(9/23/06) contact graveyard; task for boss; smashed up blinds; killers in my car; tarot girls

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I made a drop-down menu of names on a weird contact list computer program. One of my boss BS's contacts didn't want to be on the list anymore. But I had to create the drop-down list and put her on it to take her off. The background behind the menu looked like a graveyard drawn in oil pastels. I was confused whether the contact wanted to be on or off the list.

Dream 2

I had to perform a task for my boss EB.

Dream 3

I had just moved into a good-sized, nice apartment in a suburban-feeling area. The apartment was on the ground floor. I sat on the back porch, reading something. I figured I would come inside for some reason. I would read in the living room.

I closed all the blinds, not wanting to be seen by anybody in the complex (kind of townhome style, with a winding road through it and lawns before the apartments). I knew if the people saw me, they'd cause trouble.

But somehow some kids got close to my windows. They smashed up my blinds -- or they actually didn't, but their presence did. I started talking with the kids. Apparently they were nice. They faded out.

I was by a side window, boarding it up and putting a blanket over it to keep people from seeing me. I was talking (in my head) to someone, a friend. I thought perhaps I should unlock my window so I could see my friend. But I became absorbed by the sliding configuration of the white boards I had used to block my window.

Dream 4

I walked down a suburban street, in the road, on the right hand side. I was walking past nice houses, but they were also like the backs of apartments or business buildings, with short staircases leading up to heavy, dull-painted doors.

Two Mexican kids (one of whom I never saw and who eventually faded out of existence (?)) were following me, annoying me. I tried to pretend they didn't bother me. They would run up to the doors, pound on them, and scream. The one kid I saw would beat on the door with a red balloon. Then he would charge at me, bouncing the red balloon in my face and growling.

I turned the block to see an incongruous, stately building made of stone, in a very classic style, i.e.

except somehow very smooth and seamless. It didn't fit in with this semi-upper-class, suburban neighborhood.

The kid with the red balloon was nicer to me, hugging me and talking.

In the distance I saw a hill with a lot of buildings. I thought to a block there with some nice restaurant. But I couldn't figure how I would get there.

I was in a big house. There were windows all around, showing a mountainous scene under a greyish sky with maybe a little snow. Some other houses were here and there.

There was a road. Two teenage Mexican guys were taunting me and trying to break into my house. But I did something that got them to leave.

I knew the cops were now following the Mexican guys. I knew the Mexican guys were mad at my mom and were going to kill her. They had gone to her house before coming to mine. But she had sent the police to follow them. The police, coincidentally, caught up with them after they had come to attack me.

I was in front of my mom's house as the guys pulled up -- both in the backseat. They had come to do a drive-by shooting on my mom's house. But I ran to the car (a dull gold, 1980s-style car) before they could do anything.

I challenged the guys to a fight. They wouldn't get out of the car, so I jumped in through the back passenger side window. The guy on the left pulled out a beautifully polished, silver "switchblade" that reminded me of a curling iron or a comb (though now it obviously seems like a shaving razor with no blade, only a hinged, silver casing).

I put my neck right where the black should have been, wondering why it wasn't sharp. I wanted to take a cut to prove I wasn't afraid and then fight back.

My mom was driving the car. I sat on the driver's side, beside the two guys. We drove through a nice, mountainous area. We were all laughing.

I told the guys, "I like you both. But sometimes you, you in particular," (to the one to my right) "can be assholes." The one to my right was sweating. We all laughed. I was a woman for a second, making flirtatious glances to my right and left.

My mom sat in the front passenger seat. A blank "chauffeur" drove. The two people beside me were a man and a woman, both naked. They said, "Well, we'd better be going now. We'll see you later." They pulled up a blanket over themselves to go do sleep.

But the woman, who sat next to me, first making sure the jealous man was asleep, turned to me and hugged me warmly, saying, "I'm glad you visited. It's always nice when you make us laugh and make us feel special."

Dream 5

Two women sat at a table, battling with something like tarot cards. One woman put down a card of a brown, orange, and gold landscape and said to the other woman, "Do you have anything to match that?"

(5/7/08) tarot drones; the pathetic cat; "no clothes! no clothes!"

Dream #1

I was on a gigantic stairway with a group of people. The steps were wide and shallow, probably carpeted in red. The light was warm and incandescent. We were all using some kind of joystick or remote to control either a character in a video game or a machine in an area like the one we were in. A teacher was telling us how to use the machine.

I got up to a point where the stairs turned left. The steps continued up to a nice hallway with chandeliers. I turned around, to look back down the steps. The teacher told me not to turn my head too quickly, as that would make the thing I was controlling lose its balance.

I could now see as if I were looking at a screen through the video game character's/machine's eyes. The machine looked like a machine from Star Wars, with two log legs and a box-like cabin on top. It was silvery grey, maybe as tall as a person. Its purpose was to wander through this space in search of some kind of secret or special material.

The machine got to the foot of the steps. It turned right, possibly around the corner of a stone wall, and faced a bridge (still inside this building) which was wide and made of flat, yellowish stones. All along the entrance to the bridge were yellow and blue poker chips. I knew they were the secret material and they stood for money.

I bent down (as if I were in the game and was now a person and not a machine) and put my hands on top of the chips. As I did, they disappeared. I told myself not to pick up all the chips, because I couldn't slow myself down. There would be plenty of other opportunities to get more chips during my travels.

I now saw a thinnish, Asian man walk around a corner to a quiet area with cobbled floors and a brick wall. The cobbles were reddish and uneven. The man had grey and black hair and wore a flannel shirt and a tan vest. He sat down on the ground and started playing with something, possibly cards.

Now I was where the man had been, and I was playing with the cards. I had laid the cards face-down, some on the ground, and some on a box. I was now turning them face-up. After having turned up one or two cards, I began trying to guess what each next card would be before I turned it up. But I kept guessing incorrectly.

The cards were like playing cards, but the patterns of their pips were very strange. For instance, one card had a very thin rectangle in its center and in the rectangle were three red shapes, like spades (?) or diamonds. This was either an ace or a three -- I didn't really know which!

A couple men walked out through a door behind me and to my left, then past me on my right. One of them might have been my boss BS. One of them commented, "You're trying to tell your future?"

I felt ashamed because it did look like that was what I was doing. I looked down to the cards. They now looked like tarot cards, except the images were very vague, as if they were showing pink clouds or green sea.

I said something like, "Well, if I am, it isn't working! I haven't gotten anything right!" This was supposed to show that I didn't believe anything like tarot cards could be real.

I stood up to follow the men. We walked out to a place that looked like the outdoors, with cobbled sidewalks and maybe some building fronts, possibly on a muggy, sunny day. There was only one man now. He looked like JH, one of my bosses from an Americorps project I did in 2002. The man kept drifting farther and farther away from me.

The man said some weird quote that sounded vaguely, but not quite, like a common quote, like "Trust the enemy; he's your boss." This quote was apparently pretty widely employed as a cap to conversations made regarding things not going smoothly at work or in the government, etc.

I thought the man's statement was cheesy, but I said something sarcastic to sound like I cynically agreed, like, "Well, that always gets us by pretty good, doesn't it?"

The man chuckled as he disappeared into the distance.

I stood in a suburban neighborhood on a summer day. I was at the top of a slightly sloped road. I walked down the slope as I "recalled" a group of people talking about an organization that claimed to have been against the Vietnam War but that did things which on further investigation actually supported the war.

I got to the bottom of the slope, the corner of the block, and turned right. There was a house just down the way and on my right. I could see the people inside, as if they were sitting in a playhouse.

I "recalled" how the people called the organization in question a word which was a derogatory combination of two words which would mean "to support" and "to denounce." The word began with either "gr" or "ga."

I turned the possible ways of combining the two words as I walked into a small, plastic playhouse. The walls of the playhouse were yellow. There might have been a plastic jack-o-lantern sitting on a brown, plastic table in front of me and to my left, right by the front door. I could see a dense curtain of leafs outside a small window to my left.

One or two people stood outside the house and closed me in. I was pretty sure the people had locked me in. But I hadn't been able to stop them: I'd been too preoccupied with getting the combinations of the two words in my head in the funniest and most derogatory way.

Dream #2

I was in the bedroom of what seemed to be a modern apartment in a city like New York. The carpet was grey, and the walls were white. There was one window stretching along the wall to my left. I sat on a wide and disheveled bed.

A weird animal caught my attention. At first it seemed like a little mouse. Then it was more like a fake (but living) animal made out of cotton balls or big tufts of polyester padding coated in patches of brownish paint. It was about as big as a rabbit and had black eyes.

The animal ran backward when it saw I was looking at it. It sood by a heating vent by the window-sill/wall. I patted on the bed, beckoning the animal to come near me. I didn't think the animal was cute, by any means, but I felt like it was intelligent. So I felt like I should treat the animal as if it were a cute domestic animal, so it would feel good about itself.

The animal jumped up on the bed with me. It became black-grey. It was telling me some kind of story about why it preferred not to be free to run around the house.

I now stood over a roughly four-foot-tall, gold-barred, domed birdcage in which the animal sat, as if crouched and defensively opposed to me. The floor of the cage was messy with paper and cloth.

I now stood on the other side of the room. I was on the right side of the bed. The cage had probably been on the left side. A woman, like my friend R's wife L (?) looked out a small window and was telling the story of how she and my friend R had picked up a cat that they really liked. As L told this story, an orange cat bit my right index finger harder and harder.

L said they had picked up one cat before, but that it had been no good. Then one night, in the pouring rain, as L and R were driving along, there was a black cat wearing white satin gloves on its forelegs. The cat looked like it was barely alive. It was emaciated and heaved long breaths, like it was having trouble breathing. As L told the story, I imagined a cat as tall as a human.

L said, "The cat looked so pathetic, almost like a pathetic human being. So we just had to take it home."

I noticed the orange cat, still biting my finger, was laughing at the story. L started laughing. too, about how pathetic the black cat had looked. At first I thought the cat was just laughing to mimic L's actions. But I was astounded to find that the cat could understand what L was saying.

The cat was laughing silently, in little, sneeze-like chuckles, and had loosened its grip on my finger. Then the cat stopped laughing. It had teary eyes, as if it had been laughing at a good memory of a dear, departed friend.

The cat then said, "I do love L's sense of humor, and I used to love being around her because of it. But then her dark side started showing. It really overtook her. It became too much for me to stay around her and watch her hurting herself all the time like this."

I looked for what the cat meant. I pulled the blanket off from the head of the bed. There was a tangle of clear, plastic tubes and brightly colored, plastic clips. I knew all this was a kind of drugging and torture system R used on L. At first L had just taken part in the drugging and torture game to please R. But now she was addicted to it. And now she wanted to get me addicted to it, too.

Dream #3

I stood naked in a house, before a curtained, sliding-glass door. The thin, white curtain billowed gently in the breeze, as if the door were open. I walked toward the curtain. A shortish, Hispanic or Asian woman pulled the curtain back to come into the house. It was dark outside.

I was ashamed of my nakedness. I hid myself behind the curtain. I tried to get the woman to go back outside so she wouldn't be offended by my nakedness and so I could go put on some clothes. I shouted something stupid like, "No! No! Go! No clothes! No clothes!" as if this woman could only understand very simple, halting English.

The woman just giggled and said something like, "No, no, come, come." She took my hands and pulled me toward a bedroom. As we got to the threshold, the woman, walking backward into the room, turned to her left (my right) so I couldn't see her. She kept hold of my hands. I might have thought that the woman was going to dress me herself.