A couple of new ones

Three nights ago

I am in the livingroom of my apartment, talking to Eva. She is on her way into her bedroom. There is a woman there whom I really don't know, so I try making small talk with her. She has long, black hair. I am thinking she is a friend of Eva's.

As Eva walks away from us, I ask the woman, "So, how was your Easter weekend?"

There is a horribly long silence, and the woman looks away. Eva pokes her head around the corner of her doorway and hisses, "Melissa, she's Jewish."

I am mortified.

The night before last

I am walking on the campus of my alma mater, and make my way into Scandling. I am late for a meeting--something I was invited to. But instead of going where I am supposed to go, I am on automatic pilot, and suddenly I am in the office of The Herald. Not wanting to look stupid, I take a seat, as if, all along, I meant to be there. Melissa R. is leading the meeting. I look around the room and realize, suddenly, that everyone on staff is white.

A black woman on HWS staff enters the room, and I think to myself, "Oh, this must be the new Pamela Thomas."

Soon after, two other black women on HWS staff enter the room; they all have dreads, and they are all very well dressed. At this point, I think to myself, "Oh, how nice of the administration to send all their token minorities on staff to this meeting."

 

Confusion

I don't remember much about my dream last night, except that it kept skipping around all over the place.

In one part, I am with Eva and she wants me to get a morning job with Admissions at the Colleges. So we see this woman named Donna at the front desk, which is actually in Geneva General Hospital. Donna and Eva set me down at a cubicle and tell me to get to work. "Wait a minute," I say. "Aren't you guys supposed to train me or something? I don't even know what to do." They sort of brush me off and tell me to make calls to recent alumnae and ask for money, but to shred the paperwork afterwards....

In another part of the dream, I need to get on an elevator that's supposed to take me up to someone's penthouse apartment. There are four or five elevators on the wall, and one of them looks nicer than the rest because it's open and there are mirrors all along the wooden walls, track lighting, and plush, maroon carpetting. But I'm nervous to get on the elevator, which makes sense, because as a child I had a knack for getting stuck in elevators often. Anyway, I step in slowly and Stacy (from work) is already in the elevator, standing in the upper right corner. "Which floor are we supposed to be going to?" I ask her. She gives me an answer that now escapes me. The elevator starts up and stops quickly, opening up at a basement floor. I'm very confused by this point. The basement is poorly lit, cold, damp, and empty.

Then I am with Renee in her car. We have a destination that I no longer remember, and I want to stop at the hospital along the way. She stops the car there without me even having to ask. We both get out of the car, and I stop to talk to Donna at the receptionist's desk.

Then I am in a bedroom--whose it is, I'm not certain. But it is dark inside, like there's a storm brewing outside and no light can filter in through the window. I don't feel like turning on the lights. Suddenly, a log raft pulls up along the carpet in front of me (it's a very big room), and it's Jill Larsen from "All My Children" (Opal) steering it. There's someone else in the room, and they tell me that I have to pay a lot of money to have a celebrity steer my raft. I tell the person, "It's okay, that's a family friend." Jill Larsen happily plays along, and I get on the raft.

Then everyone is gone, and I am alone. There is a lit bathroom attached to the room, and Jenna comes out of it, telling me that Alex is here. I've been lying in bed on my stomach for quite some time by this point, due to depression. "I wasn't expecting you, Alex," I say. I'm really confused as to why she's there.

In another part (no particular order, here), Eva's really angry with me. She decides it would be in her best interest to tell me every single thing that's wrong with me. I'll hold back details here, because she said some really mean things.

Contradictory, indeed, because she's in a very good mood this morning.

 

Trouble

It is night, and I am at a party for writers--a very casual affair, everyone in jeans. The lighting is dim, there's booze going around, there are groups of people huddled in corners, others alone reading on couches. The phone rings and a blonde woman retrieves it. It is a neighbor complaining about how loud the party is. Strange, I think to myself: As far as I've been able to tell, the music's been pretty mellow, pretty low. Nonetheless, the music is turned off entirely, immediately.

I make my way up the stairs to a carpetted attic room where some of my students (from the after school program) are looking out a window: Janita, Johnny, a couple of others as well. Janita turns to me and says, "Look outside, it's the police!" She is laughing.

"Don't play me, Janita," I warn her.

I look out the window, and there really is one lone policeman standing at the entrance, aiming a rifle at the house. It is now day. I look back towards the kids to see if they're okay, and they are laughing and horsing around. I look out the window once again to see 50 or 60 policemen, seven or eight squad cars, and all of the officers are aiming rifles at the house.

There's more that happens now, I'm sure, but I must have lost it in transition from sleep to full consciousness.

Next scene: I have just entered Super Stop and Shop (Natick, MA) to spend some money simply because I'm bored, but as soon as I arrive, I realize that I've walked twenty minutes for no reason because I've forgotten my wallet. But it's no big deal, because I see Natalie standing in line at the bakery. We chat for a bit, and eventually leave in her minivan. As we're driving on the highway, destination unknown, she tells me that she is looking into an afternoon job because she's only got a morning job. "I think I'll work in the history office at HWS," she tells me.

I don't question her, even though I know that's a job for work study students currently attending the Colleges. I do, however, inquire, "Wouldn't it make more sense to find a job in Rochester, you know, where you live?"

"Not really," she responds. "I don't want Paul using the car."

 

Survey says: Steer clear

A few nights ago, I dreamed that Jenna was teaching me how to drive. This is amusing (and startling) for a number of reasons, but I'll just skip right over that for now.

So I was driving, and she was in the passenger's seat. I was going along just fine along this semi-busy road, when all of a sudden, the car stopped. So I let go of the gas pedal and pushed on it again, and the car went merrily along its way--that is, until it stopped again. It took me a minute to understand that the car was coming to a sudden stop at every single road sign. Jenna was like, "You incompetent fool, you can't drive for crap!"

And I was like, "No, I swear, the car is like possessed or something! It keeps stopping at every road sign. Look, my foot is still on the gas!"

The last time the car stopped, it skidded to the point where the driver's side was now in (formerly) the right shoulder, and a sherriff came up to me because he happened to be there investigating a pile-up a couple hundred feet ahead. I don't remember whether he believed me or not. I imagine not.

Renee told me this afternoon, if only Freud were there. Hmph.

Gotta go--Jenna's yelling at the TV again. Something about guys throwing firecrackers at polar bears. I laughed when she told me. Thank goodness I'm in the other room.

 

Grilled macaroni and cheese sandwich, anyone?

Last night, I was in a building that I think might have been a frat house. In my dream, of course. Just assume that whatever I write about in this particular journal solely pertains to dreams.

So, I was in bed with this other woman. Not in **that** sense necessarily, because I entered the dream under the assumption that there were lots of us in the house, all sharing beds, or something like that. Anyway, I had been sleeping, and was startled awake by these two guys who came into the room saying, "What the hell are you two doing in here? This is our room!" But they didn't say it in a mean way--it was more of a confused tone.

So I started to get out of bed, but slowly, because I was so self-conscious since I was wearing this short black satin slip thingy (I was saying...?) I left the room and went downstairs, where everyone--about 20 or 30 people--was eating hors d'oeuvres. Dean DeMeis was at the kitchen counter with a grilling device and asked me, "Melissa, how would you like a grilled macaroni and cheese sandwich?" And you know what? It sounded really good at the time, so I said yes.

I then left the kitchen in search of a videotape that I heard someone had brought. It was a movie that was critically acclaimed for like a decade, and all the professors made students watch it in their classes, but I had never seen it. So I found the tape, and went back to those guys' room to pop it in the VCR. Well, the movie started playing, and suddenly I was in it. I then realized that this movie was about the 1980's; it was sort of like "Forrest Gump," except it covered a much shorter time span, more sophisticated, more hip. Sort of like contemporary German cinema. I was supposed to guess what each historical event was as it was unfolding.

The first thing I saw was this invisible thing going up in the sky at night, and this thing moved all the stars to make the shape of what it was: A rocket. I shouted to no one in particular: "That's the Challenger!" There was an explosion, and the Sears Tower then sort of sprouted from the ground right in front of me. I thought to myself, if this is supposed to be an interactive movie based on the 80's, well...wasn't the Tower built in the 60's? (I just looked it up: 1973.)

A bunch of things happened after that, but I don't remember what. So suddenly, I was back downstairs, having remembered my grilled sandwich, but Debra had given it away to someone else because I'd taken so long to get it, and I thought she might be mad, but she wasn't. Instead, she was all Donna Reed like, and made me another sandwich. I started to eat it, but I don't think there was any more to the dream.

What is this with my dreams ending while I'm in the middle of eating???

Shut up. Just shut up.

 

A mayor, a cutie, an old man

Last night--rather, this morning--I had a strange dream. What made it strange was that, while I can usually tell that I am dreaming while the dream is in process, this was one of those rare times when I was just taken along for the ride.

I am in a large, well-lit conference room, sitting at the end of the conference table. I look at my watch; it is six-something in the evening. My eyes wander to the other end of the table, and who is sitting there but Rudolph Giuliani, pouring over some figures in a large book. As luck should have it, all of the four or five seats between us are empty; there must only be six or seven people in the room, total. I stand up and make my way towards Giuliani, settling two seats away from him. As soon as I sit down, two or three people step into the room and turn off all the lights. I look out the window, and the view of the city is breathtaking. We are in New York, and, from this window in front of me, I can see lights upon lights upon lights, as well as the Towers, fully intact. Giuliani turns to me and says, "Looks like you got here right on time, huh?" I nod; I am now at the understanding that this is something that happens every night, at this exact time, in this same place. I was not expecting this. The room is silent.

Without warning, the room starts to spin around, faster and faster. My chair's back is now facing the table, so I grab onto the table, now behind me, for support. I am getting nauseous, but the spinning doesn't last all that long. I look at the guy across from me, sitting in some chairs that are part of a row of chairs that covers the length of the same wall that contains the entrance to the room. This guy, who's taking up three seats by lying across them, looks up to me. He's kind of cute, sort of GQ-like. He's laughing. "Isn't this so fun??!" he exclaims. I look back at him.

"Not really," I respond, deadpan.

"Hey," he says, "At least you didn't have to work for the past five days straight." The spinning slows down.

"Uh, yes Kato, I did, in fact." The spinning has now stopped entirely.

"No," he begins to clarify, "I mean, in double-shifts."

"Why the hell would you do that?" I inquire.

"Well, I've been working lots of overtime so I could go somewhere nice for a vacation. That's why I'm on this train."

Train? I ask myself. But we are no longer in a conference room. We are, in fact, now on a train. It isn't a nice train. It's one of those el trains that I'd take to work every morning in Chicago. "Where are you on your way to?" I ask the stranger.

"Somewhere warm."

"Yeah, but, where?"

"I don't know, actually. It's one of those one-time-only last-minute package deals. They told me which train to get on, but I won't know where I'm going until I see the people after I arrive."

"That doesn't sound right," I speculate. "Once you arrive there, you shouldn't have to ask anybody where you are. You should just know." I don't stop to question where it is that I myself am going.

Suddenly, I get this feeling that our train is about to crash into another train. It does. I feel fortunate that we are in the second cart, because it is only the first cart that gets damaged. Miraculously, everyone from the first cart is fine. My mind is working frantically to see how I can get this guy's phone number.

He interrupts my thoughts. "I think that's the train I'm supposed to connect on to finish up my trip," he says.

I read the lit-up sign above the conductor's window: FL 630. "Hey, I think you're going to Florida," I tell him. "Look at the sign." He smiles.

Suddenly, I am in somebody's kitchen, holding some little boy's urine sample. There is an old man cooking at the stove. He says something to me to the effect of, "We need to see if he's doing drugs. Put that petri dish away because we're about to eat dinner. I want you to try both plates of food, even though they're the same thing, because I want to know which meal is better."

He places two plates of food in front of me as I take a seat at the table. Both plates contain steamed broccoli and carrots. I eat from one plate, knowing that I'll like this plate of food more because the food looks fresher. The vegetables are delicious; the carrots are sweeter than they should be, but I like this. I hesitantly place my fork tines into the second plate's food, starting with the broccoli, but the broccoli won't stay on the fork this time, because it's too watered-down. I place the second plate's broccoli into my mouth, but it only tastes like hot water. Too hot--it burns my mouth.

But I don't get any further into the dream because I am awakened. Jehovah's Witnesses are knocking on my door.