.

Now some younger kids came out of the house with red and yellow plastic jugs of water (kind of like ketchup and mustard bottles).

The kids began a water fight. I got in the way. They tossed water onto me. I laughed but was also angry.

Dream 4

I stood in the lobby before the entrance to a museum. I stood by a couple people, like I was in line behind them. A couple of them were told by the female security guard that they had to have the right ticket to get in. They had to purchase the right ticket from some booths off to my right and then get back in this line.

I decided not even to acknowledge the security guard. I knew if I asked a question or said a word she'd do her best to hold me back in her line. But I had my work ID, and I was pretty sure that alone would get me inside.

I took my ID out of my pocket and swung it back and forth as I passed the security guard. Nobody said anything. I got a few steps into the museum and then got nervous because nobody was bothering me.

(6/18/07) fight of the pinky-swears

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

Dream #1

I was in an apartment. It was night and dark. My mom had just left. She may have warned me about some person coming into the house. She might also have gone looking for that person, to stop him from threatening us.

A person unlocked the door and walked in, keeping his (?) back to me (and possibly to my brother or sister, who may also have been in the apartment). The man was really tall at first. But by the time I got to him he was less than waist-height, and he was carrying an umbrella. He looked like the old scientist character in the Satoshi Kon film Paprika.

A voice said, "It's Cecil. You've been had."

I fought in a weird way with the little man. The little man tried to grab me around the waist, mid-way between my hips and the bottom of my rib cage. I kept pushing the little man off by linking my pinkies with his and pushing him away.

(9/19/09) psychological performance

(Entered in paper journal at 7:57 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with a group of people out on a lawn like the Long Meadow at Prospect Park. The light was dim and grey-blue, like early morning or early evening. The group and I stood about halfway up a mild slope, possibly just before the edges of the canopies of a thick stand of trees.

Before us was an Asian woman, long haired, pale skinned, with thinnish, roundish eyes and a cheerful, smart voice. The woman was telling us how some psychological concept wasn't as deep as it had originally been thought to be, and how we (?) should treat people with the psychological condition related to this concept in a way different to that in which they'd been treated in the past.

I completely disagreed with this comment. But, I thought, I'm not the psychologist. I really don't have much to do with the treatment of these people.

I was now walking down an asphalt path in the park with a large group of people, including an Asian man who was a couple inches taller than I, a little muscly, with a square face and a short, slightly spiky, haircut. The man and I were talking, good-humoredly, about how we didn't agree with the woman. The man just laughed, as if to say, "Well, what are you going to do?"

I was now with a group of people like the improv comedy troupe I'd been in in college. We were looking at one of the sections of valley in the park. We were planning to put on a performance in this area.

But now we saw a couple of other groups walk out into the valley, setting up some kind of shop-like exhibits. The exhibits had weird boundaries set around them, like "roping" made of red lasers, just outlining where, for instance, walls would be in a fully built shop, almost like a computer drawing of a planned house or shop.

I saw that these two shop-like areas impeded the space we were going to perform in. But I thought we could still perform there. We walked down in between the two areas and began performing.

It was now like we were in a very dim, cheaply built hallway. The two stores were on either side of the hallway. I was leaning against the walls, which were and yet weren't quite real, tumbling against the walls, as if I were drunk and trying to find my balance. I may have noticed that one of the buildings was a store that rented out VHS video cassettes. The light in the hall may have been a deepish red-maroon, like in a dance club. There may even have been steam or smoke billowing around through the hallway.