(4/3/06) study of the dead; the house of many worlds

(Entered in paper journal at 6:04 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was part of some scientific or medical crew. We were working in a pit of black soil which was grainy and gloppy. The whole scene was indoors, in a dim room. People were getting operations or we were getting their bodies inspected before or after they died. The bodies were naked, and they seemed to arrive by being moved like on a conveyor belt along the surface of the soil and by springing up from the soil. A lot of us were on the soil, on our knees, surrounding the bodies.

Now the operation/study was to remove a leg/the legs from the bodies. I believe each person was supposed to take a turn cutting off a leg. But I couldn't bear to do something so drastic to a human (body). I could no longer even look at the bodies, knowing something like that was being done to them. I felt ashamed for being so weak. But I just wouldn't look.

I looked further down the reach of soil. There I saw a train of legs being relayed by the "scientists." I knew that this was the least I would see -- I had avoided all I could.

Dream 2

I traveled through a house that had many floors, all of which weren't really floors but "worlds" or locations. A top floor was like the stairwell to the basement in my mother's house. This one led down to a kitchen area, a door from which led to a mountainside that sloped and flattened near a residential neighborhood. There were other places I can't remember. I journeyed through these locations to find something or to find somebody to tell them to stop something bad from happening.

I was working to keep away from a mean woman who was somehow like my mother. Near the end (?) I rode on a big wheel tricycle (?)

or

into a living room like that of a very small apartment. The carpet was brown and the windows were draped so the light had a gross, dim yellow look. I had to get through the room, to a stairwell, and up to the next location quickly and quietly to avoid the having people living here notice me.

I got into the kitchen -- a mess, in glaring white window light -- when a tall, mean, poor-looking white man caught me. I was back in the living room. The man had a rifle aimed at me and was telling me to leave.

I wouldn't quite leave -- I knew I had to get through. I tried to make up a story or think of some way to make the man think I was no threat. But nothing I could think of seemed plausible. I kept waiting to be shot.