(7/31/06) fungeling or yuenlueng; wearing only thong panties to college; tom osborne and lake surfing

(Entered in paper journal at 6:08 AM on 4-train from Utica Avenue in Brooklyn to 59th Street in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a subway station that had something like the look of a stage to it. At the back end was a brown-painted wood wall with four doors. Across the wide way were staircases leading down to subways. I was looking for a certain train, but I couldn't find the right staircase.

I walked back out the doors. I "saw" somewhere, in some room like a security room or control room, maybe three black teenage boys. The boys were laughing at me because they had changed around the trains and tricked me.

I walked back through the doors, to the staircases. I went to a staircase down to my right. It went down a number of stories. A group of black kids came tumbling down toward me, trying to race me and beat me down the stairs. I began jumping over the railings until I even flew down through the openings between the cases and landed on the bottom floor.

I walked into a classroom where a few kids were waiting to be taught. I couldn't stop flying. I jumped from empty desk to empty desk. Eventually I was bounding, ten feet in the air. I made a half-circle around the large classroom and landed by the right wall midway through the classroom, looking up to the front, to a child by the chalkboard.

The child (a girl?) had written on the chalkboard about the technique I had just been practicing. She said the class already knew all about that. The technique was called something like "fungeling" or "yuenlueng."

Dream 2

My grandmother P drove me up to my new college dorm room. The room was at the top of a building, in a complex surrounded by a parking area. Some guys who lived next door to my new room saw me and started making faces with each other like they were plotting to give me trouble. The sky was grey, heavy, and cool.

I was about to get out of the car, but I saw I was only wearing blue thong panties. My grandma was about to drive off to find a parking space. I told her to wait for me and got back in the car, into the backseat.

As I changed my clothes, my grandma drove around the entirely empty lot to find a specific parking space. The space was numbered 35 or 53. I had such a feeling of awe as we pulled into that space.

Dream 3

I was in a room with a woman who was something like a screenwriting teacher to me. The woman was telling me that she didn't treat everybody as special as she treated me.

She said, "Everybody else is pretty normal, except XXXXX." (Tom Osborne?) "He actually has screenplays published."

Now "Tom Osborne" came in, very well dressed, looking a little like a young version of a person, CJ, who was on the board of a parks foundation I volunteered with in Brooklyn in waking life.

"Tom Osborne" shook my hand and asked, "When are you going to let me see your screenplay, Preemie?"

I stood up to get a copy out of my backpack. As I did, Tom disappeared and the room filled up with people, one of whom was my brother. He had bought Tom a lot new David Bowie CDs. When I saw that he'd bought Pin-Ups, I was impressed. But when my brother held the case up for me to see, it changed to a CD I'd never seen before. It looked like Magical Mystery Tour.

I was now outside, by a swampy lake. It was small, but it had big tides, and people were surfing in it. I got in and felt the pull of the tides.

I was now among a lot of people and piles of what eventually became Chex cereal. I was looking for a person or waiting for a person whom I was almost in love with -- he was almost like the "Tom Osborne" character again.

Another guy was waiting for Tom. The guy was black. He may have been a woman at first. He and I started "pretend kissing" -- then I kept trying to "real kiss" him, but I just ended up putting my tongue in his mouth in a lot of weird ways, eventually pulling out Chex with my tongue.

I was now sitting on a pile of Chex and chocolate Teddy Grahams. I stood up, saying I had to go, and that I was sorry I couldn't have seen Tom.

I saw a cemetery. I thought I really needed to go there. There were thick, granite crosses behind an iron fence. I walked toward the cemetery.

I was back to the swampy "beach." There were a lot of people surfing. I found a surfboard and floated it out with a group of girls to where "they thought" the tide was good (?). My surfboard was red, with a white fin, all flimsy like hollow plastic in a big-wheel tricycle.

I stood on the board (in this murky lake water, filled with moss!) and was surprised by how easy it was. Now a wave came. I rode with it into a swampy area full of young, whitish-barked trees. I was disappointed by my inability to direct myself to shore like everybody else.

I turned my surfboard around near an iron fence and was surprised by how easily the tide drifted me back out of the woods. But there were webs full of tiny, white spiders. I didn't want them to bite me or get on me. I drifted back out.

I was on shore. I went somewhere and talked to somebody and then headed toward home. I looked at the lake again -- this time a corner of it. Most of the people here were just standing in the water and enjoying the rushing of the tide. The water was full of moss.

I figured that if everybody else was having so much fun in the lake, I should get in, too. I got in. I was alone. But then XXXXX's wife (kind of like my coworker BK's wife, AK) was with me, teaching me about the tide. We were by a bridge. All the water sucked out under the bridge. XXXXX said she had made a boat.

We were in a room. XXXXX showed me the boat. She was pulling it out of a bag. The boat couldn't have been more than four feet long.

XXXXX said, "I made it out of the bark of an ancestral tree."

At first it was shaped like,

then when she had it all the way pulled out, it was like,

all polished wood and with gold embellishments and ornate designs. I was impressed but also flabbergasted (jealous) that XXXXX could create such such a beautiful piece of art that was also practical.

(4/29/08) threat and consolation

(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was outside on a clear day, looking out over a group of small buildings across a wide street. I was near the back of a group of people. From the buildings I could hear some kind of music playing. I thought I recognized it and called out that I liked it. Then I realized it was a Prince song. I said that I did't like it that much, after all.

I noticed that the people all around me (except one or two friends) were high school students and black or Hispanic. They grumbled defensively at my comment.

I said to my friends, as if trying to sound spontaneous, hopefully to make the students feel less offended, "Well, I guess Prince wrote some pretty awesome songs, now that I think of it."

The students now grumbled, "Oh, look at the white man pretending to like black music now that he feels bad."

I said, "I actually don't see why I have to feel bad. If you were to say you thought a song by a white person was bad, you'd feel like that was a perfectly fine and natural thing to say."

One of the female students said, "That's right. Don't make him feel bad about what he said."

I now stood in a long hallway with the students. It was a ramped hallway like in a hospital. I was worried about something else. One of the male students consoled me over this other thing, putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, "Don't worry about it. Everything will be fine." The student was black, taller than I by at least a head, and dressed like a skater.

We were all walking somewhere. I felt an increasing scrutiny around me, like I was the target of students who were going to hurt me regardless of whether I was an adult.

Suddenly someone pushed down on my shoulders. I thought they were trying to steal my backpack. I was pushed all the way down so my face was against the ground.

Everything went black. When I stood up, the hallway, which had been dim before, was even more pronouncedly dim, as if half the building had broken down.

I saw a couple white kids, either boys or girls, sitting on a barrier on the right side of the hallway. The kids were dressed in an exaggeratedly grungy style. I accused the kids of having stolen something from me. The kids just laughed.

An adult came up. I tried to explain that the children had stolen my bag. But the children had tumbled over the barrier to hide. I ran to the barrier and grabbed at something like a dog kennel. I pulled it up, thinking that the children would be inside. But there were only blankets.

I looked over the barrier and saw a child hiding under a chair. I pulled him out, but he may have disappeared or become a pile of clothes. I may have seen a student and become very violent toward him or her.

I was now walking toward a subway station entrance in the daytime. A young man cut me off. We headed down a long stairwell. As we did I ran up to him and cut him off and then started arguing with him.

I was now speaking instead with an Indian woman who was maybe in her forties. She was calming me down. I felt ashamed for having been so petty and violent with the young man.

When we got to the bottom of the steps the woman said that she had forgotten something upstairs. She had to go back up. I told her I would go with her.

I asked the woman something about her job. We stood at the foot of a down escalator (i.e. down from a level above us and ending at our level). The steps glittered, like they were wet, or like they were made of mercury.

We walked over to an up escalator. This escalator was like a thin sheet of metal that drew passengers upward. It was a side, somewhat steep, strip.

As we went up the strange escalator, the woman asked me about my job. I tried not to be boastful.  also realized that the woman would know a lot about my job -- maybe more than I did -- given her own job.

At first, instead of simply standing on the escalator, the woman was at first walking along a half-wall that was weirdly shaped. Then she went to standing on the escalator.

We kept going up, into a dark sky. I looked down and saw that below us was a strange, desert planet or landscape, like in a Salvador Dali painting. The land was greyish-tan, featureless, with orange and red, plasticky figures on it like cacti or barren vegetation. A few sparse people wandered aimlessly through the landscape. Light seemed to crackle against the sand, as if somewhere fireworks were going off.

(8/23/08) zit as sex toy; i'm a lesbian with my female friend; lured into dead end

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I had three small, dry bumps on my face. I thought they were zits, so I "popped" one of them. It peeled off my face like a film or a dry piece of paper.

There was a hard ball of "pus" inside the film. I pulled it out and looked at it. It grew, became a little gooey, and took on a weird appearance. It was about two inches long, bean-shaped, with prongs coming out of it. The "body" itself had some consistency, but the prongs were soft and flaky. It was almost like a toy, maybe even a sex toy, except that it was gooey, like phlegm or pus.

Dream #2

I walked into a small side hallway (to my left) in some place like a mall or perhaps like the shopping areas in Grand Central. A lingerie shop caught my eye. I looked in as I walked past, trying not to be conspicuous, but interested in seeing if the store's style was something I wanted to wear. But most of it seemed to be things like camisoles, a kind of rigid, fancy style that I didn't like.

The hallway was very small and narrow. A decent amount of people walked through the hallway in both directions, mostly young women. All the shops in the hallway were lingerie shops. I knew I would want to stop into one, and I hoped nobody I  knew would see me.

I turned right, into another dim hallway. I saw a rack of panties, of a cloth, cottony, non-stretching fabric. I thought these panties would be fun to wear, but I realized they'd probably be smallish and awkward on my body, like most feminine-shaped but inflexible articles of clothing always ended up being for me. Plus, I felt too fat to wear those panties.

I grabbed the waistband of my own underwear at the back. I realized I was actually wearing a pair of panties like the ones I had been looking at just now, so that I really didn't need another pair, especially sine this pair already fit less than perfectly.

I now realized that, in fact, all I was wearing were these panties and a matching bra or camisole!

I continued walking down the hallway. The atmosphere alternated between a dimmish, plaster-walled hallway like a hallway in a small, dingy office and a marble-walled hallway, like in a well-built or fancy building.

I turned right, into what may have been the end of the hallway. It was a very clean, white-floored, white-walled lingerie shop that also seemed like an enormous dressing room. There were a lot of girls there, but the place wasn't crowded. The lingerie was all brightly colored, like summer, or like sweetgum leafs in the fall.

I looked at myself in a mirror. I was wearing a pair of vivid pink, almost hot pink, gingham panties and a matching shirt/tank top. I probably looked just like a woman. I might actually have been a woman.

Now I saw KB, an old friend of mine and one of the people I'd worked with on my Americorps program in 2005. I tried to hide myself. But KB didn't seem to mind how I looked. She was more interested in being able to see me after such a long time. But I was still upset to see her while I looked this way.

We were in an adjoining room, which was even more like a fitting room than the last room had been. There was a door outside on the back wall. It seemed to lead out to a foresty area, like around the visitor center at the National Park where I'd done my Americorps program in New Mexico in 2002. The door was open. Bright, comfortable sun flowed in.

KB was sitting on a deep-blue-green couch. The couch was full of girls. I seemed to be having a conversation with KB as myself. But as the girl I also (?) was (?) I seemed to be cuddling with KB and kissing her.

Dream #3

I was walking down a street in a relaxed shopping district type area (which kind of reminds me of some shopping block in Queens). I was on the shady side of the street on a sunny, slightly breezy day. The sidewalk was busy with people, but the overall mood was relaxed.

But I soon found myself constantly having to get out of the way of different groups of people. The first group was a group of white teenage boys, all tan, with golden blonde hair, very cheerful. Then it was two or three tall, smart-looking black men, who were all laughing with each other. I didn't feel stressed out by these people, but I felt overwhelmed, like I was avoiding a tide which would sooner or later carry me away.

These groups of people had been coming toward me. Now I had to get out of the way of a person who was walking in the same direction as I. He was a white man, maybe in his early twenties. He might have been walking with another man who was like him. He carried a bundle of twigs on his shoulder. He had straight, brown-black hair and olive skin, and he wore a dull, navy blue shirt and dull, army green shorts.

The twigs, which the young man might have been carrying for his mother, were supposed to serve the same decorative purpose as cherry blossom twigs or willow twigs. In fact, I even called them willow twigs. The wood was a rich tan color, like on young mulberry trees, and the leafs were compact and vivid green, ridged very tightly, somehow (not completely) like rose leafs.

I had to swerve completely off the sidewalk to avoid this boy, and even as I did this, the edges of the branches still brushed against me, as if the boy were purposely trying to get back in my way.

The sidewalk was now in the sunlight. I walked behind a mailbox and then back onto the sidewalk. I was walking toward a subway entrance (a lot like the PATH train entrance at Hoboken). The building was brick, very clean, topped with a pristine, arching, aluminum or stainless steel structure. The building seemed to back into a grocery store parking lot. This area was even busier, like there were a fair somewhere nearby.

A young boy cut in front of me as I headed down the stair. I got competitively upset and hustled to cut him back off. But as we went down the stairs, which curved to the left, it was very hard for me to walk. It was, in fact, hard for me to move my legs at all.

The young boy and I seemed to be going at the same pace. I thought I could do something like slide down the handrail or even hold onto the handrail and "fly" or "hover" down to beat the boy. The boy seemed to have the same idea. But when I saw he was going to ride the railing down, I decided not to. I decided that riding the rail would be cheating. I could beat the boy, I thought, just by moving quickly, or perhaps by flying.

Nevertheless, I grabbed onto the railing like I was going to ride down it. But it was all covered in brown packing (?) tape. I could feel that, underneath the tape, the railing was broken in a lot of different places. It wouldn't be practical to ride down at all.

Now I was on the right side of the stairwell, where the boy had been. I was sliding down the railign, but the stairway was getting narrower and narrower. The stairway narrowed to a point and became a wall, I saw, before it even reached the actual floor of the subway platform. I'd have to hop the railing to get to the train.

The boy had stopped a few steps up from me, i.e. behind me. His mother had been calling him. He ran back up the stairs to meet her. Originally, I knew, the boy had been heading down the stairs to the train in order to take care of some task for his mother. But now it was like he was an overzealous boy who had headed for the train ahead of his mother, thinking he could be independent of her. Now he was being lightly scolded for having run ahead. The boy would have to go back up the stairs to his mother and then come back down with her.

But I also knew that the boy had run down the stairs to "trick" me. He wanted to rev me up into a competitive state so I'd get stuck in the exact position I was in at this moment -- facing the hallway that narrowed into a  blunt wall. The boy knew well enough to stop ahead of time and head back out of the station, never having had any intention of coming down to the level I was at.

I felt tricked, frustrated. But I still also had to catch the train that was arriving at this station. I was now more concerned with how to get over the railing so I could get onto the train.

(9/26/08) crossing a train platform

(Entered in paper journal at 5:55 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was on the platform of a subway station that was more like a train station platform, i.e. outdoors but covered, with light coming through on the front and back sides and possibly from small windows or openings high overhead. I was crossing a platform to get to a B- or D-train. Between me and the train was a wall or partition, with an opening that I could walk through.