"i just won't eat"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was walking outside in some area that looked like a Main Street area of some small town. It was a really sunny day, so sunny the sky seemed yellow. I felt like I was on the crest of a high hill. The buildings all felt really low somehow. There were a lot of people out walking on the street.

I may have been trying to figure out what to get for dinner -- even while I was already eating something like a sesame seed bagel that was two or three times the size of a normal bagel. But everything seemed so expensive. I didn't want to buy anything. I didn't feel like I had enough money.

I suddenly realized that I could go down to some place nearby and file for food assistance. I was employed, but I was making so little money at my current job that I still qualified for food assistance.

I was already walking into the place for filinf for food assistance. The place kind of looked like a post office. It was divided into two rooms. The room on the right had some tables and forms. You filled out a form and took it into the room to the left, where you would be processed and given a meal. From then on you could receive meals from this place.

I felt that maybe I wasn't so bad off that I should use the system. It didn't feel honest. It felt like I was cheating the system, especially since, even now, I had a huge bagel in my hand.

But I justified all this to myself by remembering that for the entire time I'd been unemployed, I hadn't filed for unemployment or food assistance or anything. I'd simply lived during that time off of the money I'd saved up in the bank. So, now that I was working and felt I needed a little help to supplement my wages, it wouldn't be so bad, every now and then, to come to this place for a free meal.

I took the form and got in line. The line spilled over a little bit from the left room into the room I was in. But I was soon in the left room. The left room was dark. The only light came from behind the counters. The counters were along the right wall. The counters were plexiglass-windowed, with little slots at their bottoms for passing things back and forth between the workers.

There were two or three workers taking care of everybody. I was now up to the front of the line. I could see that the worker at the far end had just finished helping someone. He was walking away.

I knew I should walk up to the worker so I could get helped. But I lost my focus for a moment. It took a moment before I could make myself walk up to the worker. By that time the worker was looking over her counter, looking through the window at me impatiently.

I knew that the workers were actually supposed to put a light over their counters to show when they were ready to serve another person. But, I knew, this worker was too lazy to do that. She expected people just to come up to her counter as soon as they saw she wasn't helping anybody. When people didn't follow her unspoken rule, I knew, she decided they were disrespecting her. So she would give them bad service.

I dreaded meeting the woman. But I walked up to her counter and smiled at her politely. She had brown skin and kind of frizzy, reddish-brown hair. She was heavy, round-bodied, and she wore a uniform like a postal worker's uniform.

I handed the woman my identification and some other card. The woman was already looking for ways not to help me. She said that something was wrong with my application. She may have said something like, "You have a job. You make money. Why are you here?"

I might have tried to explain that I was trying to get the assistance for people with jobs that didn't pay enough for them to live on. But I was already wondering if I was cheating the system.

The woman may have told me something about some part of the form I'd filled out, or about some form I hadn't filled out. I needed to fill this thing out. It was for exceptions, like the one I was looking for. I could see a back page and bottom end of a form in my mind's eye. I knew this was what I needed to fill out. I wondered if the woman would wait while I filled it out, or if she'd send me to the back of the line.

I finally got so frustrated that I told the woman, "This is too much. I don't really need to go through all of this. You don't want to help me? Fine. I just won't eat." I knew my situation wasn't this bad. But I wanted, somehow, to make a point to the woman that this situation was much more important, for all the people in line, than she had been making it seem.

I was looking down. Apparently some time had passed. The woman had walked away for some reason. I thought it may have been to get me a form or to talk with someone to see whether I could get an exception.

A man now came up to the counter. I thought that maybe this was the woman's boss, and that he was going to talk to me about getting some exception. The man was shortish, kind of slim, probably Hispanic, with short, salt and pepper hair, eyeglasses, and a small, trim mustache. His hairstyle may have changed at some point to be more of a buzz cut.

The man began telling me that, according to entries on my application, I had recently been bitten by a dog. (This was true IWL.) He said that records indicated I had not been taken to the hospital after the bite.

The man, I now knew, was actually a worker assigned to getting medical help for people who came through this center. The man was now telling me all sorts of standards and regulations regarding what needed to be done to a person once it was discovered they needed medical help. My case, the man explained, was completely urgent and involved. I had a bad feeling I was going to be here for a long time.

The man still kept talking and talking. All the time I was just waiting to explain to the man that the bit hadn't been bad. I'd contacted animal control and the paramedics immediately. Both had told me I was okay and didn't need to go to the hospital.

So I was okay. I wasn't looking for some kind of crazy health care runaround. All I wanted was to get some dinner. But the man was still talking to me, giving me all kinds of discussion about protocol.

too many dinners; brother wants to strangle me

Good morning, everybody. This post was from 5/4/12. I thought I'd published it. But it looks like I'd only saved it. So I'm publishing it now.

Dream #1

I was in a car with one of my co-workers, LM. LM was driving. We ended up going to some small restaurant, maybe like a fast food restaurant. It was like LM was ordering some meal or something for some other event. LM then told me that since I'd come with her to this restaurant, that she would give me dinner as a reward.

I was looking forward to this dinner. But now I was in the car with LM and a group of other people, possibly a few younger people. LM was in the front passenger seat now, and I was in one of the back seats, maybe the back middle seat.

Somebody had brought LM two or three bags with styrofoam containers in them. The containers were all full of dinner meals. LM had been given these meals as a kind of present. She was expected to eat them all pretty soon.

I understood this would mean that LM would likely not get dinner with me today. But I also thought that maybe what would happen would be that LM would expect me to eat these containers with her and then to eat a dinner with her, too. I knew that would be way too much for my weak stomach to handle.

LM opened up one of the packages. It was filled with rich food, like some sort of steak coated in a heavy gravy. I knew this was way too much. I probably wouldn't share this with LM. And she'd probably be too full after eating it to have another dinner with me.

Dream #2

I was in some room like a kitchen with my brother and some woman, possibly my mother. The kitchen was small and narrow. My brother stood at one narrow end of the kitchen. My mother somehow stood at my brother's right. My brother was maybe 15cm taller than he is in waking life.

My mother asked my brother to tell me how sometimes he felt like strangling me. I asked my brother why he sometimes felt like strangling me. My brother got really mad. He towered over me, almost seeming to make a gesture toward strangling me right then and there. He shouted something at me like, "Because you're always so damn frustrating!"

make yourself useful; nephew handoff

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at some kind of big dinner. It was in some place like a school gym. The lights were all greenish fluorescent, like big floodlights hanging from the ceiling. The room was full of tables.

I sat at a round table with a few other people. The people I sat with were probably park rangers I've known. Everybody was talking, like at any old dinner. But it was also like everybody was giving some sort of presentation. The presentation mainly had to do with whether everybody had been doing their job well.

At the end, the task somehow fell on me of giving criticisms regarding all the rangers' performances. I said something like, "Spend less time focusing on showing how much you know about the things you know, and more time learning the things you don't know," or "Spend less time talking about the things that aren't important and more time talking about the things that are important."

While I gave my little criticism, I alternately stood up and sat down. While I sat down, I sat really far back in my chair. The whole time, everybody else at the table was blocked from my view, as if there were some huge candle or centerpiece or pile of clutter on the table.

The conversation apparently started up again. Again, I was asked to respond. But this time, when I responded, I saw, sitting to the right of one of the rangers, an old friend of mine, KB. She looked really healthy and young, though kind of skinny. She had short, spiky hair and a shiny, black leather jacket. She waved to me surreptitiously and smile-smirked a little. At first I didn't think it was her. But then I realized it was. As I sat down I tried to look past all the stuff on the table to see KB again. I could tell that she could see me and recognize me alright, even though I couldn't quite see her.

I was probably about to call out to KB. But something else happened. It was like there was now something else going on in the gym, like a physical contest of some kind. It probably involvled high school kids. I was somehow a part of it.

The gym floor was cleared out. The conestants sat on either side of the floor. I sat among one of the group. The contest may have been explained, or I may have known what it was about at the time. But I don't remember now. It was something like a race. There may have been something to do with thin, wooden frames and creme pies as well. There was also something to do with a test of strength. I think this got me worried. I was worried about something with my shoulder or something with my arm.

The scene of the contest shifted. It was like the contest, or at least part of the contest, was over. I had possibly embarrassed myself in some way during the contest, probably disappointing my teammates as well. It was like the gym was mostly cleared out, quiet and empty.

I sat on the floor. Two or three young men sat near me. They all started talking about how I should do this or that next time to keep from failing so bad at the game. They did it in a kind of joking way, like they thought something about my clumsiness was endearing. They probably eventually gave up and just told me to come sit by them.

But when I sat by them I was sitting with a whole group of high schoolers again. There may have been a general feeling of disappointment from everybody, as if nobody could believe I actually had to be on their team. I would really slow things down for them. Most of the people who thought this seemed to be guys. But there were a few girls who thought I was cute. They were happy to have me around.

I was sitting by myself again, a few meters in front of the team I had been sitting with. The gym looked different now. It was like there were window walls or high-up windows -- windows somewhere -- showing the black night sky outside.

I had the feeling I was supposed to be giving some kind of presentation. But there were a few girls in the front row of the team I had been sitting with. One or more of the girls started asking me questions, like advice questions about their lives or about paying bills. They asked partly because they thought I could help, but partly because they thought I was cute and they just wanted to talk to me. I was a little nervous about talking with them. I didn't want the boys to be jealous and start causing troubles for me.

I was now sitting right next to one of the girls. She was kind of skinny, with long, dark brown hair. She wore a dark, velvet mini-dress and something like a velvet rose in her hair. She started whispering her questions into my ear.

Dream #2

I was down in the basement of my family's house. My nephews were down there, too, running around and making messes out of things. Some of them ran into the laundry room. Others were messing around in the main part of the basement. I was trying to get them all to stop and just go back upstairs. But they wouldn't listen to me.

Finally they all just jumped into the bathroom. They left the door open a crack, so that I could see they were running around in there, making messes. I was getting really angry. At last, I opened the door and grabbed the first kid I could see -- my youngest nephew. I held him by his right arm and held him outward from me. He didn't struggle. It was like he was some solid, motionless object, like a coffee pot.

I walked up the stairs and into the living room. It was night. The only light in the living room came from the hallway. The living room seemed to be just as busy with kids as the basement had been. My brother-in-law was standing in front of the TV, which was shut off. I handed my nephew over to my brother-in-law.