(1/6/15) you kept me on the outside on purpose

(Entered in paper journal at 6:35 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I watched some yellow-sepia-toned scene of a sword fight in an eighteenth century house in what was supposedly the movie Anchorman. Will Ferrell fought Owen Wilson, who, possibly unlike Ferrell, was in an old military outfit.

I thought this scene would tickle my friend R, given its incongruity with the rest of the movie and the simple fact that there was a silly sword fight. But something else I forget now, too -- some very humorous nuances to the fight scene.

I showed this movie to my R in a dining room, possibly the same dining room in the movie. He talked and talked through the whole movie and hardly even looked at the movie screen (I also can't remember exactly where the movie screen was.)

But when we got to the sword fight scene I told him, "Look. This is what I thought you'd think was funny."

He looked at the "screen" and laughed, "Ha! Ha! A sword fight! This is great!" Then he went back to talking and talking and ignoring the movie. He didn't even pay attention to the humorous sword movements I was hoping he'd pay attention to.

There was another scene, which seemed to be projected more obscurely somewhere else, like beneath the bottom of a cupboard hanging from a ceiling. Oddly, this kitchen space might have been the scene from the movie. In this scene, Will Ferrell was drunk and all gnarled up and sweating. He wore a bathrobe. Jennifer Connelly stood right beside him, listening to his slow, depressed, depressing ramblings.

When I think of it, I couldn't even hear what R was saying. All I know is that he distracted me and he wouldn't pay attention himself.

We were now in a movie theater that was maybe twice the size of a normal AMC 25 stadium theater. The light was on and warm. The seating was maybe only one-tenth filled. The seats were all a warm, tan brown. R's girlfriend L was with us. Possibly the movie had ended. But it seems like we were also waiting for a movie to start. I had to get up to do something. I left a bunch of stuff on my seat.

Now I had done whatever it was I had gone to do -- I don't remember what it was. But now I was walking through the hallways to the theaters again. I saw a door to a theater showing a movie I had really wanted to see. There was no title on the title display over the door -- instead, there was just some strange, jungle-like border. I thought that border would mislead people into thinking the movie playing was Jurassic Park. (The movie may actually have been some movie about Vietnamese kids.)

I decided to sneak into the movie. I looked around to make sure nobody was watching before I pulled open the thick but light door and walked in. Since there had been no title on the display, I kind of figured the movie had already started. But when I went in everybody was still waiting for the movie.

All the people in the theater were dressed nicely. Some looked like professors. Others looked like students. It seemed like this was going to be a panel-lecture or symposium rather than a movie.

I jumped down some steps from the top of an aisle staircase. I thought that instead of going down the steps one step at a time, it would be easier to jump out far enough that you begin to float and descend only slightly, keeping your trajectory such that the slope of your descent is less than the slope of the staircase. In this way, I thought to myself, I have mastered flight. But I have not yet mastered flight beyond the floating and slight descent.

I floated over the heads of the audience. I thought to myself, If only they knew how easy this is. I'm hardly breaking any physical laws at all.

But I was floating over to a ticket man. He was dressed up nicely. I keep seeing the sign like the Ancient Egyptian crook hieroglyph

in relation to the ticket man.

He asked me if I had a ticket. I said something like "Come on. I was just sampling a few minutes. The movie hasn't even started. I probably wouldn't have been able to see any of it. I have to get to my own movie, where all of my stuff is."

Now we were at the back and top of the theater. Two other folks were there with us. One looked like some nondescript ticket man in a blue uniform with white fringes. The other was a pretty woman in her late thirties or early forties and in a very nice business suit. She told me I wasn't taking this situation seriously enough and that I could find myself in a lot of trouble, maybe even with jail time.

I'd had enough of her talk. I jumped in the air about seven or eight feet. I darted down, grabbed her head with both hands, and, still floating, I pressed my thumbs into her eyes. I didn't press her eyes out. I just wanted to show her that I could if she didn't shut up. I descended, happy, yet also afraid that what I had just done could get me in more trouble.

The woman moaned and screamed something like, "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what I can do to you?" She was really about to start tearing into me.

I jumped up again. This time I descended on her, even as she continued prattling, and gouged my thumbs into her eyes entirely. But her eyes wouldn't come out, or they wouldn't seem to have come out. I took my thumb away from the sockets a couple times. There were nothing but bloody holes. But at the same time the eyes were still there. I even told myself so.

Now some voice said, "Wait! The possessive demon is here."

The lights all went out. A big, grey box or hollow, plastic cube spun toward and against the back wall. There was a priest somewhere. I could also see or sense that the demon was the little girl from The Exorcist. She may have been there, but now she "suddenly disappeared." The voice said, "It's seeking a body."

Now the ticket woman disappeared and reappeared behind the box, possessed by and half looking like the demon. She growled loudly at me, "You thought you'd overpower me? Now look at all the powers I have! You'll wish you were dead!"

I was standing outside a bar with a dog, possibly R's dog, on a leash that I held. It was a clear, winter day. The door was a little half-hexagon intruding in at the right of the front full-wall window. R was inside, talking to one of his friends. I was watching the dog.

A guy came out behind me: short, stout, rough looking, old, with stubbly, grey and dark grey hair. He stood, actually huddled aggressively, behind me and against my shoulders, possibly hoping to move me as I stared into the window wall. All the time the man spoke with a silent, unseen friend about publishing some new book.

Now I was walking into another bar with R. It was bigger and more like a restaurant. It was also rather empty, as if closed, except for a bartender behind the bar a little way off.

R told me something like, "I'm sorry I was in there for so long. I just got caught up in this conversation, you would have found it really fascinating, with Chuck Bassey." (Chuck Bassey was apparently a really famous person.) "And then his son Bobby Bassey came in."

I knew R knew I liked Chuck and Bobby Bassey, and I got really angry that he hadn't invited me in once he'd started talking with them. I had either  a glass bottle or a metal can in my hand. I began tapping it against R as if I meant to hit him with it.

I told R, "You kept me outside the bar because you didn't want me to impress those people more than you impressed them. You wanted to have something to brag about to make me jealous. That's why you didn't come and get me."

R said, "No. I just know... you don't like those pretentious bar situations."

I said, "Bullshit! It was Chuck Bassey, R! You know how much I like him! You could have just said, 'Come inside for a second, Preemie.' But you didn't. You kept me on the outside, on purpose. I'm not going to pretend like you're innocent of this stuff anymore."

The conversation seemed to stop as we passed in front of the bar and bartender. There was a row of booths, all wood, with a side wall barrier between them and the walkway in front of the bar, which walkway also served as the entrance, exit, and cashier line. A couple people had funneled in now. R was a little bit off in the distance.

I wanted to test my "flying skill." I jumped and hovered in a jump-sidekick position. I hovered in a wobbly way just over the four-and-a-half-foot-tall side wall barrier and landed, still wobbly. A couple people had been standing around, talking. I thought, If I fought them I couldn't use the flying techniques. That's cheating.

I tested my regular jump-sidekick over the barrier but didn't kick until my feet had almost landed back on the ground. I landed by a businessman who pointed to the ground, implying I hadn't done a good job. I went to try it again. A couple people were talking about the challenges of getting height and distance on jump-sidekicks. I tried again and did a slightly better, at least passable, kick.