Forest Band; Big Rabbits; Dust

1/8/10

I'm in a forest/living room with my buddy B. We're playing rock band. His tiny passive aggressive neighbor woman cmes over to complain. I sit down in the moss and look at maple trees. Two friends come by and ask what I've learned. I say glumly that I've learned C. I was playing key boards and hitting a button every time a tiny glowing blue C appeared. Then I make up for my slow learning by saying I can identify trees. Looking around, I see oak, maple, and sweet gum.

I'm in M's new book. I'm one of the young girls in the woods, playing pretend. This forest is very hilly. I go deeper into the woods and see huge rabbits playing on the hill. They laugh so hard that they fall over.

On Covey Island with my father and stepmother. I have a huge suitcase, and when I unpack it, the dark clothes are covered with light colored dust.

I'm driving a huge car.

Well, now it looks like the big car dream is at the end of the night.

I keep having these very beautiful, bucolic dreams. Odd since I live in the city. But I do go to Central Park every day. That's where I try to brainstorm about my writing. There's a a grove next to a bridge with a giant beech tree that's especially helpful.

At The Show; Reading On The Rooftop; Sweet Gum Tree

12/30/09

I was on my way to see Saturday Night Live with O and was complaining that there weren't enough women in the cast.

I was seated at a big round table with my mother. Someone who was a stand in for JM was there and kept talking. I told him to shut up.

I go to meet P at his apartment, in a twisty, confusing series of streets. It reminds me of Providence. Clouds of colored smoke vent onto the street. P comes out of his apartment looking freshly scrubbed. We go to a nearby rooftop to read through his latest play. He starts reading it to me in a really hammy way and I start laughing when someone appears behind him on the roof. More and more people come out, a whole junior high school class.

On the rooftop are also a whole collection of Gossip Girl books. I pick one up and read the back. It's a bout a teenager's problem when she finds out her mom is having an affair with three generations of men.

Walking under a sweet gum tree. My boss is there and I identify the tree for her by the pom poms it grows. They're huge and exaggerated and soft instead of spiny.

I continue to enjoy mental fights with my ex JM. What a dick.

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.

Dinner Theater Murder; Lost At Morehouse; Leaves

12/31/09

Murder mystery dinner theater. Everyone thought it was this middle aged guy Sterling but it turned out to be his elderly lady friend. I felt proud for staying friends with Sterling even though everyone was accusing him.

We took a rental place near the theater for the show. A family normally lived there and we could see all their stuff around, like pictures from fishing trips and the marks on the doorframe to measure kids' heights. Standing in the hallway by the measurements there was a big mirror. I stood in front of the mirror and raised up on my toes to make myself taller. This increased my height by four feet until my head was brushing the ceiling. I felt smug.

Going to a japanese restaurant with young friends. Someone upset a dish of barbecued eel and I helped clean up the sauce.

Lost with my mom. We were reading a novel set at Morehouse college and we were trying to find someone's house (the character? the author) using the book. We stumbled into a building that we thought might be a college building but turned out to be a private house full of fancy furnishings and knick knacks. On our way out we argued about the best way to find ourselves. I wanted to use my phone and Kristie wanted to use a topographical map. We ran into a little man and stopped him for directions. He was very indignant and said that was his house. I felt he was being stupid and could lock it if he cared. I yelled back that I had eaten his roasted chicken too.

We found remarkable autumn leaves. Two of them stuck together and when they separated the image of one is imprinted on the other. They are rosy pink.

I'm missing the final section of this dream. I have just a vague impression of office setting and very nice neckties.

I really liked the part of the dream where I could stretch up on my feet and be enormously tall.

Tree Reading; Deli Scam

I was at the office working on a book about a mystery taking place at a bourgeois wedding. For some reason while I was reading it I was scaling an enormous coniferous tree. The bark was very thick and someone had carved holes in it big enough for my feet. I would thrust my feet in and climb up, my body perpendicular to the tree. I was pretty far up when my boss came out and asked how the book was. I described it and she wrinkled her nose and said there were a lot of wedding mystery books out there. Then we went to her garden and picked vegetables together. I remember some leafy green and lots of dill.

I was part of a pack of homeless children. It was my job to con deli men. I went in and started weeping and asking for sandwiches. He winked and said if he sold me the bread and cheese separately it would be cheaper. I was touched by his kindness. An older lady came in and rudely pre-empted my order and asked for an elaborately decorated cake ("Put a picture of a swinger on it, you know like a man of the world and then the edges should have violets with stems. And some fresh fruit.") The deli man pointed out my suffering and I looked in my purse and found a flower made of pineapple and strawberry.

I was in my high school theater and we were doing a show. I was mostly watching. It was a blast.

Well, except for the tree and the vegetables, that's pretty much my job. I think the vegetables might be related to an incident when I was about five. My boss's daughter was my best friend in kindergarten and we went to their country house and my friend showed me dill plants. I'd never had dill or bagels before. I'm not crazy about dill, but I loved seeing that enormous plant and my friend's excitement.

The deli scam reminds me of the book Homecoming. It's a YA book I only read this year because my client said it was a lot like her book. Which it is.

Ice Cream Parlor; Trees; Mezzanine

I was visiting a fancy ice cream parlor. Or at least it had once been fancy. There were pretty girls working there wearing uniforms but they were bored and a little snarky. But they got excited when I explained how much I like ice cream and they served me something called "The Maggie" with brownies, balls of ice cream and crepes to wrap it all in. It was bedecked with flags.

There was an old man who felt selfish for having too many trees. He had eighteen saplings. I laughed and told him that it's not too many trees.
Connected to a dream about my mother in an arboretum? In the summer we often visit the Flagstaff Arboretum.

A running contest was staged around the mezzanine of an old hotel. There's a big crowd of people but I'm doing pretty well. I stop to help a young Asian woman who is lost. She resembles a high school friend of mine, Keimei. We lost touch when we graduated. I think she went to Smith and went into an arranged Unificationist marriage.

Dinner party with my college friend Jen, Stephanie and Rachel. We talk about children.

Helping a thuggish young woman move.

The marching band takes the field!

Looking back on this dream, I see a lot of images of things falling apart and doing badly, and helping. Mostly in the dream I help young women. Lots of lavish detail about places and buildings. The old hotel was lovely. Dark wood and sumptuous rugs on the stairs.

I wrote down the dream as soon as I woke up, but now, almost a week later, I can't actually remember the last few episodes, the dinner party, the move and the band. The rest are still vivid, especially the hotel race.