(11/10/05) stabbing my friend with toenail scissors; the prismatic tiger

(Entered in paper journal at 9:27 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a place like a cafe and a living room. There was a couch somewhere and only a couple tables, and the place was huge. The place was well-lit and nice, with a bit of a studio-like, unfinished feel. My friend R was behind me while I wrote. He was talking really loud and laughing in a bragging way.

I got furious. I kept silent, but I had moved somewhere else. I drew a design like this.

I noticed R was smoking. I saw R and his girlfriend L both laughing at me now, laughing that I was taking all their loud noise and smoking while I was trying to write.

I stood up and yelled at R. He tried to fight me. Somehow I grabbed him and turned him around. He wasn't wearing a shirt. I stabbed him between the ribs with a pair of toenail scissors. I "saw" I stabbed his heart. He fell backwards and looked at me as if to say, You didn't have to take your anger that far. I'm your friend.

I felt ashamed, but also happy that I was finally being taken seriously.

Dream 2

I was in a large plot of land, like a huge, landscape plot around a mansion. It was snowing. I wondered if the snow had made the tiger leave.

I looked over a stone fence (maybe five feet tall) beyond which the land sloped steeply to a pond with an island in it. A tiger waded in the pond. I was relieved. The tiger's fur was an almost prismatic stratification of orange, gold, maroon, pink and white.

(2/27/06) death of a tiger cub; neglecting my best friend; the biker's mistake

(Entered in paper journal at 5:31 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

My friend R and I sat by a smallish tiger whose fur was like a stuffed animal's plush fur. It was R's tiger. I was afraid that if I petted it it would surprise attack.

Now the tiger's cub came up. It looked like a miniature version of a full-grown wolf. I put out my hand to pet it or play a game with it. It bit my hand softly but firmly. It kept squeezing down. I tried to shake it off. I knew that right now it was only a game, but that the tiger cub would soon go too far and devour me.

As I considered this I lost focus. I thought about meat and how meat is packaged. I thought how I myself might be killed and processed as meat. I knew that if I didn't want that to happen I had to kill the tiger cub.

I looked around. R and the adult tiger were gone. I was surrounded by empty Styrofoam and cellophane packages for meat.

I looked to my hand. The tiger cub was now just a fleshy skull about half as long as my hand. Its "jaws" felt like weak, dried-out bones from a t-bone steak. I looked at the eyes, hoping they were still alive. But they were dried-out and, though alive, dying and past the point of hope. I felt awful that I had caused the tiger cub to die by losing my focus in thoughts of rage. (???) I tried to convince myself that I could still keep the tiger cub alive.

I thought of the tiger cub as a fish. I thought, It's only this way because it's been out of the water so long. If I put it back in some water, it will live again. But I was pretty sure this was just a hope that I had, not because I necessarily wanted to keep the tiger cub alive for its own sake, but because I wanted to keep it alive so I wouldn't have to deal with the guilt of having killed it.

Dream 2

I sat at a dining table in a small living room. My friend Y's mom sat across from me. Natural light came in from a wide window to my right. I told Y's mom how bad I felt for neglecting Y all this time. Y's mom said, "Well, you should tell her so."

Y was now to my right, by a couch or a couch facing another couch. She sat on the floor in a knees-front, feet-back position

like she was a kid playing with trucks. She caught me (maybe her mom, too) by surprise by talking suddenly about something very interesting.

I either turned to face her or went to her. I asked her questions about what she was talking about. I could feel her anger and sadness toward me. But I could also feel that she didn't want to talk about my having neglected her. She just wanted to be friends again.

Dream 3

(dream?) -- Drifting as I thought of something, which became a dialogue between me as a woman and another woman. Eventually before me flipped a strip-like animation of many different anime-heroine outfits and body types, until one finally locked.

The strip was on the left side of my view. It took up maybe one-sixth of my field of view. The rest of my view was of a woman in a red suit on a motorcycle on a wide track before huge stands of spectators.

I was alternately the woman and the woman talking to her. The other woman was like a floating vision, like a TV-view that was really there. "I/the other woman" told the biker woman I hadn't meant to compete so fiercely and that the advice "I" was now giving her was completely based on her well-being and nothing else.

I was now one of the two women, not sure which, but definitely on a bike. The other biker gave "me" instructions on how to win the race or maybe just get a lot of points, by performing a huge jump.

"I" jumped my bike and ascended. At a certain height, over the enormous, stands, the other biker told me to perform some pull-back maneuver with my handlebars. I did it. But when it was too late to correct my move, I wondered whether I had made a mistake by listening to the other biker. I thought, We'll just have to see how the momentum carries me.

I now saw from behind the stadium, like I was in  a helicopter outside the stadium. The sky was an incredible mixture of deep blues and deep, vivid blues and deep, earthy blues. I saw "my" biker go all the way above the stands. I thought "she/I" was going to make it.

Now I saw a church wall appear behind the two bikers. The wall was soft, pink-brown stone bathed in pink-yellow sunset light. It was a massive wall, in a "house" shape with a hole at the top and in the center, kind of like a distortion of Philip Johnson's AT&T building.

Seeing that building made it clear that "I" had made a mistake by listening to the other biker. I could feel (though I was no longer in "she/I") the bike tipping backward and descending to the ground far below.