(9/24/04) political drive; fear of heights

(Dreams entered in daytime paper journal only. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

I was watching some television show or else I was actually driving through a big city which was the subject of the show, and hearing narration, which I seem to have forgotten. It was early evening, the sky a dark, dim blue. Most of the buildings were red brick, like buildings in downtown Denver, except by a lake or coast of some sort.

The narration was about the World Trade Center being rebuilt, or at least about the loss of the World Trade Center and some kind of memorial being made. I saw in the open space between two buildings two towers, black, tall and cylindrical.

My mom's voice said, "I think it's just tacky that they're doing that." I think I may then have come to a realization, retroactive, of what was going on, as if the narration may have been senseless speaking that didn't "pull together" until after I saw the buildings and heard my mother's voice.

We drove on -- the "we," by the way, not including my mother, but including some businesslike people and myself. We drove past a building entirely decked in white Christmas lights. This castle of light was supposed to be another monument to the World Trade Center, or possibly even the new World Trade Center, which, so gaudily lit, would now, I thought, be a prime target for anybody wishing to attack America, as if it was actually the time before we were attacked.

I was now in an SUV, driving down some straight, Midwestern road with some politicians who were going to some kind of meeting, possibly a funeral. I can't remember who was there at first. I myself wasn't exactly sitting in any of the seats. I floated or simply shifted physically around like I was no more than two feet tall. The other people never exactly stayed where they were.

I was excited to be around these people, and greatly because I wanted to see how well I could use the terms of respect meant for them. I saw President Reagan. I asked him a question and made sure to call him President Reagan (?). When I asked him this question it was like I was in the back seat and turning just a bit to my left to ask him this question. But as he answered, we both slowly shifted, until he was in the driver's seat, and I was floating over the cup holder in between the two front seats.

I don't remember the question, but I feel it had to do with why some people weren't coming to this meeting.

(I now remember a part of the dream I had forgotten -- after seeing the light building I heard the narrator mention how for many ages nude sculptures on buildings were outlawed and detested. But now a building was being unveiled in Canada that showed some kind of "three ages" scene, and in the center of this sculpture was a naked woman whose eyes were hidden behind a big cloth. Some lower part of her was also hidden, below the waist, or at least including space above the waist, so that the only real nakedness was the breasts. She came out of a shield-like oval with some ornamentation on the bottom and top. Some small pictures were now shown. These were political figures who came to support this new sculpture. One of the figures there was the Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. His smile was bright white.)

Reagan tried to "explain" an answer to me. But he really didn't want to broach the subject. He thought it was "below him" to have to answer such small people as I on questions so controversial as this. So he picked at some "sticker fuzz residue" on the face of the cup holder console, telling me something about a separation of things, possibly such as toilet paper rolls, and not really even coming to any conclusions about that. This may have been in response to the question of whether "President George Bush Senior" was going to come to this meeting, since he wasn't in this car. I know I did ask this question, but I don't know when.

I was now sitting right in front of the person in the passenger seat, John Edwards, facing him. He had a plastic block, like a cooler, on his lap -- it might actually have replaced his legs altogether. I called him "Mr. Edwards," as opposed to "Senator Edwards." I then asked if he was coming to the meeting. I said, "Because I  really have felt excited about you being there." I immediately felt like a fool for having said that.

Dream 2

I don't remember the beginning. I was in some restaurant, I believe, having gone through some ordeal, and sat next to an Asian woman. We were with some friends, by whom I felt threatened. We all walked out a door.

Now the scene was on some strange bridge, like a multi-layered bridge over a wide river. I thought it was the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't know what the scenario was. Either we had just arrived after a long travel or else we were immigrant laborers coming home after work.

We stood, just an Asian woman and I (not the same woman) among a bunch of unknown people, along one white-painted steel girder. To our left was a pole with a ladder leading up to a next level. In front of us, beyond about two feet of open space leading a couple hundred (?) feet down to the river, and up about three or four feet, was a plastic or fiberglass beam along which people walked. The beam led to a platform at which the bridge was wide and solid and led across the river and down to solid ground. Behind us and beyond the beam as well were tons of steel beams in triangular shapes, above us and below us as well, like a maze of beige- and white-painted steel beams.

A steady crowd of people, mainly dressed in nice clothes (though the people were generally poor, and possibly immigrants), walked along the plastic beam. People on the steel beam waited for a spot and then leaped up onto the beam, or else they went to the right or left, to where a ladder post was and climbed up to higher levels, where there were fewer people on that level's fiberglass beam.

But I was afraid to move. The beam was shaky. The jump to the fiberglass was precarious (though everybody else did it just fine). And the climbs up to the next levels were possibly at intervals of fifty or one hundred feet, at which point the beams were even shakier than they were at this level. To keep my balance, or rather, to keep my morale, I leaned against a ladder-less post.

The Asian woman and I were two of the few people now left on this steel beam. The Asian woman wore a multicolored, tight, modern sweater and blue jeans. I wore my regular clothes. The Asian woman was kind of laughing at me, that I was afraid to move. But she was also impatient with me, because she had wanted to take one of the ladders a long time ago.

She sighed and leaned hopelessly against me. I looked away from her, jumped up onto the fiberglass or plastic beam, which wasn't shaky at all, and was quite easily reached, so easily reached that I was upset at myself for having waited this long to get to it. The beam was depressed in the middle, with a straight line, like a track, i.e.

I walked to the platform, still slightly afraid but now mostly regretful that I hadn't gone up one of the ladders.

I reached the platform. The first area, the only one I saw, was just a six foot by six foot square of concrete, walled with thin, ridged, beige-painted sheet metal. Its right side opened to a wider platform which was open to the air and went down in a slight slope. Nobody was in this room, but I could tell that somebody, some man, was nearby to ridicule me for having been afraid.

In the corner, by the door, was a short, small table with two books on it. One book was a modern book, I don't remember what, although I now feel it was some book about being afraid of heights. I don't know what it was, but I did then. The other book was a Bible. I'm pretty sure it was highlighted in many passages which, I believe, were also supposed to discuss my fear of heights.

I felt like I was already being teased and judged, and I started to form defenses against accusations of cowardice, trying to make myself believe these accusations. (Or did I mean "make myself believe these defenses?")

***

(Another entry regarding this dream was made in my daytime paper journal from 9/27/04)

BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING ELSE --

In the dream I had where I was on a bridge and had to jump onto a fiberglass beam: the book beside the Bible on the table in the corner of the room before the concrete, outdoor platform was How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It may also have had the Dr. Strangelove prefix, like in the title of the book (actually, the title of the film, not the book) in waking life. But the "Stop Worrying..." part was definitely there. I have remembered this for days, now, intending to write it down, but I always forget.

(9/25/04) fear and indignation

(Dream only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

I was in a kitchen with my brother. It was in "my aunt's house." My aunt had let my mom and "us kids" live with her. My brother was in the kitchen, cooking something in a big pot. The kitchen was a dim blue-grey. It was narrow, clean, but cluttered somehow. Out in the living room the light was brighter, although it wasn't gentle. It was beige, soft, but severe somehow. This place was either the upper floor of a two-unit "apartment" or else the house was strangely built so that the living part of the house was one story over a lower story, which was a garage.

Right behind the pot of oatmeal-like food my brother stirred (or possibly even reached into) was a small tape recorder that played The Clash, some nonexistent (in waking life) song that had a slightly unfamiliar, close to familiar, name. My brother pulled black iron rods out of either the pot of oatmeal-like food or out of a dish rack next to the stove.

My aunt came in and demanded to know why we were cooking in her kitchen and using her pots. My brother said, "Well, you told us we could live here." My aunt stormed into the living room. We, feeling accosted, walked in there, too.

I personally was surprised. My aunt had been so nice to my mom. But she was being really angry and mean with us kids. She may have yelled at us. But I really only remember the sudden transfer of angry, angry emotions and my own sudden feeling of fear and indignation. I didn't deserve to be treated this way.

I walked out of the house (?) and was now on some large, sloped lot of land, tan soil with small, green shrubs dotting the landscape. I was looking for my mother, to tell her what my aunt was saying to us. My mom and sister had gone somewhere.

I think I saw a store in the distance, but I don't know where. It might have been a dark, pine green color, short and squat, with hefty, fake wood siding and a flattish, slightly sloped roof. I felt like I was in a city and in the middle of the desert.

(9/27/04) trilobite roaches; cheap and expensive camera; lingerie and hair dryer

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info.)

Dream 1

Enormous insects like roaches ran through my house. They weren't roaches, though I called them roaches. They were shaped like trilobites, though they were smooth like futuristic cars, and a greyish green-beige color. Their eyes were like smooth, blackish windows. They also didn't quite have feet.

Their centers below the "window-eye" ridged up like the cabin of a car. All I could feel was dismay and weariness, as if I lamented having to deal with roaches all over again after not having had to deal with them for so long.

Dream 2

I was on a two-story train. I don't know where we were, but it was like we were in a terminal. The light on the train was dim, just some skylight coming in from the edges of the platform, tinging the floors and surfaces a white-grey blue. Other people must have been on the train, but I couldn't really see them. I stood in between the rows of seats, near a door that was open (on the second story of a train, no less). The aisle was wide, maybe five feet wide.

I had been somewhere before this, possibly an actual place in the dream and now forgotten, but possibly just a "memory." I was getting on the train to go back to this place, even though I had gotten on this train, apparently, from this place. It is possible that at this place my friend R had caused me all kinds of annoyance.

I asked myself, Why are you going back there? Why repeat what's already happened? I was now knelt close to the left row of seats, facing so the seats faced me. I told myself, Well, perhaps I'm going back because that's my "ka-tet." I now stood.

I faced "forward" again. I was close to the open door. I held a book which I dropped when the train lurched forward. The book, I now saw, was of William Blake's poetry. It was like the Viking Portable Blake, with the blue strip at the top in which were classical-modern, beige letters spelling "BLAKE" widely and thinly. But instead of Blake's "Ancient of Days" picture of God kneeling in a circle like the Sun on the cover, there was a black and white photograph "of Blake."

Seeing the book slip away toward the door, I lunged for it. I slapped my hand down on the book before it toppled out. But even though I did this I wasn't quite sure I had done it. I felt like I was doomed to lose the book.

Now I was somewhere "in New York." It was strange feeling. Behind me were tall, tall buildings, in the streets between which were lights and activity and people, like at Times Square. But the buildings were all red brick, all very clean, almost quiet buildings. And they all seemed about eight hundred meters behind me, so that when I looked back they all appeared small. Yet it felt like I was standing right on 8th Avenue, looking west.

In front of me, though, was a huge vacant lot, slightly mounded, full of grass, and behind a six- or seven-foot-tall chain link fence. R stood in front of me and someone else. Behind R, over the field, was a thick, greasy, black-grey cloud of smoke smothering the landscape of the vacant lot and almost blotting out the moon above it.

R, like a parent, said something like, "It looks like we aren't going to be able to go to XXXXX" (New York?) "now, since we have all this trouble going on here in XXXXX." (New York?) "So that means XXXXX." (We'll have to postpone that ice cream?)

R was now gone. It seems now that the plan suddenly became that I and this unknown woman next to me were to meet R for ice cream somewhere. We may also possibly have been told not to move from where we were, as going into XXXXX (the Times Square-like area behind me) would cause us to spend money or not be interested in ice cream anymore.

But I really wanted to go there, to see what was there. so we went down. We were at a glass display case in the middle of the street. There were no cars, just tons of people, and tons and tons of warm lights, making the night like day. The lights were incandescent yellow, with maybe a few reds and oranges. But overall it felt like we were in a dazzling casino with glass display cases instead of gaming tables.

The case this unknown woman and I were at held on its top video cameras. I noticed two cameras in particular. One was quite regular, compact, silvery. Another one, a couple cameras away, was weird. It was grey, silvery, and compact, but with a large lens on the front.

The lens seemed to be coated in some iridescent pink color. It was flat and maybe five inches in diameter. On the top of the camera, behind the stethoscope-shaped lens, was a panel of buttons, a whole lot of buttons, which may even have spilled over onto the sides of the camera.

I saw the prices on the cameras. They were pasted onto the lenses with 1 by 1 3/4 inch (?), pale blue, Post-it notes. The smaller camera was $139. The larger one was $1,329.

The salesman behind the case got very interested when I started looking at the larger camera. But the woman beside me told me something like, "No. Don't lose your grip. This guy wants you to get the expensive one. But you know you don't want it. It won't be as good for you as the cheaper one. But if you keep listening to this guy he'll confuse you into slipping up the prices so you think that $1,329 = $139."

I suddenly felt as if I had very poor control of my perceptions.

Dream 3

I was in a department store at a mall. I may have been in a Mervyn's. I don't remember most of the dream. I was at the register now, though. I either was buying or had bought an article of pink lingerie for $9.99. I now either was buying or had bought a hair dryer that was boxed like some kind of power tool, for $13.99 or $13.29. But, either while purchasing or after having purchased the hair dryer, I calculated the cost. I suddenly realized that I had spent way too much money.

I walked away from the register with the lingerie in a white bag, all crumpled and flattish, airless inside, and the hair dryer box in my right hand (where the bag also was, as if I had two hands there?).

I walked to the doorway where the department store opened to the mall, and I swung the hair dryer box in front of the theft-protection gates. Doing this, I thought, would show exactly how much the hair dryer would cost, in some way that seemed to show me if it would fit into my budget. If it wouldn't fit into my budget, I would have to put it away somewhere near the shoplifting security gates. But if it did fit into my budget, I would go back to the cash register and pay for it.

But when I waved it past the gates, it set off a quiet alarm. A nice store security guard walked up to me. He looked like the Maytag repairman in the TV commercials. He had a small, computer-like device in his hand, in which he was typing things. He asked me if I was trying to steal. I said no, that I was just checking the price. He said, "Well, I'll just walk you back to the register."

But I got a glimpse of the LCD display of  his device to see that the hair dryer cost $XXXXX (either $13.99 or $13.29). That really was too much for me to spend, especially after I had bought the lingerie. So now I wanted to put it away. But I didn't want the security guard to think that I was putting it away only because I got caught trying to steal it. So I just decided to let things be. I'd just get the hair dryer, even though I didn't really want it now.

I now started worrying that the security guard would see the pink babydoll slip and panties I'd bought.

(9/28/04) bringing someone on a drive; science show joke; dressing up for christmas party; painted bridge

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

Very vague. I was getting ready to take a trip somewhere; possibly back to New York City. I was with my mom and my grandma P. At some point we were in a wilderness which made me (or which now makes me?) sick to my stomach. It was like a forest in which everything was rotting and had the smell of stinking meat. I can't really see the place now, although I know the ground was dark, possibly rocky with silvery-grey, dull granite, and that the trees were mainly deciduous, not thick or lush, with shallow green and yellowy-orange leafs. There were a lot of hills, too.

But now I was at my mom's house (?), which was something like a mix between her house now and a cabin in the woods. Somebody who was supposed to be my sister stood on a wooden chair or bench and was pressing something into the dark, wooden walls. The place was clean, but it felt crowded full of people.

My sister now spoke either to me or of me, hoping I wouldn't mind that my mom was bringing CS (a granddaughter of one of my mom's friends, with whom my mom had come to form a mother-like relationship) along on the drive to XXXXX, as CS's indignation sometimes seemed to bother me.

I thought, I don't mind CS coming along, but where exactly are we going that we have to bring her along? Aren't they just taking me to the airport? Or were they planning on driving me all the way back home? We'll just get lost in the woods. They can't take me. And if we're taking CS, certainly we're going to take a detour to drop her off in the woods. That'll get us even more lost.

Dream 2

I don't know where I was. I'd guess I was in something like an interactive "science experiments" section of a museum, or a place like the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. The room was built strangely, and I can't quite see it. But at the end it seemed to fade into a black-walled hallway that led to some other sections of the building. There seems to have been a wide, tall window somewhere, because from my left there was a ton of natural light.

I was facing, almost standing right in front of, a display on the wall. Behind me were my friend R and some unknown children. To my right was some actor like a "science professor."

The display was attached to a silvery, mesh-like aluminum board that was fastened to the black wall. The display was a purple, tall rectangle of a laminated material. The majority of the display was unseen. What I did see was a wide, lavender border around a thin, tall rectangle of darker purple in which stood the lavender silhouette of a man, at the bottom of whose feet was a rectangle with four white text boxes in it, looking something like a multiple choice question.

But this whole section, all that I could see of the display, was maybe only one-fourth of the laminated display. I was that close to it.

I was apparently trying to think up a television show, a kind of "science professor" show. But I mainly clowned around. The four white text boxes on the display were like objectives, themes to be covered in the show.

But I now had an idea, as I stroked my finger up and down, though about two inches about from the man's body, of a way to be silly. Right before one of the themes would be given its section, I would have the "science professor" stand beside an actual astronomer, to introduce the section. After the section had been introduced the "science professor," his voice fading out as the image faded to black, would turn to ask something really interesting of the actual astronomer. The question was either, "So you're saying there's actual proof of a parallel universe that exists on the same level as ours?" or, "So you're saying that there's proof of our universe expanding into an infinitely wondrous place?" Then, of course, the kids would actually just learn some crappy, third-rate bullshit they've known for years.

It wasn't something I'd actually do. It was just a joke. So I turned to R, thinking he'd get a kick out of this joke. But when I looked at R, something in his stare made me afraid to tell him anything at all. Suddenly there was a strange, fighting, barely remembered moment where I was sitting somewhere in this room, trying to get into Hotmail, but not being able to remember my password.

Dream 3

I was in bed. I either was my brother-in-law or I was right beside him. If I was beside him, I was also myself reflecting on what he'd said. The room was pretty much like my apartment. My sister stood to my right, by the nightstand and lamp. It was later morning, maybe 9 AM.

My sister was trying to tell my brother-in-law something about how when my brother went to the Christmas party he wasn't going to dress up. He was just going to wear a white shirt, not his nice shirt (which, I think, was a softish, faded looking, classy, maroon polo (?) shirt). My sister said, "So you don't have to worry about taking time to dress. You can just go in the clothes you usually wear."

But my brother-in-law, laying with his hands behind his head, continued obstinately, "I don't want to go. I don't care about dressing up. I don't want to go."

"I" now sat up a bit and looked to the foot of "my" bed. There was a cart, a food cart, like the ones food service companies used to bring to unload food for business meetings at my old job in New York, except made out of metal instead of grey-brown plastic. It was a greenish-grey tan color.

I don't remember anything that was on it except for what caught my eye on the bottom "shelf," just about three inches above the ground. There was a bundle of roses, dead and dried, maybe twelve of them. Their stems were dark green, hard, brittle. the blossoms were blackish purple-red, dried out almost completely. On the shelf, below and around the blossoms, were a few other blossoms that lay like hard, juice-dyed, parched cherry seeds on a sidewalk.

I thought to myself, How beautiful. But why on earth were they here? How is this supposed to help?

(I don't know about this next part. It seems that now I heard my friend R's voice asking me, "Where the hell do you think you were? What the hell do you think you're doing going wherever you want and not telling me anything?" I was afraid. I rolled around in bed onto my stomach. My pillow half-leand against the headboard. I had no shirt on. I lifted up my right arm and pulled on the top of the headboard like I was trying to pull myself up. IF this is a "true" memory, then the fourth dream is just a continuation of the third dream.)

Dream 4

I floated over a tall, chain link fence. It was a cool, grey day, dark, maybe even slightly rainy. On the right side was a large, sloped lawn at the far end of which were two apartment buildings, maybe three-storied, dark tan, stucco-textured, with scalloped, red brick-colored roofs. The lawn was dotted with some small, thin, wide-branched, darkly, plain-green-needled Ponderosas. On the left side was a sidewalk beside a wide, clean, tan-grey asphalt road. the sidewalk and road went down a long, gradual hill.

Down about two hundred meters or so a red-painted steel bridge went over the road. Its floor was slightly arched, steady. It was "walled" with crisscrossing beams and an arch of thinly-meshed chain link fencing, all painted that clotted red.

As I looked around (this may have been the point at which I heard R ask me his strange, brutal question), I tried to justify myself to R, like a scared slave, even though R wasn't anywhere. It was like I was just walking around having a head-conversation. Except this one felt a bit more real. At some point my justification just became a joke that faded into the Crosby, Stills, Nash (?) song "We Are Stardust" (?).

(9/29/04) lingerie ad posters; mountain flood; grandpa at his own funeral; mother electrocutes nephew; no emergency hires needed

(Entered in paper journal at 12:17 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Had dream where Grandpa died, came and contacted me.

Mother on mantel.

Newspaper ad murals.

Me in lingerie, wish mom would go so I could change. Mom thinks I'm ungrateful. Grandma P somewhere.

Dream 2

Run outside some place. Mountain path back to home washed to straight cliff by rain. Walk around cliff. Friend falls down path. I shout, No. Friend okay, think, I'm an idiot.

Get up path. Empty river full of bugs. Run down logs. Hear flood coming. Now full of water.

In boat. Crash into other boat. Knock something off. Move nose of other boat crash into boat. Signs to my apartment. In long, dry flume like boat floor. Move nose of another boat. More water. Crash, break boat in half.

Upset. SDM says, Don't worry. But I wish I could've been a good transvestite.

Dream 3

Reading newspaper. Somehow Grandma J asks me about author. Article about South NM, some reservation. From somewhere Grandpa heard. Asks if this is book about Anthrax in XXXXX pueblo. If so, he really feels for those guys. I look, can't make out words, just say yes. See pictures of pottery and crack pipes.

Now TV commercial. Some guy in amber satin dress shirt pulls elbow to bald head, says, This deal from just about now to just about end of Christmas. Another commercial. Woman talking slow, naive, and quiet, voice like Grandma J, but looks like cartoon stuffed person. I think about how voice overs created.

Now in line in empty, church-like room. Don't know other people, but Grandpa behind me. I say, "They've been looking all over for Grandpa."

Grandpa says, "Well, yes, your mom has said he's going somewhere soon. If you know what I mean."

I know now we were in line to see casket. I say, "Oh, I couldn't stand it, to see him dead."

Now feel the pressing of fingers on right side of face. At first afraid, but know it's Grandpa's spirit. Lean into it, hoping to stop being afraid.

Suddenly pull myself "out of" sleep, "sit up" in bed, cry, Grandpa! Now eyes really open (?), try to find clock, takes a second to actually roll head and eyes over to clock without strange blackouts. But at last roll head over and see time is about 12:17.

***

(Daytime paper journal entries.)

Five dreams remembered from last night. I'll write down the last two first, as they aren't written in the Ghost Book.

Dream 5

It was night. I was in a building or outside (?) with a whole lot of people. But in particular I was with some friends, just one or two, all unknown now. My old Los Alamos Americorps roommate B came up to us. He said something like, "Hey, Preemie."

I was happy to see him. It was a relief, because I hoped he could get me "off the hook" for not having been out on a firefighting crew for one of this season's fires.

B came right up to me and said, "Hey, man, too bad we didn't get to see you this year, but we barely needed any emergency hires."

I now looked at my friends as if to say, Now see? That's the truth.

Dream 4

It was a cloudy day. I was in some kind of playground or large yard in which there was a sandbox. I was there with my mom and my oldest nephew and possibly with my sister. My nephew sat under a brown-painted steel structure with a staple-shape, i.e.

It was like the monkey bars, except it seemed to have been made out of rebar and it was less than three feet tall. My nephew, sitting cross-legged on the ground, could easily reach up and grab the rebar.

Now I stood on one side of the bars and my mom stood across from me. We were about ten feet apart. My mom told me she was heading in for a while. I told her, "Don't go." I don't know if I also was going somewhere. But, regardless, I thought that once my mom left, nobody would be there to watch my nephew. I told my mom, "If you leave, nobody'll be able to stop him from grabbing those bars and electrocuting himself to death."

My mom said, "Oh, nothing like that's going to happen." She started walking away.

My nephew, hearing what I had said, reached up and grabbed a bar just to test it out. Nothing happened.

My mom got mad. She went over to the bars while my nephew held them. She yelled, "You don't believe this can hurt you? Well it isn't on right now. That's why you aren't feeling anything. You're lucky. Here. I'll give you a taste of what it's like."

She bent down and pressed a ping-pong ball-sized button in a brown box about the size of two outdoor power outlet boxes. My nephew jolted and then fell over on his right side. My mom acted surprised, as if she couldn't have seen that coming. My nephew just lay on the ground, unresponsive.

Dream 1

I was in an empty room, a really beautiful room, actually. It was maybe thirty feet by thirty feet by ten feet. The walls were white, stucco-like material with arches built into them, just arches for show, like fake hearths or places where portraits might be fastened. Over the "hearths" were mantels. The "hearths" were set up in the walls on something like steps about one and a half feet tall.

There were exits from the room, into fluorescent-lit hallways, I think, but I wasn't really concentrating on them. The tiles were brick red porcelain with black cement between. The light was reddish pink, dim, with undertones of dim incandescent.

I walked around in thong panties and a bra and something like a pink, sheer, babydoll outfit or some kind of sheer, pink robe type thing. My mom now stood up in one of the mantels in a corner of the room, like a sculpted sentry. My grandma P stood somewhere like this as well.

In between my mother and I, pasted on the wall, were huge newsprint ads for Target and Mervyn's. I wanted to look at these ads because I wanted to buy some girl clothes and panties. But I didn't dare look at the ads while my mom and grandma were up there. In fact I wanted them to get out of here so I could change into boy clothes and they wouldn't see me like this.

My mom and maybe my grandma were talking on and on, always implying that I should pay attention. But all I wanted was for them to leave so I could get changed.

Finally my grandma said, "Well, just forget him. He's so ungrateful, after all we've given him."

(I don't know why I said in the Ghost Book that my mother said this. I very well remember my grandma saying it.)

Dream 2

Don't remember beginning. (I have to hurry, too. I have spent most of this time in a daze.) I walked out of some cabin (?) in the woods, which was "some place far away" from my house. I was supposedly of great repute because I had walked this long distance to this place out of the kindness of my heart (?).

I was actually familiar with this mountain. I'd just walk up a tall, steep hill, get over, and the rest of the journey would be easy.

-- Ugh. --

Actually, I can't do this today. I have the dreams down pretty well in the Ghost Book.

Dream 3

As to the third dream, basically it was a dream that ended in my grandpa being dead and "visiting" me. He pressed on the right side of my face. I felt this vividly. I was afraid at first. But I was curious more than anything. I stopped being afraid. I pressed my face in toward the strange pressure of fingers.

The weird buzzing feeling of things got very strong. At some point things were so intense that I told myself I had to call out to my grandpa now if I were to contact him, or else he would disappear. I yelled, "Grandpa!"

I then "woke up" and rolled my eyes all over, "blacking out" before they finally landed on my bedside clock. It was like I kept "waking up" then "blacking out" as if that waking had been a false waking, just a dream-waking. But eventually the waking was true, at which point I got up and wrote down the experience.

(9/30/14) continuously pissing

(Entered in paper journal at 9 PM on 9/29/04 at home in Albuquerque.)

(9pm 9/29 -- I will say again that I open my heart.)

***

(Entry in daytime paper journal for 10/2/04. No place/time info.)

9/30

Dream 1

I was around my old Los Alamos Americorps coworker and friend AL. We were doing something involving my penis. It was like she was fixing up my penis. But then she had a white "frosting tube" full of semen. I tasted it. It was sweet. I took it away and occasionally tasted it as I walked along by myself, thinking how wonderful it must be to practice fellatio on a good boy.

I was now standing over a toilet by a dirty, sliding glass door through which sunlight brightly poured. I was urinating. My penis was huge and it curved over to the right. I didn't stand in front of but on the left side of the toilet. I pissed and pissed in a huge, misty, powerful, acidic spray.

(The rest is how I remember it now, i.e. on 10/2/04.)

I now crouched in front of the sliding-glass door, holding an old rent contract. I saw that the name of this house's previous renter was also Preemie. The writing on the contract was tall, thin, and spiky. The last name was a sharp last name as well.

I thought to myself how the old woman who rented out this house had put men named Preemie into some kind of trap, a bondage that kept them in this house until she had drained them dry. I thought to myself, Well, I've discovered the truth! I won't let it happen to me!

I was now standing back over the toilet, realizing I was still pissing, just as powerfully as I had been before. At some point, I "remembered," the pissing had lessened a bit. But now it was just as big a spray as before. I was scared out of my wits that I could be so incontinent that I would embarrass myself with such continuous piss. I was now certain that I would never stop embarrassing myself with this pissing.

In despair I shouted out, "What the hell is going on here?"

Then I knew I was dreaming. I told myself, Get out of the dream! Wake up! Wake up!

(10/1/04) don't get used to it

(Entered in 10/2/04 daytime paper journal only. No time/place info.)

10/1

Dream 1

I was in a house, in the living room, watching TV. I sat on the floor. A beige puppy came up behind me and rubbed himself against my back. I was disgusted by the feel of the puppy's small, nub-like penis. Yet I also felt a twinge of family-love-gratefulness toward the puppy. But I didn't want the puppy around me.

I was now in bed, maybe sleeping on a couch, with the covers pulled up over my head. It was still light in the house, like I had forgotten to shut off the lights. A puppy that also seemed like a cat walked slowly onto the top of the blanket, "trapping me in" by laying down beside my face.

I thought it was nice how animals lay down next to you once they think you're asleep, but that I shouldn't enjoy it too much, because if the animal sensed my happiness (awareness), it would get up and walk away.

(10/2/04) hospital bill

(Entered in daytime paper journal only. No time/place info.)

Dream 1

I looked at a hospital bill for treatment I had recently had. I realized how much money I owed the hospital.

(10/3/04) three hundred-foot/step rose; bloom-less flowers in the land of the dead; esti skepti

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info.)

Dream 1

Don't remember the beginning, except that for some reason I was in an unkempt garden, or, rather, a wild garden, with my brother. We were putting up or pulling down something.

At some point my brother pointed up a stairway either three hundred feet or three hundred steps tall. It was blue-painted, thin metal, and it curved in a spiral. Its landing had no floor attached to it. It was a shaky stairway (I may have called it a ladder). I was afraid to go up it, and I told my brother so.

Then -- (after what?) -- I was climbing up a white-barked "tree" no larger than one inch in diameter. I called the "tree" a rose. It was covered in thorns both long (maybe three inches) and short (maybe one-eighth inch). I may have been climbing up this "rose" in order to take something off its top, which, oddly enough, was a small cone of yellowing leafs. I may have been climbing up the tree to pull or cut the tree down.

But as I continued climbing up the tree I felt the tree being cut down or rotting away from the bottom up, as if the top parts of the tree floated in the air while the lower parts were cut away, rotted and fell away, and/or disappeared altogether. But I knew the top parts, where I was, would fall, straight to the hard ground, as soon as there was no more tree left beneath them, possibly because of my weight.

I looked to my left and saw the stairway beside me. For a moment I was no longer filled with the fear of falling. Instead I was filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment. I had climbed all the way up this "rose," which was just as flimsy as, if not flimsier than, the stairway, and had attained a height of three hundred feet/steps without even having noticed it.

I now felt-saw the last bit of "trunk" rot and fall away beneath me (it looked like a splintered chair leg). Instead of holding onto the "rose" top and falling with it, though, I let go and let myself alone fall to the ground. I assume the "rose" top thus stayed floating in the air.

I myself discovered (guess what...) that I could control my rate of descent. I floated down to the ground, possibly landing on a patch of grass. I looked around and was in awe of the beauty of this wild garden. My mother may have been somewhere.

Dream 2

I was in some dark place. Something may have happened before, but I don't don't remember. In this dark place, which now feels like a tent, I was convinced I had died. I walked, or, rather, crawled, through an opening into an immense, lonely field of grass. I was on a long, wide slope, at the top of which may have been a tree, on the far left side. It was a mostly clear, sunny day.

I was still convinced that I was dead, that I had come into the land of the dead. But I moved around very slowly, as I move when I become aware that I'm dreaming. I saw patches of watery-yellow leafs in the grass, like patches of reverse shadows passing over the green. I told myself, So this is what it's like in the land of the dead. I have a lot to learn here, too.

But then I remembered (!) having seen a lawn in Albuquerque with this same patterning of grass. I tried thinking back to that lawn to remember exactly how it was. Slowly my feeling of being in the land of the dead dawned into a realization that I was actually dreaming.

I calmed myself down as soon as I realized I was dreaming. But I wasn't fully aware of things, not enough to get myself out of an overall daydream-like state. I walked over to a wide, yellow patch of grass and bent down to it, almost laying down on it.

I saw that in between the yellow blades were smallish clusters of old flowers with no petals. The heads were softly greenish-grey. I though to myself, This is what causes the patches to appear yellow -- these petal-less, yellowy flower-heads.

Dream 3

I stood behind a thin barrier erected between the sidewalk and a street. It was morning, kind of cool, very sunny, although everything had a low-sun, reddish-orange tint to it. The street was kind of busy. I waited for (my bosses for my present job) RN and A to show up across the street so I could help them unload things.

I kind of looked away for a second. When I looked back across the street I saw RN and A, each already carrying three or four boxes in each hand, already walking down the sidewalk. I wondered how I could have missed them so completely.

I was now in a camper trailer in the dark. I might have been in a bed. I don't really know. All I know is there was a barrier like a kitchen counter around with RN and A walked, going past me and to the front door.

RN said, "Let's get out of here. This guy is so lazy. He'll never get to work." I couldn't figure out why he'd say that. I just wasn't even aware that RN and A had gotten here yet.

I stood up to go out the door after them. I could feel-see them outside the trailer, walking to a cargo trailer with empty boxes in their hands. They had already started working, and here I was, doing nothing. I was now standing right by the open door. The light outside kept shifting between day and night and early morning. I didn't go outside. I stood in front of an oven.

My sister was behind me, holding a baby in a long blanket. She held it against her so that it was looking over her right shoulder. She was telling me something abut my dad. My dad didn't like the Spanish language or refused to speak it or even works that kind of found their way into the Spanish language. This was something of an annoyance as my sister's baby was Spanish in some way.

My dad would often say "esti" for "this," which bugged my sister, because she said it should have been something else in Spanish, but that Dad was using a Spanish-Italian hybrid word. He also used the word "skepti," the English for which I don't remember now.

I listened to my sister's story, laughed, and would interject things like, "What? He said that?" for a little while as I kept fixed on the stove and the door, wanting to get to work. It seems like a pot of food or perhaps just a pile of food kept appearing and vanishing.

At some point I walked out the door and down the steps. It was daylight. My sister followed me to the doorway and stood in it, continuing to tell me about Dad. It was like she was going on and on in an attempt to make some complete circuit of her argument, but she couldn't find the connections, so she had to keep going.

But I had to leave to get to work. My sister was still talking as I started to walk away. But she was also not talking. But also something like a deep, phantom-like part of her spoke in a demanding voice, "Well, I'll show you what being ungrateful gets you. You're in trouble."

(10/4/04) punk rock cafe; casa bonita hotel

(Dreams only written in daytime paper journal. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

I was in a bright cafe that was packed with people. It looked like a bar, but it was a cafe. It was morning. I think it was even a cold morning. But it was warm in the cafe. The cafe was bright and felt open in spite of people all being almost right on top of each other. The walls were white, and there was a window wall out front to the busy street. It was as if everybody here knew each other, like we were all in some club or group together.

I sat at the bar. There was a beautiful, blonde waitress or barista in a white, button-up shirt taking people's orders and generally being friendly and/or flirtatious. I didn't feel like I fit in. I felt like I was being grumpy or stupid around all these well-put-together, happy, mature people.

I listened to some music that was playing on a stereo right behind me. As I listened I took the lead from the guitar chords (it was a punk song) and starting riffing off a new song to myself. I was really excited. It felt good to be riffing off an upbeat song, a punk song. And I was actually making a complexly structured song, with three or four melodic sections. I got pretty excited, though I half-wondered whether I wasn't just singing directly from the CD or at least so close that it didn't count, anyway.

But I also think that on a very low level I knew I was dreaming, because I told myself, Remember what you're doing. Remember the song you're creating. And I meant it like I would tell myself, Remember your dream. (Of course I didn't remember the song.)

The song on the CD player now ended. Some slower, sadder song came on. I wanted to listen to the CD song again, though, so I could get my own song memorized. Plus, oddly, I really liked the song playing, and I was kind of upset that by creating my own song I had missed hearing the actual song itself.

So I got up and worked my way a few feet back to the CD player. I was about to replay the song, but I suddenly felt like everybody was looking at me, especially a kind of mean, judgmental guy. I didn't want to replay the song and have them all stare at me.

Someone asked me, "What are you doing? Do you wnat to replay that song? Well, just ask XXXXX." (The waitress.)

The waitress was now walking down toward me, not behind the bar, but down the crowded aisle between the bar and seats. I asked her if I could replay the song. She apparently said yes, because I hit what I thought was the replay button. I don't know what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure the song I wanted didn't play.

Dream 2

I was walking through some restaurant area like a Casa Bonita mixed together with a hotel. It was all beige and full of ramps and hills and table booths. Then I was in a stairwell.

(10/5/04) smelly pizza; bell bottom firefighting; standing up for mom; fast food adecco

(Entered in paper journal at 2:30 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

New York (?). Day. With mom and brother. Walk out tall white apartments to go do laundry.

Man in next apartment stops me. Says, "Don't eat any more smelly pizza out on balcony."

I say, "That wasn't me. I'm in 329, not below you but right here."

He then says, "Oh. Well, we're gonna find out who it is. One day my wife and I -- my wife is deaf -- went to Cici's Pizza at 7 PM (?) and stayed there looking at our memories." (He keeps flipping through a book of notebook and color-copied material.) "It got to about 9 PM and some guy came into the store. He was real..."

He trails off at a memory -- "Hey, look! A recipe somewhere for XXXXX!" (It's not on his present page but the present page has a note saying recipe somewhere. Page otherwise blank.) He flips through pages.

I see recipe on next page, tell man so. Man turns to it. I think he'll start story again, but he doesn't. Just says, "Well don't let me catch you eating smelly pizza anymore."

I tell him, "Have a good one."

Look to man's wife and say, "You, too." She makes hissing sound with mouth. She had done this before, too, at some point. She looks like "pretentious" wife in Monsoon Wedding (husband black). (I by the way was always standing outside a screen door. I also "remembered" having been told something about what a creep the guy was and how nice the woman was by my mom.)

I now walked to Cici's/the laundromat. But it was so late. I also now had my laundry in my hands. I thought, Well, I won't do my laundry. But since it was already put in a bag, all mixed together, I had to do it.

I thought about getting quarters. There was a change machine at the end of my block (?) -- strange external/internal block (?). Laundromat like place with washing machines in small room, then bowling alley (?) in huge room.

I thought, What if my mom sees all my panties when my clothes are in the dryer?

All washing machines full. As I look for empty one I pass three or four women, all average-looking (one looks like barista from Barnie's) looking at me, attracted. I can't find laundry machine. I think again about not doing laundry, but I realize again I have to.

Dream 2

I was listening to radio (?) with my mom. Some special on the Beatles. Paul McCartney (nowadays) said, "We've heard the last song, which was written by XXXXX." (Either him or John Lennon.) "You may be getting tired of hearing songs by XXXXX and wondering when you'll hear songs by XXXXX. But did you know this song was written by the both of us?"

Plays song called "Firestarter." (I "see" the title somewhere). (Song is actually "Bell Bottom Blues" I was hearing.) I hear voice, determine it is Paul, so mainly written by Paul (or John?).

My mom says, "Many people think this is a love song. But it's actually a song about fighting fires." I say, "Oh. When I hear the 'walk across the water'" (?) "part, I always think of wildfires." My mom seems put back now, as if I said something too braggingly. I now see an image of firefighters in the night, apparently as I drive past.

***

(Daytime paper journal entry.)

Four dreams remembered from last night. I'll list third and fourth first as they aren't written in the Ghost Book.

Dream 3

I sat in a house which was also like an office. I sat at a big desk about three-quarters toward the back of the living room. I feel like I was partially surrounded either by boxes or filing cabinets. I may have been holding up a high-heel dress shoe.

My mom (?) walked out of the house with someone else, probably a woman. I felt some man somewhere insinuating that I was lazy and worthless. I got up to prove that this wasn't so. I walked out to the front patio. My mother stood with XXXXX in the center of the yard, which was cluttered, with boxes. I think the boxes were empty.

A black man looking all scraggly and with black sunglasses on walked up to my mom with a manipulative grin on his face and began a spiel for money.

I thought, Now's my chance to prove I'm not some lazy coward! I ran down toward the guy and yelled at him, "Get the hell out of my yard!" He quickly backed up, not looking worried. He looked at me as if to say, I'm gonna get you for this.

I watched him as he walked all the way into a house next door to mine. I thought I should go in after him. But I didn't feel I had a right to go into someone else's house. I also didn't think I could beat him in the interior of that house, which was maze-like and unfamiliar to me. So (I think) I went back into my house, feeling lazy, worthless, and cowardly.

Dream 4

I sat in a one-seat-width table-booth at a fast food restaurant. Or, rather, I think I sat above it, floating, behind RN, my boss from my assignment with Adecco, who sat in another table-booth. Across the aisle from him, in another booth, sat A and S, two other workers from my assignment. S said something. R responded like S was an idiot, shutting her up.

I now sunk down into a seat, strangely, as if I sat backwards, though I felt like I sat forwards. I.e. not

or

but

with my legs going though the seat. RN who had sat in the chair-like booth seat directly backing the one I now sat in, i.e.

now sat in the booth seat on the other side of the table. ST sat to his left. ST held some white papers in his hand. I felt like RN had somehow apologized to me (for what???) by being sarcastic toward S.

RN seems to have disappeared. Now I looked at ST. His face became really sick. It was like he was realizing something really bad by looking at me. He suddenly said, "Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm ready to go home."

***

I don't know how much I need to write about my first and second dreams. They seem fully enough written in the Ghost Book. There are just a couple things I might say about the first dream.

Dream 1

The apartment was tallish, white, with a rough surface like painted, spiky concrete.

When I walked out it was like I walked out onto a patio. But when I spoke to the man, it was like I was on a ledge, looking into a window with the glass up and screen down. It was like I had walked out one window and up to another window. But it was also like I had walked onto one vertical balcony, i.e.

across empty space, up to another vertical balcony, to a doorway, the hard door of which was open but the screen door of which was shut.

It was confusing, just like walking away from the apartment, but it was like I was immediately down and walking up some street-width driveway from the apartments. It was like I was outside and inside at the same time.

At the corner of the "street" was a change machine. I was about to put a dollar in it for the laundry change. But I noticed a sign on the machine that said, "THIS MACHINE DOES GIVE OUT DIMES." The lettering was worn and faded, but I could still tell what it said. The machine was a hefty, beige-painted, steel cube.

(10/6/05) all-you-can-eat buffet scuffle

(No time/place info for paper dream  journal entry.)

(10/5 -- I will try tonight to influence my dreams with thoughts of Ghost in the Shell II the anime movie.)

(No dreams were recorded in my dream journal for the night.)

***

(Daytime paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I can't remember the beginning. I was somewhere with my friends R and Y. It was like we were doing some job outside. I had eaten a burrito that had been wrapped in aluminum foil. Once we finished we walked to the end of a parking lot and stood by something like a gas station. All I remember now is that it was a bright white building. The parking lot was empty. The sun was bright.

I sat or stood against a wall, either in the sun or the shade. R and Y were up by the front of the gas station. Possibly one of them was in or kept walking in and out of the store. One of them was talking on a cell phone. Someone had invited them to a "roller coaster park" or amusement park. I knew they would also invite me, though I didn't really want to go.

I don't really know what happened next. Something about an errand was mentioned. We walked down the parking lot toward a building that looked like a closed Kmart. It was a white building, the doors of which were boarded up with what looked like plywood painted aquamarine.

The errand had apparently become getting lunch. I thought about this with a little dread. I'd already eaten a burrito, and I didn't want to go out for a big lunch. Now I pulled two more burritos out of my back pocket. I definitely didn't want to buy lunch now, now that I had two more burritos.

I thought there was possibly a way for me to get away from these guys. But, seeing some guys opening and closing the aquamarine boards, which I now saw were steel, I knew I was just going to have to go with them.

I was now in some restaurant with them. It was like the cafe at the back end of the old Kmart on Colfax (and Wadsworth?) in Denver. But it was huge, like three or four cafe lines put together. R and Y had gone up to get food from the buffet-like lines. I stood at a table, about to sit down, but looking at my burritos and feeling guilty for even eating these. After all, hadn't one burrito been enough?

But now Y came up and told me to come check out the buffets. Apparently there were three buffet lines, each set up like they were different restaurants, with different styles of food. I walked up to the buffets with Y, telling myself not to buy any food, just to look out of interest.

The buffets were set up so that on the left and right sides were two immense, long buffets, and in the center was a small, pagoda-like buffet with something like soups on it. Y and I went to the left buffet first. It was all sub sandwiches, just a long, stretching bin full of sub sandwiches. The wall behind the buffet was wallpapered with a slightly grainy photograph of a blue sky dotted with puffy, white clouds.

I thought, Well, it's never worth it to spend this much money on a sub sandwich. But maybe I can just get a soda.

I walked away from the buffets altogether, though, back to the seats. I was about to sit down when I heard Y say, "Hey, Preemie! Come check this out!" She was now on the right side buffet, which, I could only barely see, was some kind of exotic food. I ran up through the soup buffet, which, I could only barely see, was some kind of exotic food, to get to the right side buffet.

R stood at the soup buffet. As I ran toward Y, he shoved me with his back and butt and pinned me against the guardrails for the buffet. Holding me there with his back he said, "No you don't. You aren't getting anywhere near Y."

I slipped away but he moved quickly and trapped me again. He was pissed. I tried to struggle against him, but he kept slipping out of my reach.

Trying to figure out something, anything to do to him, I stuck my hands first into a beef mushroom-type soup (kind of a french dip au jus consistency) and then into a guacamole-consistency soup, which I grabbed a hot handful of and flung into R's face.

R backed up (?) and away from me. We now stood by a trashcan by the chairs and tables. R gave me a look that scared (and scares) the shit out of me -- it was like that of a psychopath who finally decided to kill and thus saw his object as already dead, like I was just a stupid fucking absurdity for still choosing even to breathe and talk. It was a blank, petulant stare.

R was pissed that I had gotten him off of me. He was even more pissed that I had gotten a bit of his glasses and his left jawline messy with the guacamole-type soup. But he was most pissed that I had gotten some of the soup on the left side of the collar (?) of his "expensive" shirt, but that if R didn't wipe off his neck, which he wouldn't, he would let the soup get on his shirt. And he wanted that, because for so long he had wanted an excuse to kill me or embarrass me so badly that I would wish I were dead.

I half-apologized. But I mainly told R, "You just have to get off of me when I tell you to get off of me, that's all. Besides, Y's my friend, just as well as you are, and I have every right to talk to her."

He pushed me away and said, "I am going to kill you or embarrass you really bad. You don't ever tell me what to do. You are mine."

Now he was gone. I sat across from Y. She asked where R had gone. I told her he just got a little pissed and decided not to hang around for the rest of the day. She said, "Well, he should just learn to deal with the fact that not everybody in the world is going to do things whenever he wants them to."

Now I sat staring out toward the front of the restaurant, where the Kmart used to be. It was now a skyline, behind a couple skyscrapers and across a river, of what I possibly thought was New Jersey and/or lower Manhattan. It was in pinkish-orange sunset light, the buildings looking orange-purple in their shadows. I sat on the thin tile floor like I was sitting on a hilly lawn, waiting for a concert.

I was trying to think, as my friend ML sat beside me and spoke (Y now gone), how on earth I would make do back in New York if I couldn't stay at R's place. I thought that I should perhaps ask ML to let me stay with him. But right as I was about to ask him, turning up to him and lifting up my arms as if to embrace his chest like I was a fawning girl, he disappeared.

Now, instead of ML to my right, My mom's old longtime boyfriend JT was to my left. I didn't see him, but he was there. The skyline was moving now, from my right to my left, a bridge coming into view, as if we were on a boat.

JT pointed out some smallish, greenish-window-walled building kind of where Battery Park would have been. He told me, "See? That's the Jewish Aquarium Museum" (?) "right there."

I said, "Oh yeah?" first trying to figure out which building JT was talking about, then trying to figure out what made certain aquatic life Jewish.

I don't know how, but things now changed quite a bit. I was in something like an apartment that was the entire floor of a skyscraper. The floor was concrete (?) painted black and with Arabian rugs all over. There were a few nice couches as well.

The walls were either brick or black-painted concrete. There were huge holes for windows. But I don't think the windows had any panes. The window holes were from ceiling to floor and about ten or twelve feet wide, so that the "wall" was more like a wide column between the windows, more than like a wide space of wall between windows.

The space was like an artist's space, or, rather, like a space where artists could just hang out, not work. A few people were there, talking, and I was their friend. But I don't know them, nor could I really see them.

The strangest thing was that the building or the floor was revolving, turning counterclockwise. At first I thought it was just my changing perspective. But even when I held my head still I saw that building tops were "moving" from left to right before my eyes. The city looked clean, new, with buildings made out of red bricks and copper-colored, tan bricks. I was very interested in the views, but I also had a feeling that the turning of the building meant it was going to collapse.

I now heard (Y?) call for me. She told me to look out a "window" to my right. I immediately saw some neighborhood, which I thought was an incredibly beautiful yet dangerous area of Brooklyn. I was enamored with the spooky starkness (even in full, shining daylight!) of these buildings. But I don't remember them now.

I don't know what happened next. But now I was walking to a bedroom after having made an unsuccessful joke to my friend PD. There were no windows in the room. A yellowy, incandescent light shone from the center of the ceiling.

There was something like a couch-like mattress in the center of the floor. I flopped down in it and sighed to ML that PD didn't think my joke was funny. ML just grinned and was about to say something kind of rude and annoying about my sense of humor.

But apparently I predicted what ML was going to say. I butt in as he got a few words in and said something like, "Oh, yes, now it's time for you to repeat some word I characteristically say until you beat me down with a sense of being completely known and understood. You're such an ass."

But ML didn't take my comments too harshly. I don't think I meant them so harshly. He just gave me a lazy, half-dazed smile and rumpled his head under a blanket and made a joke about me.

Now a dog like my friend R's dog ran into the room from a door to my right (I had come in from the left). "She" kind of attacked my right hand, biting it softly but repeatedly.

I said, "Oh, I forgot, you like eating people's hands, don't you?"

"She" said, "Yes, I do, but I also like being petted," in a voice like a 75% feminine, 25% masculine, watery-timbered computer voice. "She" now lay back on my lap and resembled soemthing like a naked boy covered in short, silky, black dog hair. I pet it and it opened its mouth in "pleasure" that looked more like the breathless gasps of a burn victim.

Now someone somewhere said, "Oh, he's coming! Just open the door for him." They meant to use the electric door opener to open the door on the first floor but not to use the buzzer.

My sister said, "Oh, I know how to do that. I've done it before." But before she could get to the door opener the person there buzzed up to us. "My friend's dog," who was now much more, though still not quite, like the dog, sprang from my lap, barking insanely.

I now understood that the man coming up was my mom's new husband, a Japanese man. I got up from a room that wasn't quite the room I had just been in and walked down a dim hallway with a couple doorways to wide, airy, classy rooms and into a "central" room where the front door was located. The light was a rich tan-yellow.

The man had just come into the house. He was about five-foot-five, maybe 150 or 160 pounds, wearing a blue, hefty, knit sweater, slacks (or jeans?), and plastic-rimmed, black glasses. His face was kind of thick. He was wide-lipped and weary-eyed. His hair was alternately thinning greatly and full but obstinately messy. His skin was very dark, almost brown, a dull brown.

He walked toward the kitchen, where my mom was, only half-regarding me. I told him, "Hello, sir, nice to meet you. Can I ask who you are?" He just grunted and kept walking.

I said, "You have no business continuing if you don't tell me who I am." He now said something politely and slowly, but so quiet that it looked like he was on an almost muted television. He kept walking.

I told him, "You cannot continue until you tell me who you are." But he walked past me and almost to the "kitchen," which was now just another dark hallway.

I turned, sternly called to him, then walked up behind him, grabbed him with both arms, and attempted to pull him out of the threshold. It wasn't really working. It was like I had no power of resistance.

But now a son of this man ran up to him and said, "Dad, where have you been?" I now felt like a fool for having tried to stop the man. I had only done so because I wasn't being respected and the rules I had been asked to uphold weren't being respected.

I was now somehow in the kitchen, which was nice, light, airy, and clean. My mom was at the stove, apparently boiling a pot of mussels (?). The steam clung in the air, but it smelled and felt nice. My mom walked to the refrigerator (black and shiny like glass) and opened it as I told her, "I tried to get him to tell me who he was. But he spoke with almost no voice at all and then just kept on walking."

My mom said, "It's okay. He's very understanding. You don't need to worry about having embarrassed anybody."

I saw into a pan in which my mom was frying wide, thin, purplish cuts of sausage with other meats and a lot of green peppers and onions.

I now sensed that this man's wife (!) had arrived, as well as all the other children. The wife was Indian (i.e. from India). The children (maybe three or four of them) were Indian- and Japanese-looking. I was excited to meet them all, because I felt like they were skilled at some kind of mysticism, not consciously, perhaps, but deep down.

They ran around in different rooms. I flew through a dim hallway and into a dim living room. My position was cross-legged, sitting. Dim, cobalt blue light from the dark sky outside poured in through the big window in the living room. The only other light was from some other room, perhaps from the "entry room" or the kitchen. A couple kids and the wife were in the living room. I flew in through the right and flew out through the back, i.e.

Having seen the kids I thought I shouldn't really fly because they might first think I was showing off, and because they might second think I was flying because I guessed, based simply on their racial backgrounds, that they, too, had the ability to fly.

When I got out of the living room I landed. I was in a dark room. I walked into another dark room, the floor of which was littered with JUMP Japanese comic books, all arranged in a horseshoe shape. I think I thumbed through some of these, trying to find an issue that would be interesting to the kids, so I could have something to talk to them about. But I abandoned that idea as well, thinking that their Japanese background didn't exactly mean they'd like manga.

I walked through the hallway and back into the living room. Only the wife was there now. She looked like the mother in Monsoon Wedding, but she also seemed like some kind of businesswoman in her early thirties, American, possibly white, very attractive, with a slight intent to seduce or at least tease me. She was standing and walking in front of the couch, which was an L-shape on a bluish rug on a hardwood floor. (It seems like this apartment was a huge apartment on a high floor in a Manhattan skyscraper.)

The woman came up and asked me, almost furtively, "So... with all that... of yours, then... is that something you're going to keep for real?"

I said, "What of mine? Do you mean then...?" She said, "Yeah, the moving around stuff." (She meant the flying, of course.) She now sat down and was from now on, I think, only like the mother from Monsoon Wedding.

I sat on the floor, flopping my arms up on the couch just to the left of her lap. She told me, "Yeah, we have a friend who practices that stuff. He's even started to make a business out of it, charging people $188.10 to..., so I guess he's..."

She now started crying, not wailing or weeping. Her voice stayed normal, but tears gushed out of her eyes in three, wet, solid streams. She looked forward as she continued speaking, as if preoccupied. I had a feeling she had lost a son.

I asked her if she was alright. She said, "Oh, yes. It's too hot, that's all. Too hot, but it's too cold. I need to change the thermostat."

I got up and walked to the wall with the thermostat. There were two arch-shaped, aluminum bars resting against the wall, stacked against each other. On top of them was a cardboard ad-sign for a thermostat or CD. This confused me at first (!).

When I understood this wasn't the thermostat, I fumbled with the sign to get it out from in front of the thermostat. After I fumbled clumsily for a couple seconds, the wife cluttered up behind me and just grabbed the sign and threw it away.

I looked closely at the thermostat. It was a round one with an orange needle telling what the temperature was set at. By turning the casing, a metallic, pale copper-green plastic, you could move the needle, behind clear plastic, around, to bring the temperature up or down.

I saw that the needle was right at one hundred, which meant that it was neither too hot nor too cold. I showed this to the lady, but she grabbed the thermostat and twisted it. Satisfied she walked back to the couch.

She was incredibly depressed. I wanted to understand who she had lost in her life. I felt like it was a son, who had died in the World Trade Center collapse. But I didn't quite know how to ask her. I did say something. But as she started to respond I woke up.

(10/8/04) litter patrol; dioramas

(No time/place info given. Assuming dreams written at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Trashbag, river, rock bank. Try to throw twice. One across then falls in. Then way down river breaks. "Run" after it. Grab what trash I can. River becomes road. People pick up remaining trash, put in can. I take last item, Wendy's Biggie Shake cup, folks say it was too clean inside it, something else going on.

Now I am looking for something missing? Fly, quickly through building in two different ways. People see me only fly second way. Up and down floors, finally up to 25th (or 26th?) floor, to meeting place of Superiors, who are not good people (?).

Dream 2

Looking at dioramas. "Spend much time," my old high school teacher CP says. Now in other room four displays of one girl's dioramas. Now in first town, tell CP where I was. He begins to tell me about old boys of town. Some kid comes in. CP helps kid. Comes back, now is woman. Tells me about old days in Albuquerque. Crickets. Now only empty places are XXXXX, but rock concerts always there.

(10/9/04) feminine schizophrenic; san mateo ice cream shop; be strong for me; scary giant and sexy twelve-year-old; defending the deformed; charge failed

(Entered in paper journal at 4 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Man with split personality. 120 seconds/100 minutes, brushing leafs off bed.

Dream 2

M (? -- not sure who this could be) tells me to go to corner, gives me partial ride home, streets get weird, I go to ice cream store, piss off girl, fly over flowers.

Dream 3

Drive in car with Mom, brother, and sisters. CD disagreements. Ninja, XXXXX (Redman?), Gay Male. Sister said, How is he successful with that name? I say, I don't know -- Eminem did it. Mom starts to cry. Tell brother to support her. I know not even to touch her.

***

(Daytime paper journal entries.)

I kind of don't even want to write down my dreams today. I left the Ghost Book at home on accident and now feel like Dumbo without a feather. Ha! Emily Dickinson says hope is a thing with feathers, and Dumbo's flying fetish was a feather.

Anyhow, three of my dreams from last night were written in brief (finally!) form there. I can remember two of those three without the Ghost Book and probably would remember the third (actually first) if I could just see the first few words in the Ghost Book. I'll write these "unwritten" ones down first, and if I have time tonight I'll write a fuller account of the first dreams.

Dream 4

I'm not exactly sure where I was. It was strangely like an Asian temple, though it was lit with yellow light, like incandescent light. I think the floors were large stone slabs and the walls were thick plaster (?) with thick, dark, wood columns. The room was tall, empty, and wide. And yet it wasn't a temple. It was something more like an office complex or a place like a business product demo area.

I, with some other workers, had finally cleared everybody out of the place. But for some reason I had to go outside to clear people out of the building as well (?). It was early evening, the light being dark, dim, cobalt blue-grey.

I walked out onto a wide, carved stone patio. At the end of the patio was a four-walled structure of tarp-like fabric supported by aluminum poles. In front of me a wall section had a split which I could fold open to enter the structure. I did so.

Inside was something like a giant. At first I didn't quite understand what it was. It was twenty feet tall -- or at least I "knew" this thing was twenty feet tall. It seemed to be made out of soft, shiny, silky, thin material. It looked like baggy, hoody, male blue jeans, an orange shirt of the same hoody bagginess, and a large, puffy, black afro on top. It was in the far right corner, wandering aimlessly and about to turn toward me.

(HA! just remembered first dream!)

I dropped the fold of fabric and stood back outside the structure. I tried to understand what I was seeing. Obviously it was a man on stilts, right? Just a man with a huge costume around him. But, I tried to assure myself, I'd see that his head was just the same size as mine if I were to look at him again.

I pulled up the fold again and saw the thing now walking toward me. It looked like a large person, not a person, but a living doll of a stereotype of a black man, actually more like a gigantic version of that stupid puny doll in those dumb-ass Sprite ads they used to show before the movies in the theaters.

I saw it, but I also couldn't quite see it. Not that it wasn't there or that it was transparent or translucent or ghostly. Instead, I looked and didn't look, or, ratherm I looked and was so freaked out by seeing a living, twenty-foot-tall humanoid that I couldn't quite "admit" that I saw it.

As it came closer to me my feeling of dread became greater. At last I dropped the fold and ran back into the building, yelling, "ML! ML!"

This time I had to run through two sets of glass doors. ML now came up to me. I told him what I had seen in the structure. He walked out with me to see.

Now twenty people were scattered around in the large area. They were all black, guys and girls, about my age, all in a good mood. They told ML, "We're a bunch of acrobats." (?) "We dress up in these costumes. It's meant to scare people. But they shouldn't act scared. You gotta be pretty cowardly not to see through the illusion."

Now ML and I were helping the folks with something. Now the setting changed. But we were still helping.

We were in a bedroom in a basement. It was a nice, upper-middle-class bedroom, but cluttered and disordered. The walls were lined in dark wood at portions. And in the wood lining things came out like headlights and small cylinders with glass faces and needles against numbered circles, like instruments used to measure humidity or air pressure. But mostly it was the headlights. An Hispanic girl stood up with her back to a corner and faced a column of those headlights.

ML and I knelt to the floor, picking up piles of clothes and junk. As ML stood up to take his load away the girls said, "Well, you may think it's an impossibility, Preemie. But I've read the medical books, and they say that the human body does have an organic system that can support a growth of up to twenty feet."

I felt bad and stupid for having thought that was an impossibility, but I also felt even worse now for having been such a coward in my encounter with the giant.

Now none of us was wearing pants. The Hispanic girl was gone, but there were now two black girls. ML wore plain underwear. I wore white cotton panties, which fit me so loosely they were like an old man's briefs. One girl, young, wore navy blue panties with pink horizontal stripes. Another girl, about my age, wore stonewashed-like, denim-like panties.

The younger girl was thin and pretty. I honestly couldn't tell her age. She may have been seventeen, she may have been twelve. But I liked her a lot. But she liked ML, I was pretty sure. Not that ML would have done anything with her, as he respected the fact that she was a minor.

Now they both walked out of the room, up a dark, short hallway, up a small flight of stairs, and up a long, dark hallway. As they did I followed the girl. Her bottom was so tight and nice and her legs and back so thin, even through her dark blue sweater, that I wanted her in quite an animal way.

I told the girl at some point, "Your panties are cute." But she didn't hear me. It was like I wasn't quite in the same place as she and ML. Now I realized if either ML or the girl saw how I lusted after the girl they'd think and talk badly about me, if not actually turn me into the authorities for being sexually attracted to a minor.

So I quickly turned around and rushed back to the basement bedroom, to the girl who was my age. She was fattish, not too pretty, and a little dull. Her panties hung as loosely to her body as mine did to mine. She was at a tall dresser, playing with some clothes in one of the top drawers. She turned to me and asked me something, but I really have no idea what it was. I had lost all sexual desire and now sat on the floor, not paying attention to much of anything.

Dream 5

I was in a grey, small, old-timey office, like an office you'd see in a 1980s version of a 1950s-style detective movie. I don't know if I was there, but I saw the door of the office, as if I were inside. The door had one of those translucent windows of jangled plastic that distorted everything and made it all misty and vague, just watery shapes and color and movement.

"Someone" said, "He'll be coming in here to make the delivery. When he does, XXXXX." (Something like, "Don't let him in?") "He's XXXXX." (Green, mottled, deformed, XXXXX.) This series of adjectives was used regularly, like a cliche, to describe this certain kind of deformed person. I was slightly afraid to see the person.

Now the person came quickly toward the door. He wore a beautiful business suit, purplish grey and blue, I think. But his entire body, including his face, was, I could see, even through the door-window's distorting plastic, as if it cleared its wrinkles (yet kept its fogginess) just for him, wrinkled and mottled and bent and deformed, as if the man had been through a horrible, flaying fire. The man only had a tuft of hair on his sloping head. His eyes, though almost unseen for the shadow of his brow, were bright green.

The man sensed as he stood by the door that I in my terrible fright was chanting to myself the cliched string of adjectives. His whole face filled with an awful anguish. He stepped backward about thirty feet, to an elevator bank. I could see all of this clearly, as if seeing through the door. He fell back and half sat, crumpled in depression.

He now burst out moans through pursed lips, as if trying to stop a flood of complete, unstoppable despair. I thought to myself, How can anybody ever help him?

And now, two more of these deformed men came rushing down the hallway. They wore green jumpsuits, like they were movers or people who brought refrigerators to houses. In fact they had come to bring some equipment to this floor.

Seeing the other man moaning by the elevator bank, the men stopped their cheerful conversation. They immediately knew what had happened. They both bolted toward my door.

One of them, in a beautiful, clear, manly voice, shouted out the cliched string of adjectives and said, "You wanna call people that, eh? You think it's fun to hurt people that way, do you? Well some of us won't take it!"

And with that they bolted through the door.

Dream 6

I grabbed my phone off the dresser. It was plugged into the charger. I pulled the cord out of the wall. The phone made a dismal, low-toned beep. I looked at the LCD screen. It said "Charge Failed." I plugged the cord back in. The LCD screen lit up for a second, then low-toned again, went off, and said "Charge Failed."

I thought to myself, Christ. I cannot have this cord fail me now, now that I'm heading back to New York City tomorrow. I need the phone to be fully charged for my train trip.

Dream 1

I was in a place like a workshop. It was dim, kind of old-looking, like a wood carver's shop. There were a few old men at some counters like science lab counters. There were also beds everywhere. The old men were like mild-mannered mechanics or electricians. They kind of exchanged some rude jokes with each other, but basically were rather kind, though always cheerful.

Every once in a while some young men and women would show up. The old men kind of regarded me suspiciously, as if they sensed that I thought myself better than they.

At one point an old man came in. He was one of the regulars. But he wasn't quite sane. At first he spoke in a weird voice, high-pitched, almost like a male trying to sound female, but crackly, like he had a scorched, wrecked throat. I could sense he thought he was a female.

I looked to see him: a tallish, bellied, balding, wrinkly man, in a wide, pale blue, button-down sports shirt with two wide, white vertical stripes and a pair of pale, loose, denim slacks.

I was unsettled by this man. Even his wide, watery, blue eyes seemed masculine. But he so violently thought that he was feminine.

The old men all chuckled among themselves as they watched my reaction to the man. They said of me, "Look at him now. He's afraid of one of our best friends."

The man sat on a bed beside the two beds (right together) that I sat on. He continued speaking in the high voice and then suddenly spoke regularly.

Now one of the old men indirectly let me know, "Our friend has a split personality. He can't control it. But it doesn't mess things up for him, and it makes neither him nor us uncomfortable."

But they all, sensing my discomfort, decided to tease me anyway. The man even pretended to be the high-voiced personality again, just to upset me. But I ignored him. There were some dried leafs on my bed. I worried about them and brushed them as well as I could into the minuscule crack between the two beds.

But now the man became quite serious (I can't remember why). He said, "Isn't it interesting how one hundred seconds can seem like one hundred twenty minutes when you reflect upon it a while later?"

I understood this, somehow, to be a schizophrenic kind of statement. But I also felt a degree of truth to it, which matched my own personal experience. I told him something of my own experience, to let him know I agreed. But I wasn't quite telling him. I was kind of telling someone like my friend R, who stood a ways away, knowing that "R" seemed to have much better communication with this old man.

Dream 2

I really can't remember the beginning. But I was now getting a ride home from the Balloon Fiesta. It had been my second night of work. My co-worker M and her husband were going to drive me home.

But somehow the streets all got messed up. They seemed to curve around and shift their curves even as we drove on them, like they were snakes. Now even the fences grew up out of the ground, restricting our movements and leading us into dark alleys.

Thinking it would make things easier, I just had M and her husband drop me off on the roadside. Apparently this was San Mateo. They drove off.

I walked through a tangled area of old fence and up some ditch-like hill and across a street to a very small yet classy strip mall. the only store open this late at night was an ice cream store.

I don't know for sure but I think that even though I didn't see them, M and her husband were also in the store. I was afraid at first to go in because I didn't want them to see me and think that I just hadn't wanted to ride with them. But I went in anyway.

The place was a mess, not dirty, but filled with counters, machinery, and all kinds of store items and food. I went to a bar that had trays of ice cream and ginger snap cookies. This was the free samples bar. I was so hungry from not having eaten all day that I took a free sample of a ginger snap cookie and some white ice cream with mini M&Ms in it. The ice cream might have been colored a cinnamon-tan.

As I walked out the door a lady behind the counter said, "Aren't you going to buy something?" I said, "No. I just came in for a free sample. I was just a little hungry." I could hear her disgust.

I walked outside, down a small lawn, and onto a parking lot, thinking, Well, crap! I've bought things here before, haven't I? So why does she think I'm a cheapskate?

Dream 3

Don't remember beginning. It was daytime. I was in a car with my mom, brother, and sister. I don't know or remember where we were. But it was pretty much like downtown Denver and Albuquerque rolled into one. The buildings were all a pale, soothing, tan concrete or stucco.

My mom drove along. At some point we stopped. My mom was upset. She got out of the car. My sister showed me two checks our dad had given her. My mom was upset about this. There had been some argument, in which my sister had made my mom feel pretty stupid, in the car.

We were now on our way to the movie theater. My mom, to calm down, put some music on. She asked me if I liked it.

Annoyed beyond belief, I yelled, "No! It sucks! Take this shit off!" She did. I could tell my mom had now been pushed too far. She was hideously depressed but terribly silent.

We drove (along a sidewalk?, like the concrete path in between the De Vargas Center shopping mall proper and the Albertsons in Santa Fe, even with the stucco arch between the two buildings, although the place felt classier and more full of shops, all of which were trendy).

As we drove I asked my sister what kind of music she liked. I asked her about a particular style or group, which I can't remember now.

She said, "Oh, no, I can't stand that. But I like rap, like XXXXX, XXXXX," (Redman?) "and Gay Male." (?) "Gay Male's pretty cool. But I always wondered, how is he so successful with a name like that?"

I said, jokingly, thought I didn't exactly know why it was a joke, "Well, Eminem didn't name himself Gay Male, but he certainly did the Gay Male thing for a while, and he was incredibly successful." My sister laughed.

We were all now, somehow, walking along the concrete path, the left (i.e. "Albertsons") side of which was actually a movie theater, like the Century Rio, with poster cases, all of which were jet black and glossy, solid, with no posters inside, apparently.

We came to a little niche in the wall. My mom crumpled against it. we were right by the glass doors into the theater. My mom was trembling, about to burst into tears.

My sister said, "Oh, God, I knew Mom was upset about these checks. But she was just holding it all in. I hate seeing this."

My mom squinted her eyes till they were pools of black shadow, and opened her mouth narrowly to match the watery anguish in her eyes. Her breath quivered, trembled, heaved, shook. She clenched her fists and her arm trembled stiffly.

Finally it all shook loose. She bellowed to my brother, "Please. Stand in front of me. Be strong for me. Don't leave me. I'm about to collapse. Please. Grow up for me and be stable for me. Everybody else has -- !"

She now melted into profuse tears. My brother stood in front of her. He held her.

I walked up to my mom. I wanted to touch her, even just touch her right arm, to let her know I loved her. But I knew that what I had done to her was so bad that if I even touched her she would fall apart and act violently toward me.

So I just stood there. And yet, even as I stood there feeling hideous, I also felt like this was just a desperate ploy by my mother to keep me here at home instead of going back to XXXXX.