(10/25/04) can't karaoke money; don't want to fly

(Entered in paper journal at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in some place in which a set was put up for lighting or filming a rock band. It feels like the lonely corner of some larger area. I was with a couple other guys at first. They now headed off somewhere.

I felt like I hadn't done a great job singing. There was one other guy. He may have been behind a TV camera or film camera, but he also controlled some kind of karaoke-like background music machine.

The guy played a song he thought I'd be really familiar with, "Money," by Pink Floyd. I couldn't remember either the verses or the order of the verses. So the man "had" a computer "turned on" at the back of this little set. I sat down at it, turned on the internet, and searched for the lyrics to "Money."

The screen was always blue and blank, I think. The first "page" I "pulled up" was some kind of prose poem on money that appeared to have been written in Vietnamese, though it was actually, apparently, in English.

I tried to get to the correct web page, but I could hear the song continuing, getting closer to ending. I knew the other guys off in some other area would still think I was an idiot. I may even have been lamely mumbling the tune.

Dream 2

I was in something like an old plane yard with my mom, my grandpa, and a host of older, unidentified people. It was a desert area with brownish tan ground broken by small islands of green grass.

There seemed to be freight cars everywhere, too, as if we were in a maze of freighters. Some freighters were modern. Others were futuristic, grey, smooth, dull, almost plastic. Yet all of them had apparently been abandoned some time ago. Now they were used as storage areas for small, one-person, high-speed jets.

My grandpa was taking us all here so I could "fly the jet once again." I don't know if anybody else would fly.

Now I "remembered" myself having flown the jet, somehow with my brother. We were high above the green, rippled earth. We did some twirls and flips, which I "remembered" as if I were outside of and above the jet, which may have had no wings. We then descended sharply down toward the ground.

I "remembered" having been afraid but also that everything turned out fine (?). But in between "then" and "now" something horrendous happened that made me afraid of flying the jets, as if this very "memory" of my brother and I would be somewhat duplicated, except this time with a tragic ending.

I didn't tell anybody that I was afraid. I just kept hoping that something would go wrong before I had to start flying.

We got to my grandpa's "lot," which looked something like a towering coffee machine made of freighter metal and futuristic plastic. On the "burner" was a greenish, wooden box as large as a freighter. In this box was my grandpa's jet, as well as a box of small items that needed to be applied to the jet to make it work.

My grandpa went into the wooden freighter and brought out the box of small items, sitting it on some pile of wood nearby. The wooden freight car had been neglected. It and the small box were now housing for mice. The small box was full of hay as well as the large, plastic baggies full of small items. There may also have been huge wads of white stuffing or cotton.

Many of the unidentified folks went off to a similar structure across the way from ours. My mom had both wandered off aimlessly and stayed by side. My grandpa had apparently gone back into the wooden freight car to pull out the jet.

I looked through the baggies, hoping something would be missing. Almost everything was clear plastic, like small, plastic, magnifying glasses. There were also black plastic, half-conical magnifiers, like jewelers' eyepieces. All these things were to be applied to the jet.

But at last I found something, or rather it may have been my grandpa who found it, to be missing. A pair of eyeglasses, similar to the ones I wear, were supposedly broken and missing a lens (although, remembering them now, they seem to have been whole, just a little tattered).

My mom now stood behind me. My grandpa was hurrying back into the wooden freight car. He said, "You can't go flying without the glasses. You won't be able to see quickly enough. Dammit. I'll go look for the other lens. But I doubt I'll find it."

I was relieved but also a little regretful.