jan 07 gangster deal about a baby

I was attending a school. IT started at 6:30 in the morning, and there was a big crush of students then, so nothing got started on time, and the next day a lot of students from a different school were also going to be attending, so I was planning to get there late. I guess it’s the next day because there’s a bunch of new boys who are criticizing the school; its heating, its bleachers, everything. I’m aware that I’m on a diet or something. I’ve only eaten – something – that day, and now I’m smoking a cigarette, and trying to put it out, but am having trouble.

A gangster approaches me and I’m aware that I’ve seen him and his gang completing a deal or doing something I shouldn’t have seen them do. He tells me to come with him, and I do. He takes me several places…it seems that he’s trying to show me his power, or show me how its really in my best interest to do what he wants. Then we’re back at the school, and he says that I’m going to have to take his baby for a while. This is a common deal, to keep witnesses tied to the criminals, so we won’t snitch. Later I’ll give the baby back and I’ll get “seed money”.

I ask him what time it is and he says its 1:30 or two, and I’m surprised its so late. I’m aware again of my diet and how its been so long since I’ve eaten. I don’t feel hungry. He hands me the baby, and I say “I’ll run” since I have to take the baby home before coming back to classes. I run, clutching the baby, which is also a stuffed monkey. It sits in the crook of my left arm.

I meet up with someone and she admires the baby, wiping the snot out of its nose without being grossed out. I realize that caring for a baby is not my thing. Apparently I’m going to leave the baby with someone who also has a toddler. The toddler is playing with the baby, and casually lowers the baby to the floor by one arm. The arm dislocates, and I remember reading about this typical shoulder dislocation in an anatomy book. The baby crawls around unconcerned, and the arm eventually goes back into place.

I’m at a black tie event, and I’m trying to run into Brenda  because she has a baby, too, and maybe we can share child-care chores. I find her and suggest that she look after the babies in the morning while I’m at school, and I’ll look after them in the afternoon when she works. She says nooooooooo. She has a better deal. I ask if I can get in on it and she says noooooo. It has to do with her buying cars, then claiming some benefit from the government because they aren’t child-safe.

Then she says that it isn’t just her baby, but this other man (with dark, salt-and-pepper hair and beard) has two toddlers. Then there’s a bit in which I’m wandering around the party, looking for dark beer, and they are out both in the upstairs and downstairs refrigerators. Downstairs it is the locker room of Showdown, and someone is cleaning up. As I’m leaving she says (ominously) that someone needs to clean out that fridge, since it hasn’t had the ice scooped out in years. I say, oh, no, last year when I was the janitor, I cleaned it out regularly. I left.

Upstairs I sought out the dark man, and asked about sharing child-care. He said noooooo since he has some special deal, but he said he’d introduce me to Sam Wasserman. Then he launched into a long explanation of Sam’s life, about him being a newspaperman or business man or old-time banker. I thought he could leave the explanation to Sam, but didn’t say anything.

I was walking away and thinking about all the things I’ll have to do: babies are a lot of work! I’ll have to get a stroller, and nappies and bottles and all that crap. At least I know its only temporary. I think about how it might be my only choice to drop out and go on welfare. I’m aware that this is a sorry state for our society, if I have to drop out.

Is the baby my new house? Jack the ex-con has sort of handed me this new project, which I’ve run with.  Being in school and smoking takes me back to the 70s. Last night I dreamed of “31 years ago”, so I guess my psyche is back there. Maybe the baby is the psychological process incubated back in high school. The baby is the persona I created to cope. Now that persona isn’t useful anymore, but I’m not succeeding at fobbing it off onto Brenda or the guy. I’m not getting any help from anyone. I feel like I need to acknowledge this “baby” and then leave it behind. Perhaps collect that “seed money”. Money exchanged can be an exchange of energies, and I suppose when I trade the “baby” in I’ll get energy for other things. The session with the horses suggests to me that I’m not quite ready to get rid of the “baby”, since I wasn’t ready to drop the halter rope and walk away. Or I dropped it, but I kept interacting with the horse anyway, and found her reactions endearing, funny.  I’m not sure what to make of the times. They were very specific: 6:30 and 1:30-2. The early time I thought about postponing since I didn’t really have to be there then. I was surprised at how late it was at 1:30, and aware that I’d been observing a regimen. I was happy to have stuck it out that long. If its an analogy for my lifetime…no, I was given the baby at a little past mid-way, whereas if the “baby” is my coping persona, I acquired that in the first 10% or so of my life. I’m not sensing anything. 

Apr 07 a message in my journal

Apr 07 a message in my journal

I drive to town, and I have a lot of appointments to go to. My bus isn’t running well – its slow even at maximum acceleration – and I think I can get to the mechanic after my appoint ment with Bonnie and before something else. Then it seems that I actually have that appointment.

Bonnie is late finishing up with the patient before me. He has black, spotted exercise pants similar to mine. I wait in the same room with them. The building is busy and there is no waiting room. There are strong boxes there, and they match my pants. Bonnie comments on that, and we make a little joke. Then we begin and the room is very small, with cream/yellow walls and I comment that its like a prison cell. A joke. I show bonnie my journal, which is a black book with blank pages in the front, while the back of the book has printed pages. Is it a sort of text book? As I give it to her I’m aware that only a few of my thoughts are therein, that I’ve also written in myother notebook sand on my computer.

Bonnie asks what this or that means, and then comes to a passage later in the book, but which is handwritten. She shows me, and its not my handwriting. It is a letter and it says: “Dear Jasmine, I’m coming to you *&0___/)**&___.”  The garbled part is like the notation people or dictionaries use when parsing a word. The message goes on for two or three sentences, but I don’t remember what they say.

Some sort of emergency happens so Bonnie has to step out for a minute. She’s gone for a long time, and finally I go look for her. I find my hanging plant, which has flowering petunias in it, and my QRU watch on one of the hanging wires. It says 5:30 which is an hour late! I’m angry, frustrated and anxious, but I play it cool. Bonnie is working with another patient, which bothers me. I wait patiently for her to finish, and follow her to her office, thinking that maybe she’d finish my session, but she just gets her things together, goes to the bathroom and leaves. I walk out with her, and only say that its understandable that she’s so very tired and late since there was such a huge disaster/emergency.

I go out into the parking lot and can’t find my bus. Finally I do, and there are some boys playing next to it. It appears they’ve been playing against it, perhaps throwing balls against it. I get in and start it up, and the boys move away, except one boy wearing a sombrero jumps up and kicks the back door really hard. I’m pissed off, and rush to drive around and confront him, but the bus stalls. I imagine the ways I’d get to him, and drag him into the hotel to look for his parents, or call the police, but then nothing happens.

Now I’m in a big, white, diesel  pick up. I go to a couples’ house (sort of Bob and _____ Small), as the man and I are going to his land in the mountains to cut wood or something. He dawdles around getting this and that and I’m impatient. Inside his house his daughters show me displays they’ve made with various kinds of dry pasta in bowls. I show them how they should add some shell pasta here, since the bowl is such a delicate pink. The man is finally ready to go.

He gets in his small, dark car and speeds off. Now I’m the late one. I have trouble getting the pick up in gear. Its new and I’m unfamiliar with all the settings and whatnot. Finally I get going, and I hurry down a dirt road , and I’m going too fast so I plow into the verge which is either snow or corn. The truck flips into the field and I’m okay, but jarred. I worry that now I’ll have to find someone to turn my truck over, and I’m late and etc. Then the truck is just a very fancy bicycle and I get on it and its sort of okay. The chain is very long and complicated (giving me extra gears), and something has been bent or jarred out of place, so as I pedal I don’t go very fast. I stop and fiddle with it and make it a little better, but not right yet. The handle bars are okay, but not adjusted right. I pedal along and see a young boy on a little trick bike with a tiny back wheel speed by me seemingly effortlessly. I try to compare how much speed each of us is getting per pedal revolution.

I worry that I’m not exactly sure how to get to the man’s property, and wonder if he’ll wait for me at the crossroads.

Today I do have an appointment with Bonnie plus a platelet appointment and many errands to do. Lately, during ass-breathing and at other times I’ve become aware of a raft of anger in me, somewhere in my thorax or head. I’m becoming aware that I’ve got anger that I haven’t expressed.   In both sections of the dream I have vehicles which don’t work right, which I don’t quite know how to operate, and which fail me and then recover. They don’t go fast enough. I’m frustrated and anxious.  Both bonnie and the Bob-man are late, and then they leave without me, or without finishing with me. I’m abandoned, and angry, but I don’t say so. With Bonnie I just rationalize her abandonment, and with him I redirect the anger toward myself for having fucked up. Boy does this sound familiar!

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