(2/26/05) two lingerie departments; the place of glass; crash canyon

(No place/time info for paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I was at some clothing store. I walked past some lingerie I wanted to try on -- I think it was a bra and panty set of pink satin lined with black lace. I only eyed it peripherally as I passed, thinking people would laugh at me for wanting to try it on.

I passed into a cluttered, eclectic area of the store. A woman came up behind me and told me I should try things on if I wanted to. So I headed back. But I couldn't really find my way back.

Eventually I found my way to another lingerie section. I must have thought it was the same one, because I looked for the bra and panty set. I couldn't find it.

The whole store was very busy. Here there were three or four bustling women edging and shoving in front of me and pulling panties off high upper shelves in shelf-casings that looked like closets or dressing rooms in a Victoria's Secret.

The panties were mesh-fronted or -backed with fluorescent (or, rather, just bright, beach-colored, like cyan or bright green) solid-fabric fronts or backs. I really wanted to try these on. But I didn't even know if they'd work with my body shape.

Dream 2

It was night. I had walked out of a building, perhaps where a party was being held, though it now looked like a combination of a Barnes & Noble and a Victorian-style, heavy-wood house now used as some kind of classy restaurant. It was also something like an airport. The parking lot in front of the building was only one row, sloping down to the curb at about a seven-degree angle.

I looked in one of the windows in front of "my" car (I stood by the passenger side door) and saw a book by Stephen King. It looked like a paperback version of The Waste Lands VI, except with a red color scheme instead of a purple one, possibly no crystal ball, and a slightly different animal skull.

I had been excited by the sight of the book. I thought it was a new release. Now I thought it was just The Waste Lands IV. But when I scrutinized the differences on the cover I got excited and looked again. Its title, which ran in wide, slender letters down the cover between the images, was The Place (or "Land"?) of Glass, not Wizard & Glass.

I had wanted to get out of the gathering as soon as possible because I felt socially awkward. But now I wanted to go back in to see the book close up.

(At this point the various sections of the dream are confused to my memory. They don't stay in the same place. I'll just write them out as I "construct" their order.)

I went into the bookstore, which was nice, with beautiful (green?) carpet and heavy, rich wood for walls, bookcases, etc., and warm, soft light. I tried to get to the Stephen King books without being noticed. I didn't want to be ridiculed for liking Stephen King.

But some worker came up to me and asked me where I was headed. I don't know if I answered, but the worker led me, anyway, down to a basement area, which, though somehow being my mom's basement, was also a huge, desert-like landscape with a brimstone-purple, clouded-over sky. It also seem to be held all up by mine shaft posts.

Now something like a quaint, wall-less train flew down out of the sky and "belly-landed" softly, almost cartoon-rubber-like,on the dusty ground. There were a bunch of old tourists, all rich and intelligent. They all waved at me as they landed. I told myself, Don't make yourself look more stupid than they already think you are.

The tourists all piled cheerfully out of the train. I asked them as they passed me where they were going. They said something and pointed to another "flying train," which looked like a commercial plane and an Amtrak train. They then said something like, "And if you, too want to take this journey, simply go XXXXX."

I planned on going XXXXX. So I walked upstairs into the kitchen with a female bookstore worker who also served as a tour guide to where I needed to go. The kitchen was brighter and cleaner and wider than my mom's kitchen. It was also stark. It ended in an open, airy, spiral-like staircase going down, maybe thirty feet, steeply, to the living room, which was bright, clean, spacious, softly carpeted, though stark, almost slicing, once again. There were one or two tallish, thin bookcases along the kitchen wall.

I was hiding some kind of panic from the worker. We passed the bookcase which held Stephen King's books. I saw that The Place of Glass was a sequel to some previous book like "CAT DNA" or "GAC DNA." I thought of the manga DNA2.

Right next to this book was a brand new (as if The Place of Glass was now old) release -- something like, I Always Remember You as Standing. It was about the World Trade Center. The cover was of a couple Empire State-like buildings in a grey, grey night. The illustration was textured and silvery.

I couldn't believe that this book existed. Its existence presaged, I believed, some new attack. I cried to the woman, "Is it already time for another attack?" The woman wouldn't answer me.

I had a copy in my hand. I threw myself to the ground, bashing my fist and my book-holding hand against the ground. I bawled and bawled, "This can't happen!" I was crying. I tried to get control of myself so the woman wouldn't see me in such a pathetic state. But now she was gone.

JH, one of my old supervisors from my Los Alamos Americorps program, walked into the kitchen. I stood up and pulled myself together instantly, in a snap.

JH said something like, "I'm sorry I'm late. I've really wanted to address these issues. Excuse me for a moment. Then we'll take care of everything right away." JH walked out onto the staircase landing to speak on his cell phone.

I looked down to the floor. Right by a stairway barrier (the space doesn't make much sense) and still inside the kitchen was some kind of plastic mock-up of a campfire: a circle of plastic stones, charred newspaper, and plastic wrapping inside the circle, and around the circle, trashy-looking "logs" of mottled plastic. The whole scene was very small, like a child's indoor imitation of a campfire. A dog like a Springer Spaniel colored black, white, and copper-brown lay before the "fire ring."

I crouched down. I realized JH camped all over the country. He had a life separated from mine. I was really looking forward to seeing him. But I couldn't make my anticipation appear too great, because JH would feel too obliged for being so important to me. If I could be free and easygoing about things, he could remain cheerful and unperturbed. I felt I shouldn't even have called him up again to meet, after all.

JH came back in. He said, "Let's discuss those issues."

I said, "Oh, you know what? Let's not worry. We both have to get going pretty soon. I have to finish my camping and you have to head to the next place. But it was good to see you." JH was pretty relieved.

I apparently lit "my" "fire." It only smoldered at a high temperature. The dog, who was now "my" dog, kept sniffing at the fire, thinking something was cooking on it. There may have been a pot of boiling water.

The dog itself was soaking wet. This surprised me (even in the dream!), and I tried to figure out what it meant psychologically. I mainly worried about keeping the dog away from the fire, partly because I didn't want the dog to get burnt, but also partly because I didn't want JH to think I was irresponsible with the dog.

I kept waving and swatting the dog away from the fire. But it kept nudging back, like a buzzying fly. Finally I tossed a little (boiling water?) on the dog's nose to give the dog a little pain and show it why it should stay away from the fire. It backed away.

I thought, Well, I'm good enough for now. But once the water boils enough, the smell of the food will break open, and the dog will lead straight at it all again.

Dream 3

I don't know where I was. I heard (wherever they were) two older folks. They spoke about a plane that had run out of gas and crashed on its belly right on the runway of the airport in Denver.

This running out of gas was considered (somehow) to have been a terrorist attack. One old man said, "So they're starting again, are they? Isn't there any safe place? When are they going to crash into the Grand Canyon?"

I now saw a bend in the "canyon." The wall of the bend had different strata of rock: orange and orange-red and peach-red. Purple grey clouds loomed low into the canyon. The sky was dark amethyst-grey.

I was trying to figure out whether I was about to see the crash. But mainly I was just amazed at the fact that I was having such a clear (!) vision of the canyon, as if my "mystical vision" was finally starting to work.

(5/17/05) stop the disaster

(Entered in paper journal at 6 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I stood along a greenbelt or some park-like area that ran beside a street. Planes filled the sky and began crashing down. I had to dodge one.

Now I was in the backseat of a car. In the driver's seat was Stephen King. There were two or three other people in the car. Everybody except I spoke about this new disaster with the hijacked airplanes.

Suddenly I remembered I had dreamed this and written it in my dream book. I felt frightened of the coincidence and guilty that I had done nothing, with this foresight, to stop the disaster. But I also thought I might be able to do something now that I recognized everything.

I burst out in tears. I tried to tell Stephen King clearly that I had had precognitive knowledge of the disaster. King got upset and told me that psychic phenomena aren't real and are only for novels.

I was ashamed to have been told this by King. But it was also like I hadn't even heard him. I shuffled through my dream book, trying to find the dream in question.

(9/10/06) stephen king's short story journal

(Entered in paper journal at 12:19 PM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was peripherally friends with Stephen King. He was publishing a new monthly short story journal. He was kind of laughing, but he was also a little impressed, because I submitted a new story each month. I knew this but I didn't see it. My vision was more like I was standing in a wide, columned garage looking out over a narrow, sunny city sidewalk.

(10/23/06) gotta make way for the homo superior; drug/panty raid

(Entered in paper journal at 7 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

The gas station by Gaiten Academy in Stephen King's Cell. Alice (not Tom) and Clay watch the book woman and the Twinkie man arguing. The book woman and Twinkie man calm down and begin sharing.

A narrator explains that just as the Pulse stripped these people down to the aggressive core only to build up their telepathic abilities, it also stripped them down to help them build up love toward one another.

I hear the narrator say, "KASHWAK = NO-FO was meaningless to all of them. There was no meaning to it, and it gave nobody a reason for panicking."

I considered how the rapid development of these new beings (the "phone crazies") was making them superior to "regular" humans, and how maybe it was actually time for the new humans to arrive and the old humans to pass away.

Dream 2

I was in a huge bathroom in what was something like an office floor full of huge bedrooms. I sat on the edge of a wide bed, the left side, pulling on a pair of work pants. I had my dresser drawer open, and I could see a couple pairs of panties inside one, hidden under some clothes. I thought I should close the drawer quickly before anybody saw.

My co-worker JBS looked in through the window-wall, which was covered in half-closed blinds. He was laughing before I could shut the drawer. I thought he was laughing at my panties. But he was laughing at my pants, the left leg of which had a girls' shirt stuck to it by static cling. I brushed the shirt into an open drawer and closed the drawer right away.

Now JBS and a few other people from work, mostly unknown, but led by CB, stood in my doorway. CB said, "We've secured the right to inspect your room, based on behavior that leads us to believe you were doing drugs."

All the people carried thick binders. I knew this had to do with our job. I wanted a binder, too. So they gave me one. They said they would be back to inspect my room later.

I threw the binder on my bed. I went to my dresser. I panicked and pulled all the panties I could out of my dresser. I knew I didn't do or have drugs, but that my girl clothes would make me stock.

I was putting all my girl clothes in a plastic bag. I was amazed by how many different kinds of panties I had. I thought, I haven't worn these in so long? Why? I took the panties over to the other side of my room, where, presumably, I was throwing them away for good before anyone came into my room.

As I walked to the other side of the room I remembered CB saying (so vividly I could feel it in my ears), "Look what a wreck you've let your place become. Who wouldn't think you're on drugs? There are even wood chips all over your room. How does anybody get wood chips in their room?"

I looked on the right side of my bed and saw the floor slightly scattered with old, grey wood chips. I saw that even my bed had wood chips all over it. I was disgusted with myself.

(8/11/07) shopping mall ballroom; pink panty panic; pinto bean stew; having friends over

(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 AM at Ozzie's Cafe on Seventh Avenue and Lincoln Place.)

Dream #1

I walked down a "main street" like block of shops. A woman was moving things out of a moving truck. I felt like I knew the woman, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't say anything. I helped the woman move a table into a house. Now there were a bunch of women helping us. I still felt really bad for not telling the woman I thought I knew her.

In the room there was a square column, maybe six feet tall, with a TV set into a hole in its top. Previews for movies were playing.

One preview was for an old-looking movie. In one scene of this old-looking movie a square-faced, aging woman was on the phone. She was covered with something like tar, as if she had been in an explosion. She said something like "I would do anything for you, even die in an explosion." The scene cut to the woman the first woman was talking with on the phone. This woman had black hair and was, like the first woman, square-faced and aging.

Another preview started with a city skyline at night. I myself was now on a building-top, looking down at the skyline. I sat on the ledge of the building. I decided to climb down the building. I did so by scaling down the curtains, which were outside the windows.

I got down to a certain level, maybe the first floor. In the window I could see a ballroom. A woman stood before a table of drinks. She looked like a 1980s-style politician. She wore a red suit-dress and had a wide, hairsprayed hairstyle.

I was now inside the ballroom. Suddenly I felt so free that I flew all over the room, up to the high ceiling and back down. The ceiling had an oval design like framing for a fresco or mural. The light in the ballroom was golden and warm. The room was pretty empty overall, with only a few people inside.

I flew into a hallway like a shopping mall corridor. I was thinking about buildings as I flew. I wondered which building I had scaled down. I couldn't remember the building's name. It had seemed to be one of the highest buildings in the city. I thought it had been designed by Louis Sullivan (?). I now imagined a modern-looking, green-glass building.

As I saw and thought this, I flew down a side hallway, where there were no shops. When I got close to the end of the hallway I landed, then jumped up, hit my feet against the right wall -- which was a weird, rough, plasticky, tan material -- and flew in a u-turn back toward the main corridor.

As I flew over a handicap-accessible ramp, a mall worker, a long-haired Hispanic man in a janitor's uniform, walked up it. The man looked at me. I thought he was going to bully me.

I almost lost my power of flight. But there was a huge structure like a confession box to my right. I jumped, grabbed onto the box, pulled myself up onto it, and stood on top of it.

I was now flying down the main hallway. I landed in front of a Victoria's Secret store. I went inside, where a woman helped me find some lingerie.

Dream #2

I was presently living at my grandmother's (my grandmother P's?) house. It was late at night. I was just coming back home, just entering the house. My grandmother had also gone out for the evening. She hadn't yet returned.

I went into a big bedroom. I had a few bags in the bedroom. I pulled a dress and panties out of one bag. I put the dress and panties on. I got aroused and masturbated, then fell asleep.

In the morning I woke up. I realized I had fallen asleep with my bedroom door wide open. I knew the door of my grandma's bedroom was right across the hallway from the door to my bedroom. It would, then, have been easy for my grandma and the man she had picked up and brought home to have seen me as I slept! I was ashamed, especially since this man, whom I imagined to be some kind of sleazy guy, didn't know me and obviously, therefore (?), wouldn't have any sympathy for my sexual abnormalities.

I lifted up the blankets to get out of bed. I had ejaculated in my panties and worn them to sleep, even though they were soaked with my semen. There was a pink, wet patch on my white sheets, as if the semen had soaked through my panties and, soaking through the panties, transmitted the color of the panties to the sheets. But the panties were actually a faded, peach-pink gingham pattern, while the pink of the semen-patch was a shocking, vivid pink.

The whole house was full of natural, golden-white morning light. Somehow it was now like my grandma and the guy she'd picked up had actually never come home. I could see through the very short hallway into the big, white-carpeted living room.

A patch of light on the floor indicated that the front door of the house was wide open. I sensed that someone had just recently walked into the house. I tried to cover myself up, especially the front of my semen-soaked panties. But I knew the person was coming toward this room, and that I couldn't possibly get fully dressed before the person reached the room. I wouldn't be able to hide the fact that I was wearing women's clothes.

I grabbed the dress I had put on the night before. It was like a blue sundress. I wadded it up and covered up the front of my panties with it.

A pretty, Hispanic woman walked in. The woman didn't seem to be aware of my shameful appearance at all. She told me, "I'm looking for a XXXXX." (Hotel? Doctor? I can't remember.) "Can you help me find one?"

I knew I had a phone book in my (???) kitchen, so I went with her into the kitchen. I no longer held the dress in front of my panties.

We got into the kitchen. I had a whole train (or something like Stephen King's "book snake") of phone books in the kitchen. They piled about four feet tall and sprawled all the way out into a long, dark hallway. I was trying to find the correct phone book. All the other ones were out of date.

I was now dressed in my regular boys' clothes. My grandma had come home. The man was also with my grandma. It was now like the man and my grandma had lived together for a little while. And now the room I had spent the night in was a room used by the man's son. The man's son had now also, apparently, arrived back at the house. My grandma and the man asked me if I could clear out my bags so the son could come in and sleep.

The bed was now in the center of the room, against the back wall, as opposed to previously, when it had been against the right wall and moved a few feet away from the back wall. There was also now a dresser with a mirror against the front wall. It may all have been this way from the time the pretty woman (who was now gone) had walked into the room.

I now realized that the messy spot of pink semen was still on the underside of the blanket. I panicked, trying to figure how I could the son from getting into the bed.

Dream #3

A naked woman walked around in a room the floor of which was some weird material like brown turtle shells. The wall had pipes coming out of it. The pipes were maybe twelve inches in diameter and blew out billows of steam, which I thought of as "industrial gases."

I (? - wherever I'd come from) walked into the next room, which was like a room in an abandoned house. The floor was brownish-red, like clay. The walls were sloppily painted with sea-green paint. There was a cafeteria-style counter against a wall. In the distance was a stairwell filled with natural daylight and leading to an upper floor.

I felt a haughty feeling toward the woman in the room with the steam-pipes, as if I felt that, since the woman hadn't shown up in this room, she couldn't show up for her job.

A woman behind the cafeteria counter called for me. This woman was oldish and fattish. She asked me what I'd like for lunch. I looked down and chose some roast pork, plantains, and pinto bean stew.

Dream #4

A lot of my friends were walking through rooms in my house. My friends might have been getting ready to stay with me for a while. I was happy to have so much space in this place (which was full of rooms) that I could have a few of my friends stay with me.

(3/6/09) blow off

(Entered in paper journal at 8:38 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

My old friend ML and I had gone to a cafe together. It was very late at night. We had walked down a suburban sidewalk with houses and small shops alongside it. The sky was pitch black, but everything could be seen, as if the street was lit for a movie. There were a lot of people around, like this was a party night in a college town (or perhaps one of the crowd scenes in a Stephen King novel).

I now sat in the cafe. The cafe was large and decently lit. There were a lot of people in the cafe. The front half may have been higher than the back half by abut a step (around nine inches). There were all kinds of different seating arrangements. Along the right wall was the bar/counter. I sat at a small bar near the front door, on the left wall. To my left was somebody I had come along with.

ML had gone to meet with somebody. I was waiting for his meeting to finish. In the meantime I was writing, hunched over the bar and notebook like a child with a coloring book.

At some point ML came back. He had been longer than I'd thought he would be, and I also felt like he'd been excluding me by not including me in the meeting. ML said something to me. I blew him off, as if I had to finish a thought I was writing. ML walked away.

I finished what I was writing and looked up to my right, where ML had been. I didn't see him. I thought he'd gotten mad and left altogether. But then I saw him sitting over near the middle of the room. I knew that if I didn't make up for how I'd blown him off, he'd really make me pay for it later on. So I went to talk to him.

ML sat on a couch that was tall like a bar stool. His appearance and dress were more mainstream than usual (???). His beard was thinnish and scraggly, but softly so, as if it had been styled. He wore a "worn-out" wool cap, some kind of flannel-style overshirt, and a drab undershirt. His face might have been different -- narrower, with soft skin but sharp cheeks and thin eyes. He may have looked at me like I was nobody and he didn't even care who I was.

(4/11/09) graveyard/shooting; lone men and mobs

(Entered in paper journal at 8:31 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was in a car with my family. The blue sky was possibly webbed over with thin clouds, dimming the overall light. My mom was probably driving the car. We were driving down a mountainside road, into a small valley between two mountains. The valley was part of a range that extended far in the distance to my left. We were arguing about where we were, as if either this landscape wasn't a certain kind of landscape or as if we were heading in the wrong direction.

 We now approached the valley. At the base of the slope opposite us were tallish headstones, all of orange-tan stone, mainly shapes like square columns with smaller spheres on top. I made some comment about this place being a cemetery, as if that proved we were or weren't in the right place.

We turned right and drove through the valley. I looked to the right (I had been in the backseat on the driver's side, but I wasn't quite there now) to see monumental, white headstones. There were gigantic heads springing out of columns like flowers; headstones of double-men, from the torso up, reaching out and looking forward; and other similar headstones, all in a style like an Art Deco imitation of Hellenistic sculpture.

The size and odd style of these headstones gave me an ominous feeling, as if where we were was a prophetic indication of something bad that would happen to us.

We now drove among headstones. We drove past (to our right) a tall headstone of greyish stone, like a pedestal displaying a large sculpture of a man, not unlike the torso-men, driving a chariot carried by two horses. The sculpture almost seemed alive to me.

Now, along both sides of our car, a group of "horses" ran up from behind us, then running ahead of us, turning a slight left, as we would, with the road, toward a tallish, arched, pale tan-orange stone gate.

The horses were pale slate colored, with a deepening grey on their sides, and with their sides dappled with black spots. Their legs were, however, long and spindly, so that their bodies stood perhaps ten feet above the ground. They were ridden or guided by a group of people who may have been wearing yellow and red silk clothing. I again thought that all of this was ominous.

There was now a view, of which I was, at first, not necessarily a part, of a man giving a speech to a large audience. The speech the man gave was like an Oscar acceptance speech. But it was also supposed to be like a political speech.

The man was about six feet tall, a little heavy, wide-faced, slightly balding on the forehead, but distinguished looking, with red hair, a short, red beard, and glasses. The man wore a nice, pale coffee colored suit with a cream colored shirt. Behind the man was a satiny, purple curtain. The man stood behind a podium.

Suddenly, someone shot the man. Now it was like I was the man. In a series of reveries (like I was in a half-waking state, rather than a dream state) I wondered to myself how bravely I'd act if I really were shot. I wondered whether I'd flinch or maybe scream in a high-pitched voice.

I thought that perhaps I'd take the shot alright, but that if I fell and the person who had shot me were to proceed to attack me physically, I might, in my death throes, thrash about and flinch like a weakling. I also thought that if I were attacked, and the person who shot me were straddling me and pummeling me physically, I might sit up and attack him with all my strength.

But I thought that even then, I'd lose my realistic consciousness, like the police officer (Bannerman?) did in the Stephen King novel Cujo, and imagine that I was fighting on, while really I had fallen back down and was rolled onto my left side, dying.

I, as the man, was lying down. My head had been shot. I was lifted onto a stretcher and into a bunh of material like a gauzy blanket. The people who carried me may have been Mexican boys or young men.

I was carried into an "operating room," which looked more like a run-down barber shop. It had purple-painted walls and unpainted, uncovered, concrete floors. I sat in a barber's chair, possibly before a mirror, though I couldn't see my face.

All this time people had been telling me not to move but to stay awake. They may also have been telling me not to speak. I had also not been allowed to be part of a certain aspect of all the action that had been taking place around me.

But now the group of people had placed on my head a wrapping of gauze as thick as a helmet. With this "helmet," which went over the crown and sides of my head and under my chin, with a strap across the middle as well, to go over my nose, the people now told me, "Okay," as if I were now "allowed" to be fully conscious of all the events around me.

I could feel blood gushing down from the crown of my head and down along my left ear. The blood felt cold, but it was like a fresh gushing, like it had just begun.

I was placed in a wheeled chair, something like a cross between a wheeled hospital bed and a dentist's chair. There were people carting me along, people carting things like IV bags along, and people walking backwards before me. We walked toward a doorway to an "operating room" (?).

The people walking before me kept telling me to stay awake. They kept asking me questions to keep me talking. I wondered why they were making such an effort to keep me awake. I thought, I'm doomed, anyway. I might as well lose consciousness now, and either die or wake up with irreversible brain damage.

Dream #2

I was with my brother in a "movie theater lobby," which was a lot more like a cafe, except with the dim lighting of a bar, and the feeling that this room was in a much larger building, like a big shopping mall or an airport. The light was dim orange-yellow, like candlelight.

I was in the ticket-taker's line. I noticed my brother was over at the "concession stand." I walked over to him, awkwardly, like I'd suddenly realized I should be with my brother, although I still actually wanted to stay in the ticket-taker's line.

I looked into a cafeteria-style glass case displaying desserts. There were a lot of things that looked like brownie squares with layers of some kind of pale brown "chocolate" cream in them. Some of the brownie squares had their top layers out of shape like they were stale, so that the old brownie layer was bending upward at the corners. Some of the brownie squares, however, looked very fresh and appetizing. I couldn't decide what I wanted.

A man who was black or Hispanic, or both, stepped between me and my brother. The man was about my height, wiry-muscular, with a tight face. He had shaggy, curly, pale brown hair, that was kind of long, but not quite down to his shoulders. He wore a tan cap and blue-reflective sunglasses. He had a mustache. He wore a beige windbreaker.

The man started making weird comments to me about how tough it was for someone like him to come here and see movies. He then made a comment like, "It's really tough when there are all these fags here, isn't it?"

I thought the man was half-thinking I'd agree with what he said, but that he also half-thought I was gay and that I'd stand up for myself and other gay people by starting a fight with him. I just backed away from the man, figuring that other people had heard him, and not wanting other people to think that I was with this guy or that I agreed with what he was saying.

I had stepped backward and out of the line for the "concession stand." But I thought, I didn't really need to eat anything, anyway. I'll just wait for my brother. I ended up standing behind a table that held one or two tallish, cylindrical, chrome coffee makers and a couple baskets of different-colored tea-packets. I even ducked behind it.

But now the man turned in my direction and shouted out, "But what's even worse than that is the spics, isn't it?"

I knew there were a lot of Hispanic people here, and that I had to stand up against the man's racial slur about Hispanics.

I stood up as tall as I could. My head peeped up about halfway over the coffee makers. I said, "Oh, yeah?!"

I thought I'd say something else. But I looked around to see that all the Hispanic people in the place were staring at me, like I was also responsible for what the man had said. Everybody, disappointed in me, may simply have dropped me from their minds.

The people now turned and ran out of the place, as if the man had run out before them and they were now chasing him. I ran along with everybody else, trying to prove myself to them.

We all ran through a series of balconies, like the indoor balconies in an office building or hotel. The balconies had red carpet and light-colored, wood railings. There were stairways going up and down. Balconies randomly turned and intersected.

The group of people stopped in their chase while heading up a small staircase. I was at the back of the group. As the group started moving forward again, a black man, tall, wide, wearing black jeans, a black, leather jacket, a backward cap, and slightly tinted, round eyeglasses, jogged down the steps.

As the man went past me (I stood still, like a straggler), he swung his arm out and grabbed my right leg, around the calf, skimming and swinging along on it like it was a handrail, to annoy me. He hustled off confidently, thinking I'd do nothing.

I turned and ran off after the man. I was going to catch up with him and fight him. But he was now ahead of me and apparently running himself. He ran along a balcony and then into a glass-walled corridor that ran alongside the balcony he'd just run through (so that he'd run in a hairpin curve). I followed him through the corridor, which was kind of stuffy and fluorescent-lit.

The man then turned down a narrow, grey-walled, fluorescent-lit hallway. I was about to follow him down this hallway, but I saw that he was heading into a doorway on the left wall. The door was automatically locking, with a number punch-code fixture over the knob. Another person, a tallish, thinnish, black man wearing a red polo shirt, let the man in.

I could tell this was the back entrance for a restaurant. The man was coming to work. I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to get past the locked door. But even if I got past the door, I thought, I'd have to deal with a whole group of men ready to fight me, instead of just the lone man.

(11/5/09) good impressions aren't worthwhile

(Entered in dream journal at 7:30 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was somewhere indeterminate, hearing a young man telling me, as if we were speaking on the phone, that he would meet me for our interview at XXXXX. I knew I was going to interview for either a room or an apartment. The young man had told me to meet him near the room. He had also told me some of the difficulties I might have have living there: something to do with the shower or the kitchen.

I was now in the building. The building was a square, with a lot of open space in the center, like and atrium or a lobby, and all the rooms along the walls. There was a half-ceiling over the floor just in front of the rooms, like a second-story balcony ran along the walls. There were squarish, cheapish columns spaced somewhat closely at the edges of the balcony. In the center of the "atrium" was a seating area, with comfortable chairs, soft, with fake leather upholstery, sat around a square or rectangular rug.

I continued to hear the conversation between me and the young man for a little while longer. I might have looked into a room with a slightly open door, looking into dimness, possibly seeing a bed.

I then pulled out a book (from my bag?), sat in one of the nice chairs, and started to read. The book seemed to have and not to have a cover. The cover looked like the first edition cover of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. The book was a paperback, about the size and thickness of an old Stephen King novel, like Christine. I thumbed through some of the pages.

At some point I looked back over my right shoulder and saw one or two rooms with open doors. The lights were on in both rooms, which were in the corner. I knew one of these rooms was the young man's room.

I hoped the young man would be impressed that I was reading this book, which was thick and slightly difficult. But then I remembered that this book was also thought of as pulp, which some people felt wasn't intellectually worthwhile. I knew I had to make a positive personal impression, since my history wasn't the most positive the young man would encounter.

Looking into the rooms, I saw a couple beds in each room, as well as cubicle-like room dividers. It looked like each room may actually have held more than two beds. The beds had no blankets. The sheets on the bed were dull blue, a shade darker and duller than surgeon's scrubs.

I thought, Well -- wasn't I moving into a room by myself? Wasn't that the good deal, in spite of the kitchen and bathroom not being great? I thought, Is the young man still living here, and that's why I have to make a good impression? Because we'll be living in the same room?

I tried to figure how many people lived in each room, and I tried to figure whether what I would pay would be a good deal after all, if more than two people lived in the room. I didn't think it was a good deal. I vaguely remembered the price, and I realized it wasn't much lower than what I'd been paying for my apartment. To pay this much to live in a room full of people didn't seem right.

I felt nervous. Before now, I'd thought I'd be able to save some money by living here. Now I realized that, even if this place had been a good deal, I still wouldn't be saving much money. Nevertheless, I still felt like I needed to make a good impression, so I could get into this place.

I might have seen my old landlord from a rented room I'd lived in in Brooklyn a few years back. I then also realized that I didn't have a job. I wondered how I'd convince the young man that I was a good candidate for this room despite the fact that I didn't have a job.

(1/8/10) jumping in the hay: a novel

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a street in a city which was probably supposed to be New York. The streets were clean and calm, though there were a moderate amount of people walking along them. The whole area had a small town feel. It was afternoon, and the sky was a placid silver-blue.

I had been walking from a place far uptown -- possibly 125th Street -- and possibly even across a bridge. I was now down on what was supposed to have been 86th Street. I was looking for a place to have coffee. I was going to have coffee and write or read for a little while, then head back uptown. It was like I had gotten some kind of break time from a large training event or conference.

I found a coffee shop in a building hat looked very small-town like. I walked inside. There was a lot of space. The floors and tables were of pale wood. The tables were as wide as dining tables. The place had two areas. The "back" area, to my left, was set slightly lower than the "front" area.

I thought I would sit in the cafe and read for a while. But for some reason I felt pressed for time. I worried either that I would have to get out of here before sunset or that I would have to get out of here in time to get back to the event uptown. I thought to myself that it would be much smarter for me, in the future, to walk down somewhere, have coffee there, and then walk back uptown (as if that were different from what I had just done!). That way I could avoid getting out of here after sunset.

The place was empty except for two old, heavyish ladies with square, grey haircuts. The ladies sat across from each other at a table near a divider-screen which set apart the back area from the front area. The ladies wore slightly oversized t-shirts, probably blue and red, and pale jeans. They spoke like two grandmothers, with a deadpan, but patient and cheerful tone of voice.

I had to squeeze past the two ladies to get into the back area, where I thought I'd sit because it had so much space. I may have seen two more people enter the shop: a man and woman about my age. This may have made me a little anxious.

I wanted to buy some coffee or tea, but I hadn't seen a cashier yet. I saw a stairway that went down to a basement. It was narrow, with clean walls and pale wood steps. It looked newly built. I knew the cashier was actually in the basement.

I went down into the basement. It was huge, like three or four living rooms put together. The place itself seemed to be set up like three or four different living rooms. The whole place was cast in a bluish light, which I think came from the ground-level windows, high up on the walls. The floor was covered in thick, white shag carpet or rugs of the same material. There were couches everywhere. There were square pillars of dark wood near the center of the room. There were other household items, like bicycles, etc., scattered about.

Bookshelves lined most of the walls. All the books on the shelves looked like popular novels. What mostly caught my attention as I gazed at the bookshelves from the center of the room were books whose spines looked like those of the old V.C. Andrews books.

I saw the cash register, but nobody was there. I knew the cashier was in the restroom. I tried to be quiet, almost invisible as well. I was afraid that if I was too "forward" about my presence, I would cause the cashier to dislike me, which would, I feared, make my future visits here really stressful.

I pulled back my personality so much that I became like a ghost. I "walked," moving my legs, but not moving because I was moving my legs. I was actually moving by cruising forward while floating about an inch above the floor. I crept-floated around the corner of a pillar and possibly squeezed between the space between the back of a chair or couch and the pillar. I floated toward a bookshelf and reached out for a book.

The cashier walked out from the bathroom, which, I saw, was near a smallish, concrete-floored laundry room. The cashier was a tallish, skinny man with a slight, stubbly, black beard and glasses. He may have worn a wool cap.

The cashier, seeing me, at first seemed hesitant to interact. Then he said, "Beautiful night."

I said something in response, but my words were drowned out to me by my thoughts about what I should say. I knew the man had said what he'd said because he didn't want to go through the whole "how are you doing" or "how can I help you" kind of thing.

But I thought that since he'd said it was a beautiful night, I'd sound like I was an idiot if anything I said implied I would be staying inside reading. I thought I'd say something about the long walk I'd just taken to show that I hadn't wasted the beauty of the day by being inside.

I may have asked the man about a book to read. The man told me that I should read XXXXX (can't remember). I thought to myself, Who does that guy think he is, telling me what book to read? I won't read it!

I walked up to a bookshelf to the right (as I faced it) of the cash register. This bookshelf had previously been along the back wall, but now it was on the right wall. I looked up at one of the top shelves, to a row of Stephen King books with the "new style" white bindings with blocks of color across the bottom of the page, where the titles are. I focused on one book called something like Jumping in the Hay.