(10/12/04) stones and pumpkins; the wrong mexican restaurant

(No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

It was night. I stood on some patio-like, concrete square that was in bad condition at the edge of a backyard. Smallish, weedy vegetation grew all around it. There were electric lights like stadium lights from somewhere.

I stood with my "cousin PS" (who may have looked like Mick Jagger) and "another kid," who looked like Keith Richards. We were trying to write a song. I kept poking "Keith" in the sternum with the fingertips of my right hand.

"Keith" or somebody (we all had guitars and there seemed to be four or five of us) began playing chords to which I thought out, somewhat by trial and error, a riff for a song. All I remember of it now is that it had five notes, which all sounded the same except one that bent upward.

I now stood at the other end of the concrete square, a much more wrecked end. "My cousin PS" was now much more like my cousin PS. He and his friends had a jack-o-lantern, which they were preparing to kick into the next yard. I told them not to, as they might get in trouble. Then I myself (?) did it, watching the pumpkin loose an orange trail after itself as it rose sharply then descended sharply into the other yard. It might possibly have been ready to explode.

Dream 2

Can't remember beginning. Now I, my grandma J, and my brother were at a place that was supposed to be Pancho's Mexican Buffet in Albuquerque. We were all waiting for my grandpa. The fact that he hadn't showed up yet meant he was in physical trouble.

We sat at a table the seating of which was booth-seating on one side and chairs on the other. My grandma sat opposite me, in the booth. My brother sat in the chair to my right. The buffet was off some vague but close distance to my left. We all had somewhat large plates of food. I fumbled around with mine, discovering some rice under an enchilada or tamale.

We spoke vaguely about my grandpa, becoming increasingly worried about him, until he suddenly showed up. And now it was as if he had been there all along, in my grandma's spot, and my grandma in the spot to the left of my grandpa.

We were all drinking beers. My grandpa was trying to tell us of another Mexican restaurant he'd been to in Albuquerque that had better food than this one, but was lit dimly.

My brother said, "Oh, it was Chihuahua's." But my grandpa said no. There was a slight argument and a slight rise in tension, during which time I felt a little sick. Then somehow my grandpa became a lot more conciliatory, though now apparently neither of them knew which restaurant my grandpa was referring to.

(2/22/05) distorting the rolling stones; planetree and buildings

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

Dream 1

I was working on some photograph of the "Rolling Stones" standing on a dirt (?) road in a brightly yellow-green stand of trees. The photograph was probably on a television screen, although the screen worked like it was attached to computer equipment.

All four "Stones" looked normal, none really drawing attention to himself. In fact, the only one whose face even looked recognizable was Mick Jagger. I had gotten word, though, that Mick wanted the picture changed, as he felt he stood out too much from everyone else. So I was now working on the photo.

A couple people with me were getting bored -- I had come up with no ideas. They both got up to leave. Suddenly I got the idea to bend everybody's image out of shape and digitally alter their facial features. But I would leave Mick alone and let him sink into the background.

I drew rhomboid (?) polygons around the other three band members. The polygons stretched up into the trees in the image. I then enlarged the band members' bodies, especially their heads, into the entirety of the polygons. I and the two people beside me were entertained by this process -- each enlargement seemed to match the respective band member's personality.

I now started to work on the far left band member (Mick Taylor?), who looked like a long-faced biker balding on the forehead and with smoky blue-tinted eyeglasses. I added these rug-like, pale tan, almost paint-like, coils and mounds of hair on his head.

The people said, "Okay. That looks great so far. But we should really go get some lunch."

I wanted to save what I had because I knew I'd forget it. So I took a videotape and fast-forwarded though it to get to a part I could save on. There was a movie on the tape, but right in the middle of the movie was a blank spot just long enough to store all the information on the photograph. Fast forwarding through the movie, I became interested in it. I pressed play.

It was night in the movie. There was smoke everywhere, lit up yellow and orange and tan and purple and grey. There was a fallen water tower and frames of fire-gutted suburban houses.

I was now in the movie. A house was burning. A white woman with deep, black eyes, pale skin, and short, silky hair, and wearing a white t-shirt and white pants, stood by a car. She was accusing me of having made things bad between her and her lover. I may actually have done this.

I was slightly afraid of the woman. But I also didn't really care. I thought she might use her husband's or her own social position against me.

She walked away. I now saw her half-smashed by some fallen roof beams. I thought she was on the brink of death. There was a ton of blood, somewhere, but nowhere that I could see on her clothes. I was scared and disgusted.

I may have offered help. The woman looked up at me and told me to leave her alone. She was still going to look for "him." She couldn't stand. Her legs were smashed. I watched her pull herself away, slither down the street.

I thought, Doesn't she know she might die before she reaches "him?" She barely stands a chance!

Dream 2

I stood before a beige-yellow-painted building that stood directly beside a red-brick-colored concrete building. The yellow-painted building took up most of my view. The red building maybe occupied the very left one-fifth.

The yellow-beige building glowed softly in soft daylight. there was a white, white-framed door in the center, at the top of a concrete "double ramp" of three-steps on each side. Possibly three square, white-framed windows line out to the left.

A London planetree branch hung low out left, just above the row of small, square windows. The limb was smooth and fairly even, though dotted all along with sprays of branches and buzzy-backlit seed balls, almost like a quaintly decorative wreath. I may have caught a glimpse or shadow of a smaller, thinner, more vertical, mottled tree in front of the red building.

I told myself to remember this vision -- like I was awake and out on the street!

(9/21/07) mick jagger: ice cream bully

(Entered in paper journal at 7:30 AM at Starbucks on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I may have been standing out on a lawn with a group of people. We'd finished working on some long project, which had apparently been physical, but which I then remembered as having been something like preparing for a court trial. It was like we were a jury and we had been preparing for the trial by finding the evidence ourselves.

Now either the trial was over or the evidence finding part of the trial was over and the trial was beginning. we were all relieved. This had been one of the longest times it had ever taken to find evidence. But one of us said, "Isn't there a group on the other side of the earth that has taken an even longer time?"

Our leader, a woman, said, "There is." I saw, for a moment, a photo of a group of Latin American people, mostly men, mostly wearing soccer jerseys, like soccer fans, on a sunny day out on a field like ours. The woman continued, "I'm planning on giving the people on the other side of the earth a congratulatory call and see how their trial is going right now."

We were all in a room. In the next room our trial was getting ready. The next room was dark wood, with some kind of a counter like a breakfast bar and then a kitchen area behind that. In front of the bar was the place where the jury sat. It was like a rubber doormat on a heavy, yellow, metal or plastic platform that shifted left to right as if it were on ball bearings. We could lay on the platform and watch the proceedings (in the kitchen area) as if we were watching TV.

The trial was about the murder of a little girl. The murderers might have been the little girl's parents. But at some point the trial became just a discussion of some industry, and we were all waiting around to hear one particular data point about the industry.

At some point I got bored. I walked out. I came back in just a second or two later, but the data point had already been said. My co-worker CJ had gotten it.

I now sat with a group of women right before the bar. A man who looked like Mick Jagger saw in the kitchen area. He kept handing us ice cream, sundaes, and hot fudge. The girls would eat the stuff. I kept thinking about eating it, but I didn't want to eat right now because I was scheduled to eat somewhere else shortly.

I thought, Perhaps when I go out to eat, I can by myself a sundae, maybe even a Peanut Buster Parfait. But I thought I probably wouldn't do that because that would be too many calories.

But now Mick Jagger became a lot more bullying. He insisted that I eat some of the ice cream. He even put a bowl of hot fudge in front of me and told me to eat that. He then sang a song about how I was in deep trouble if I didn't do everything he told me.

(2/25/09) fort holland; afraid of museum displays; pizza panic

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A woman and I had been co-pilots, possibly in a fighter jet. The jet had crashed. The woman had died, while I may have lived. I thought back to the event and wondered how I could have done things differently so the woman could have survived.

I now saw the event again, as if it were just happening. Our jet (definitely a fighter jet now, like an F-16 (?)) crashed into blackish water. The sky was black, or rather a blackish green-blue, but for some reason it didn't feel like night, and the jet was perfectly visible (as if I were looking at myself in the jet from a point in front of the jet) as if lit, not by daylight, but as if in a cartoon.

The woman (although I feel like an F-16 is just a one-seater) sat in the backseat. She was hunched over, but I was pretty sure she was still alive. We wore yellowish-tan uniforms with white sleeves and white helmets.

Our jet had reached a snowy shore. The snow was still falling. I knew we were near an American Air Force base called Fort Holland. I could see a snow-covered sign on a stick saying Fort Holland and some other things (this view was also very cartoon-like).

Our cabin hatch was open -- it had been open all along. I called out, disappointed, like a spoiled kid, "Only Fort Holland?" as if after all our trouble we had only made it this far along.

We now walked from the shore, along a wide valley, and then up a slope, which was between two slightly steeper and taller slopes. I walked in front and led the woman, as if I were pulling her by means of a closed but unfurled parachute. The parachute may have been orange with white bordering.

The woman seemed injured, doubled-over, as if her stomach were in great pain. She hardly seemed alive. In some ways, she also looked like a cartoon, like Jun from the anime Gatchaman.

I knew the base was just over the slope. I saw, as if from very high in the air, the base -- two cartoony, cabin-like structures and possibly a couple other small structures, all broadly spaced in the snow.

On the other side of the hills I now saw myself, although instead of pulling the woman along with the parachute, I was now pulling the entire jet with it -- possibly with the woman inside.

Dream #2

I was in a hallway of some building like an airport or a convention center. The floors were tight, shallow, brown carpet. The wall to my left may have been grey. The wall to my right was a window wall, which opened to a pale blue sky all the way down the hallway.

A group of people (probably like a group of kids and volunteers, with some official-looking people, like airline pilots) and I stood at the top of a small set of escalators and stairs. The escalators were supposed to be a fun kind of ride (like the sledding hill at the Winter Jam festival which had taken place in New York City at the beginning of 2009). I couldn't see how this was supposed to be fun, but I acted like it was, anyway. I saw all of us as if I were viewing from a point at the bottom of the escalators. Now it was my turn to go. I (walked? ran? slid?) down the escalator.

I was now in a big room like an animal display room in a museum of natural history (a lot like the African animals display room had been at the Denver Museum of Natural History when I was a kid). The walls were black, and big windows revealed displays. The place was maze-like, almost cavernous. The light was all dim red, like the lighting in the cages for nocturnal animals in zoos. I was all alone.

I now realized that many animals there were standing outside their displays. I may not have noticed this until I turned to look over my left shoulder and saw, in a room slightly separated from the room I was in by walls a little offset from one another, a buffalo, in a reclining position, with its head turned so that it appeared to be looking straight at me.

I suddenly had the feeling that these animals could become alive again at any moment. The buffalo looked huge, even in a reclining position. I didn't want it to become alive again to charge me. I decided to walk out of its sight. But the more I looked around the more I saw all kinds of animals out of their displays. I walked into another room, which seemed to be all displays of animals in the room, i.e. not in a diorama set into the walls. I hurried through the room, not wanting the animals suddenly to come alive and see me there.

Now I was just trying to find a way out of this place, or at least to find other poeple to be with. But I was also getting more interested in some of these animals. They weren't all identifiable. Some of them looked rather alien.

I saw another buffalo, which was posed (?) before a display, as if it were looking at the display, except that it had its head turned so it appeared to be looking at me. Another animal, which had the coat, and maybe even the face, of a koala bear, but which had the body of a small wildcat, and had ears wide enough almost to make an entire cone around the back of the animal's head, stood in the threshold between rooms, almost blocking my way to the next room.

As I walked through the next room, I saw, far in the distance to my left, a humanoid figure, as if it had been pinned against the wall. Its skin was pink and white, like the meat of a crab, or the scales of a large goldfish. It was tall and muscular. Its head was powerful. It had pale green (?) eyes. Around its head extended a flap of skin, like the lower body of an octopus, except without extending into legs. This flap of skin was also expanded and pinned to the wall. I thought that this was the creature most likely to come alive and attack me.

I really hurried now to get somewhere familiar. I heard voices behind me, coming from a space to my right, as if there were a small, dark hallway at the end of which were two middle-aged women, something like curators or librarians for the museum, speaking mildly about some plans they had for an exhibit or something else that needed to be organized. I felt very reassured when I heard them talking, more like I was suddenly re-connected with reality.

I caught a glimpse of daylight to my right -- daylight reflected off the plexiglass of some of the display cases. The displays all now seemed to be of astronomical or geological objects. They largely seemed to be photos, or mock-up photo-models of things like nebulae or galaxies or asteroids.

I now saw the exit. I walked leisurely to it -- I was now kind of disappointed in myself for not having been able to keep calm while I walked through all the displays of the strange animals.

Dream #3

I was in a conference room with a group of people. The conference room was long and narrow, with drab, beige-yellowish-tan (beige-olive?) walls and drab, fluorescent lighting. There was a group of people about my age or a little younger, all in dress suits, standing by a long cabinet, possibly grabbing paper plates, napkins, etc.

I was laying out a table full of pizzas. There were all kinds of pizza, but three boxes of pepperoni pizza looked particularly fresh and good. I was apparently on the same level as all the people in the room, but I had ordered the pizzas and was laying them out, as if I were the assistant to all the people.

There may have been an attitude on the part of all the people, as if I had only gotten the usual selection of pizzas, instead of getting anything new and unusual. I was also now disappointed, and I wondered if I hadn't done it on purpose -- the pepperoni pizzas looked so good; perhaps I had ordered more of those because I wanted good pepperoni pizza like that so bad.

Now some other group of people brought in three boxes of pizza. They looked like business people, probably older and farther along in their careers than the people in this room. At first I thought they were bringing fresh pizzas. I laid them out. The table was completely full with pizza boxes. People were now taking pizza. I called out to everybody, as I looked at the new pizzas, that the pizzas the other people had brought in were new and unique, if anybody wanted to try those out.

One of the pizzas seemed to be topped entirely with green stuff like spinach. Another seemed to be topped entirely with ground sausage, possibly having no sauce and just a tiny bit of cheese holding the sausage together. I can't remember the third box.

But when I looked at these three boxes, I realized the pizza was all cold, as if it were already a couple hours old. The pizzas weren't full -- they were all three missing at least a couple slices. The people who had brought them in now said, "We just got out of our meeting and thought you guys might be hungry, so we brought these pizzas in."

I was panicked. I thought, First my co-workers thought I was an idiot for not having ordered a good enough selection of pizza. Now they'll think I'm an idiot for having all my selection be stale!

I called out to everybody, "Guys, these pizzas are cold. But they're different, f you want that. And the pieces we have are untouched. They haven't been tampered with."

But now one of the people to my left (he may have looked like my co-worker DE) opened one of the new boxes, as if I hadn't opened them all. He pulled out a crust that somebody had thrown back into the box after having eaten the rest of the slice of pizza. The person (DE?) said, "Look at this. This doesn't look untouched!"

Now a woman to my right (and she may actually have been one of the group who had brought the new pizzas in) pulled a crust out of the box next to her. She told DE, "I know. I don't think we should eat anything out of these boxes." She said this in a tone implying I had done a really lousy job by suggesting anybody should eat these pizzas.

Again I called out to everybody, "The pepperoni pizzas are extremely fresh, and they look really good, if anybody wants to try those."

Whatever meeting these guys were all going to have was probably about to start. A couple of guys said, as if to imply that I should also be heading out now, "Why don't you grab some pizza, man?"

I thought I'd really like some of the pepperoni pizza, but I also thought it was a little too early in the day to eat pizza. So I just laughed a little and headed out of the room.

I walked down a long, narrow hallway and was in a weird room. It was just as drab as the conference room had been. It didn't look like it was any kind of room in particular. I took care of some kind of business somewhere.

Some time had passed. I now thought I should go pick up some pizza before the next meeting (the "lunch meeting?") started. I walked down the hallway and saw through the window of the conference room. All the pizza was now cold, but it still looked delicious to me. But for some reason, I still decided that it was too early for me to have pizza.

I turned around quickly and headed back to a desk, which was "like a receptionist's desk" (even thought it was just a dumpy, flimsy, standard work desk) at the upper right corner of the weird room, before the room turned into another sterile hallway.

I was now busily doing some nothing-work, possibly having something to do with a roll of (duct?) tape. I was scurrying through this work, as if I thought it would help me forget my appetite for pizza.

Some older man walked up from the hallway to my right, standing in front of and just to the left of my desk. I kept scurrying through my work, thinking the man would be really proud of me for staying so busy that I didn't want to eat pizza.

But now the man called down the hallway behind me, i.e. to the conference room. I looked up at the old  man as he continued a conversation with a man down the hallway. The man before me looked like Mick Jagger, except that he was about thirty pounds heavier. He looked about the same age as Mick Jagger (which would leave me to believe this man was in his mid-fifties (his mid-fifties???)). He wore a dull blue, long-sleeved, casual shirt, which showed a slightly round belly, and slightly aged blue jeans. His hair was about jaw-length, red-brown. He sounded very American, not British, almost like JH, a boss of mine from a National Park in New Mexico where I'd been part of an Americorps program.

The two men continued a quick conversation about the details for the meeting. I could tell that the guy before me thought I was cool, like someone from his "good old days," and that he wanted to strike up a conversation with me. But, for some reason, I was so upset by how out of shape the man looked that I didn't want to talk to him -- I didn't want any of his slackness to influence me.

But I also felt like I should talk to the man, to remind him of his "good old days." I felt sad. I could see the man in his younger days, and I thought he must have looked really cool. I thought it would be really nice if I could humar the man into thinking that he was that cool once again.