My Family Goes To The Races; Tea Shop Catastrophes

12/29/09

The first half of the night all I got was the word "diverticulitis" which is from reading the very stupid Millroy The Magician by Paul Theroux before bed. Stick to travel writing, Paul.

My grandmother B, my aunt T, and my grandmother's farm manager J all came to visit New York for a racing event. They were staying at Columbus Circle. I hurried down from work to meet them. They're in a rented house surrounded by flowering catalpa trees. I see J, who is very dressed up in a red shirt and purple jacket. I wait at the house with my brother S while everyone else goes to gamble. My mother comes back giddy with triumph at winning. She's holding a bouquet and someone hands her another little one full of peonies. She takes them and puts the stems down the front of her shirt and arranges the blossoms so they make sort of a collar around her neck.

S shows me the game they were playing. It's like a pinball machine. Anthropomorphic greyhound characters bowl through a maze. It looks stupid and I'm scornful.

My cousin is there and throws a tantrum as he's being put to bed. We're all mortified.

We go to Aqueduct on a bus. I look at a map that shows Brooklyn connects to the south of Manhattan and Aqueduct is right at the top of Brooklyn, marked in a big yellow triangle. The bus is taking forever and J is getting nervous. T suggests that we charter the bus and go straight there but the bus driver is scornful. Again, we're all mortified.

On my way home, I stop by a coffee shop for a music show and wave at the friendly scruffy male baristas. I make friends with them and they say they'll bring me tea. One of them hands me a tea bag. It's like a little flat sponge that you toss into the water and it expands. When it touches my hand it starts growing and the feeling of movement surprises me and I scream. They reassure me. I feel close to them and they say that both of their parents are dying. I feel awful and don't know what to do. I hold both of their hands. They look at me like, big help.

A pest control advertisement. A cartoon of bedbugs being driven to smaller and smaller chambers in between layers of wood until the fat queen is crushed. It's gross.

This was a very good dream, all the parts interconnected. I even saw the bedbug ad on television in one of the places in the dream.

I liked the artificial map and game. I'm pretty pleased with my brain for coming up with that.

The emotional temperature of the dream was mostly anxious and weirded out but with an appreciation for all the beautiful things I was seeing. J did in fact come visit a few weeks ago and stayed at a hotel in Columbus Circle. We went and saw Wicked and talked about racing at Belmont. My grandmother doesn't actually raise racing horses and I've never been to a race. I think the reason my dream was set at Aqueduct (we didn't actually get there) was I was talking to 3 who is a racing fan and he had recently been there. I don't have a big craving to go see racing.

I think the anxiety from the dream centers around my aunt. She's a difficult person to be around.

I suspect the coffee house dream comes from my anxiety about having too many male friends in general, and wondering especially if 3 has anything like the interest I have in him. The coffee house itself was very beautiful. I loved the sponge tea bag. That was a neat detail.