(Entered in dream journal at 8:09 AM at my friend R's house.)
Dream 1
I was in a double-decker bus. A man had been driving it, taking me and my (sister/friend AL) somewhere where we would "receive instructions." We drove down side roads very much like in Lakewood, Colorado. The man got out and went to a car. We would meet him at a restaurant. My sister/AL drove. The road was very much like Wadsworth Boulevard in Denver, going south from Colfax.
I was happy. I thought we were going to make it. But my sister drove erratically, and we ended up meandering uncontrollably in a big, grassy lot by the road.
My sister told me I was messing her up somehow. I could see as if I were inside her. I felt like there was a third person in the bus.
My sister told me we were on Flatbush (in Brooklyn) and that we had to get to an address that was deceptively close -- it was close, but the roads to get there were very maze-like, indirect. My sister said the address, something like 2860.
Dream 2
Excerpts from the show Jackass. The guys all lined up and got shot in the face. Then the guys all lined up to have lions jump out of boxes to attack them.
Showing posts with label brooklyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brooklyn. Show all posts
Sunday, February 5, 2017
(11/13/06) that's not above montgomery, is it?; the special dining ware
(Entered in paper journal at 6:31 PM on Brooklyn-bound Q-train from 57th Street and 7th in Manhattan.)
Dream 1
I was on a suburban street corner. A young, Mexican boy walked up to me and asked where some place was. I pointed in one direction, but that meant I was pointing in the other direction. I believe I was giving directions to Flatbush.
The boy asked, "That's not above Montgomery, is it?"
I said, "No, no. It's below."
Dream 2
A dinner at my friend R's house (?). I was pulling out the plates, maybe washing them. But I had to pull a special plate and a big, green, plastic spoon out of a tote bag (like black rubber, like the material for fishermen's overalls).
Dream 1
I was on a suburban street corner. A young, Mexican boy walked up to me and asked where some place was. I pointed in one direction, but that meant I was pointing in the other direction. I believe I was giving directions to Flatbush.
The boy asked, "That's not above Montgomery, is it?"
I said, "No, no. It's below."
Dream 2
A dinner at my friend R's house (?). I was pulling out the plates, maybe washing them. But I had to pull a special plate and a big, green, plastic spoon out of a tote bag (like black rubber, like the material for fishermen's overalls).
Saturday, January 26, 2013
(2/13/08) cross-streets
(Entered in paper journal at 6:35 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
It was daytime. I stood out on a road like the stretch of Classon Avenue near the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I stood before a woman, possibly fighting with her over a white cross of wood or plastic that was maybe three feet long. The cross may have had the limbs slanted, i.e. like the Celtic life-rune.
I think I held the top end. The woman and I were really arguing natural or appropriate position of the cross. She argued that it was right-side-up. I argued that it was upside-down.
While I struggled with the woman physically and tried to make my points verbally, I imagined cross-streets in Brooklyn (Classon and Washington and Eastern Parkway) as if they fit my imagined "cross" (really, the life-rune) perfectly.
Dream #1
It was daytime. I stood out on a road like the stretch of Classon Avenue near the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I stood before a woman, possibly fighting with her over a white cross of wood or plastic that was maybe three feet long. The cross may have had the limbs slanted, i.e. like the Celtic life-rune.
I think I held the top end. The woman and I were really arguing natural or appropriate position of the cross. She argued that it was right-side-up. I argued that it was upside-down.
While I struggled with the woman physically and tried to make my points verbally, I imagined cross-streets in Brooklyn (Classon and Washington and Eastern Parkway) as if they fit my imagined "cross" (really, the life-rune) perfectly.
Monday, November 19, 2012
(5/17/09) searching for a cleft palate
Dream #1
I was on a black iron platform like an above-ground subway platform. I probably had just gotten off a train. I walked down a black-iron staircase. I stopped halfway down, possibly at a landing, and looked out at the view.
It was early evening. The sun had just set, and a pink band of sky below the deep blue dome was reflected off a calm lake (?) to the right of which was a gently rounded hill of grasses, all in shadow. The whole area looked a lot like the view from a bridge running between Pelham Bay and City Island in New York.
Two businessmen, somewhere to my right, just behind me and out of my view, were speaking back and forth about a project that one of the men was having a little difficulty with. This talk may also have spilled over into a talk about the man's family. The overall situation wasn't awful, but it was a difficulty that the man was glad to be able to work out with another person.
I also felt like the two men were involving me in the talk. It was like they wanted to get me interested in their business.
I decided to remain aloof. I stood outside of a deli. The street was like one of the more main streets in a residential area in Brooklyn or the Bronx. It was either night or early morning, just before sunrise. Fluorescent green-white light flooded out onto the sidewalk from the deli's window. I had been inside the store, discussing business with someone. I don't think things had been going well.
Something made me think of a cleft palate. I pulled out my BlackBerry and did an internet search for "cleft palate." I found a Wikipedia-style page talking about cleft palates and, possibly, how they affect people's relationships.
There were a few photos of people with "cleft palates." One photo showed a man who looked normal, except that his eyes and possibly nose, or some other part of his face, were digitally blanked out with green circles. I assumed the man had suffered some disfigurement there which was blanked out digitally. There was another photo of a person who had a log of bubble-like protrusions on his face. They were red, like boils or sores, though I knew they were the result of something like elephantitis.
I kept thinking there would be a photo of someone with a "cleft palate," which I envisioned as a harelip on the person's top lip, splitting to reveal a fleshy split in the roof of a person's mouth.
I was on a black iron platform like an above-ground subway platform. I probably had just gotten off a train. I walked down a black-iron staircase. I stopped halfway down, possibly at a landing, and looked out at the view.
It was early evening. The sun had just set, and a pink band of sky below the deep blue dome was reflected off a calm lake (?) to the right of which was a gently rounded hill of grasses, all in shadow. The whole area looked a lot like the view from a bridge running between Pelham Bay and City Island in New York.
Two businessmen, somewhere to my right, just behind me and out of my view, were speaking back and forth about a project that one of the men was having a little difficulty with. This talk may also have spilled over into a talk about the man's family. The overall situation wasn't awful, but it was a difficulty that the man was glad to be able to work out with another person.
I also felt like the two men were involving me in the talk. It was like they wanted to get me interested in their business.
I decided to remain aloof. I stood outside of a deli. The street was like one of the more main streets in a residential area in Brooklyn or the Bronx. It was either night or early morning, just before sunrise. Fluorescent green-white light flooded out onto the sidewalk from the deli's window. I had been inside the store, discussing business with someone. I don't think things had been going well.
Something made me think of a cleft palate. I pulled out my BlackBerry and did an internet search for "cleft palate." I found a Wikipedia-style page talking about cleft palates and, possibly, how they affect people's relationships.
There were a few photos of people with "cleft palates." One photo showed a man who looked normal, except that his eyes and possibly nose, or some other part of his face, were digitally blanked out with green circles. I assumed the man had suffered some disfigurement there which was blanked out digitally. There was another photo of a person who had a log of bubble-like protrusions on his face. They were red, like boils or sores, though I knew they were the result of something like elephantitis.
I kept thinking there would be a photo of someone with a "cleft palate," which I envisioned as a harelip on the person's top lip, splitting to reveal a fleshy split in the roof of a person's mouth.
Monday, November 12, 2012
(10/1/09) grandpa visits from beyond; floating head art gallery
(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a dark basement and into a bathroom. The basement itself was dirty, as if long unused, and almost completely dark. I was afraid to go in, but I did, closing the door.
My vision was, at first, all purple-white eye-static color in the dark. Then I saw or imagined a stretched-out sideways version of a classic grey alien's face, as if the alien were lurking in the shower to capture me.
But my vision cleared, and I actually could see some of the bathroom, as if it were lit by faint moonlight pouring in from some distant window. As I went to the bathroom I thought that, just beyond the wall against which the toilet backed (this wall now no more, apparently, than a couple of plyboards slapped up so on layered over the other), there was a room or a deeper basement, unfinished, skeletally "divided" into rooms, which was turned into a "classroom," -- or, basically, just a small, old school desk.
This place, I knew, was where my brother studied, my mother having taken my brother out of school. (I saw an image of my brother crouching down before a wind of my old high school building.) I thought that something seemed cruel about pulling my brother out of school. It was cruel the way my mother locked my brother so far away from people.
I was now in an enormous living room. The windows let in grey light, probably from a rainy day outside. I stood between a couch (of maroon leather?) and a small, wide table with a television on it. The carpet was pale grey. The living room seemed to stretch on, at least fifty feet on each side.
The television showed a rainy scene in front of a church in Venice (?). The TV announcer, probably a woman, was talking about the rain, but she might also have been mentioning a service at the church, possibly a funeral.
I now stood in a hallway or foyer area. The walls were almost all made of glass, giving me a pretty full view to the rainy area (Venice?) outside, although there were some structures, columns or wall, made of pink stones, obstructing my view.
I saw, somehow framed by the metallic skeleton of beams holding up the wide, glass panes, a very modern-looking, American-style church. The front of the church was A-shaped, made of gold-yellow bricks. It had a large circle of stained glass in the center, near the top, with an A-shape of arched-rectangle windows tapering down under that. I thought of the church as a Methodist church.
Just to the left of that church I could see the corner of another red-stone church, which was Catholic and, it seemed, more of the traditional Venetian style (?). I knew tha tthis area of Venice had nothing but churches all over the place.
(The area felt to me like an outskirts of the Denver suburbs, just a couple wide streets away from a main highway.)
To my right, the wall before me all red stone, was a doorway with a heavy wood (?) door open just a little. I assumed that beyond the door was a sanctuary. A priest (?) in a black robe with a white collar stood before the door. He may have told me that the event I had come for wasn't actually happening today. He then walked into the room and closed the door.
I now looked to my left. In another room that was all empty and walled and ceilinged with windows, stood my grandfather, who had died about a year previously in waking life. My grandfather had his hands clasped casually behind his back. He was looking out the windows. He turned away from the windows to face me.
He looked different. He was huge, at least six feet tall, and, proportionally, wider than he had been. His skin was patchy-dry and red-pink, like the skin of someone who smoked way too much. He had a strange bowl-cut of red-gold hair, which almost looked like a wig. He wore a beige-olive suit jacket and slacks and probably a deepish blue shirt and a tie.
He didn't look like he was completely alert mentally. But he recognized me and walked toward me. His eyes were almost vacant, like those of Frankenstein or a zombie. He may have been carrying an empty or almost empty, black duffel bag in his left arm. As he continued walking toward me he said, vacantly, "I've been meaning to ask you, Son, are you okay? Have you been having a rough year?"
My grandpa was now in front of me. But he kept trudging forward. I walked up to him and squeezed both of his hands, which were folded together before him, just above his bellybutton. I told him, "Yes. It's been a really awful year."
My grandpa kept walking forward, off to my right side. He said something like, "Well, keep up your hope."
My grandpa walked through the heavy, wooden door and let it close behind him. I understood that I wasn't supposed to follow my grandpa past the door. But, like I might doo when suddenly remembering I needed to tell one of my bosses something important, I rushed up to the door and pushed it open.
Before me was something like the living room of a Pennsylvania Dutch house. My grandpa was already across that "living room" and into an area like a largely columned, medieval interior (of a castle?) mixed with a parking lot.
I called out to my grandfather, telling him something like I loved him or I thought about him a lot. I couldn't stand thinking that our exchange had only been about how I had been doing. I wanted to let him know that I cared about him.
My grandpa turned toward me. In some sense or another it was like he stood outside, in a well-lit (with white, halogen lights) parking lot at night. He faced me at a quarter-turn, so that I saw him almost full on, but with a left profile. He looked normal now, not all distorted like he had looked before. He wore a beige, windbreaker-type jacket, khaki slacks, a blue, button-up shirt, and a hunched hat. He may have had his hands in his pockets.
As I spoke, two people sitting at a table in the Pennsylvania Dutch living room began speaking, telling me something about how the event I was looking for wouldn't happen today. The director for the event hadn't showed up. They kept on speaking so that my grandpa could never hear what I said.
It also seemed like there was a huge wind blocking my voice from my grandpa's ears. My grandpa kept calling out, "What? What?" Finally he said he couldn't hear me and that he had to go. He walked away into the night.
I looked down to the two people at the table. I was somehow concerned about them, now, and interested in what they were saying. They were two children, one boy and one girl. They wore stereotypical old-European peasant clothing. They sat at a thinnish, wooden table.
Both children had their faces painted. The boy, blonde, may have had his face painted a ghostly white with black circles for eyes. The girl, wearing a yellow kerchief over her hair, was made up so that she looked like wood. Her entire body, in fact, wherever it showed out from under her clothes, looked like the painted feathers on a wooden decoy duck. The girl also, when she first spoke, didn't even look like her lips were moving. But as I looked at her longer, her lips did begin to move.
(As I later reflected on this, I thought that my shock at how wooden the girl looked actually broke my connection with my grandpa, at which point my grandpa said he had to leave.)
I sat down at the table, across from the boy and girl, who sat side by side. The girl told me that she and the boy were here for something like an audition or else to be extras in a movie. But the director hadn't shown up and wasn't likely to show up.
A girl, who I now thought of as my grandpa, walked up to us from the nighttime parking lot as I told the boy and girl not to give up hope, that there was still time for the director to show up. The girl/my grandpa sat down to the wood-painted girl's right.
The new girl looked to be maybe in her late teens or early twenties. She was tallish and white with slightly tanned skin. She had blue eyes and chesnut brown hair pulled back and up into a ponytail She wore a green t-shirt, which she tucked into white jean-shorts that extended to just below her knees.
At some point I stopped thinking of the new girl as my grandfather and just started thinking of her as some girl I knew (?). The new girl was cheerful. She agreed with what I'd previously told the children, even bringing, I think, some evidence that the director was, in fact, coming.
Even thought I no longer thought of the new girl as my grandpa, I did know that she was, like my grandpa, dead, a ghost, if only because she'd come from the same place toward which my grandfather had departed. In fact, I thought of the girl now as the spirit of a boy who had died.
I could see the boy in the dark. He had longish, bowl-shaped, blonde hair, and he was wiry and thin, looking a little like a punk rocker in the toughness of his face. The boy seemed terribly upset. Then he was dead.
Now the new girl said she had come extremely prepared for the audition. She pulled out a notebook and pen and began writing down, in outline, all the steps she took to get ready for things, mostly to illustrate to the boy and girl, who were like good-hearted, but somewhat clueless, directionless, and unmotivated peasants from out of town, that they shouldn't give up hope and that they should keep fighting for their dreams.
As the new girl kept on writing her stuff out, I realized how incredibly bright and motivated she was. But he's dead!, I told myself. This boy's dead, and he's still working like this! It all seemed so absurd and yet so joyful that I suddenly broke out in a joyful cheer. I screamed, "Yeah! This girl! This is who I love!"
I stood and walked around the table to embrace the girl. I may have been able to embrace the girl. But I think something happened that made the girl inaccessible, as if she were walking back through the nighttime parking lot, up to a chain link fence, or possibly already beyond it.
Dream #2
I walked down a wide sidewalk in some part of a big city full of one-story warehouses. It was a cold afternoon. The sky was pale tan-blue, as if the sun were finally below the horizon.
I heard two men across the street. I recognized one voice as that of my old friend R. I looked across the wide, empty street to see two white men in grey, hooded sweatshirts, each man having the hood over his head.
The men spoke in a casual, sports-like, but also business-like, tone. But it sounded like they were talking about the next time they'd meet, to go out on a date, in somewhat sexual and romantic terms.
The building the men stood in front of, another one-story warehouse, was white, the paint job looking rough, like stucco, with a gate drawn entrance and the walls lightly misted in a pale, faded, blue graffiti.
I looked more attentively at the men and saw that one of them definitely was R. I called out to him. He at first looked shocked to see me, as if he'd been caught engaging in an extramarital affair. The other man had walked away casually.
I crossed the street to meet R, making nothing of the situation I'd just seen. R asked, a little suspiciously, what I was doing here. I couldn't quite place where "here" was. This place could have been Red Hook, Brooklyn. But it didn't seem quite right. We were at the top, it seemed, of a long, shallow hill. And I knew there were other long, shallow hills full of wide-stretched warehouse blocks like this beyond us.
But eventually, as we briskly walked toward the corner of this block, I settled on the idea that we were on Smith Street and Ninth Street in Brooklyn, I told R that it was coincidence that we met here. I always walked down around here.
We decided to cross the bridge together. Somehow, though, we walked on the suspension beams of the bridge. These beams must once have been copper: they were now corroded to a bright Statue of Liberty green. The beams, I saw, octagoned up, flat, and down, repeating along the length of the bridge.
I was surprised we had taken this route, but I knew R had chosen it as a test of how honest I was being regarding my accidentally having seen him in this neighborhood (and having caught him with that man).
As we ascended the bridge I looked out at the cityscape, seeing how monumental everything looked: we were so high; the bridge was so tall; the buildings and building tops so vast. I remembered that I'd had this kind of vision and feeling in dreams about riding trains across bridges in the city, but I couldn't remember the dreams I'd had.
R and I walked down one of the beam slopes and into an enormous, white-walled, wood floored loft. The walls were at least thirty feet tall. The room was probably one hundred by one hundred feet. The wall opposite us was one big window, looking out over the river.
All throughout the room, gigantic plastic (?) boards bearing the heads of famous Disney cartoon characters were suspended from the ceiling by white rope or thick, white twine, the heads suspended about three feet above the ground, and the heads themselves maybe six feet tall. There may also have been occasional abstract plastic models, also large, through the room. There were one or two other people in the room. One of the people was, I think, a curator.
We walked through the gallery of Disney heads. R asked me, as if, again, to test my innocence, what I knew about these cartoons, or how involved I felt with these cartoons. I may have said something.
We were now in a different exhibition room. The room was rectangular, versus square, with ceilings as high, white walls, and wood floors, maybe slightly smaller (or larger?) than the other room. Heads hung from the ceiling again, though not through the entire room -- just in the lower left area of the room; beyond the "quadrant proper," though, so that the display took up a little more than half the room.
The heads were also more varied, being not only Disney heads but also anime character heads and the heads of real-life celebrities, both "cartoonized" and taken from photographs of the celebrities. This room was dim, as if it were now dark outside (if this room even had a window), and as if the room were lit with just a few watery, incandescent lights, like track lighting from the ceiling.
R and I were alone at first, although eventually there may also have been an old man, who kind of looked like Orville Redenbacher, and who was the curator for this gallery.
I may have been kneeling or sittin gin front of one of the heads. I noticed that R, who stood to my left, was talking to a woman. I looked to my left to see R engaged in a flirting conversation with a woman who was in a place where a head had been.
The woman was cluttered around with a couple wooden boxes. The woman wore chunky, frizzy, knit wool clothes. She had frizzy, long, blonde hair, smooth, clear, tan skin, and pale, blue eyes. She may have been bound, either bound standing or bound to a chair. The woman's responses to R were cheerful, but almost robotic, as if the woman were a program, something made to be part of the exhibition.
I thought, R figured something out. He learned how to speak to the hanging heads and bring them to life. I thought I would try to do the same thing R had done.
I looked to the head before me, which was from a photograph (black and white, or sepia and white, the pixels (?) very visible with the enlargement of the photo) of a great composer. I asked the composer a question, like, "Can you speak, too?"
The composer, first as the large head, then as the composer "himself," standing before me, responded, "Of course I can speak to you, you idiot. What do you think I am? What do you think this is? You already saw him speaking to the girl? Why would you think I couldn't speak to you? God. Why'd I have to get stuck talking to you? I thought I'd get some good questions."
(Once the composer had become real, he took on the appearance of a white man with slightly pinkish skin. He was tall, thin, older, with a loosely wrinkled, but dignified face. He had a full head of pure white, soft hair, which glowed under the soft lights here. He wore a nice, grey suit with a white shirt and a tie.)
I was ashamed for having spoken to the composer. I looked away from the composer, at least hoping that I could console him for my dumb question by not talking to him at all.
Dream #1
I walked down into a dark basement and into a bathroom. The basement itself was dirty, as if long unused, and almost completely dark. I was afraid to go in, but I did, closing the door.
My vision was, at first, all purple-white eye-static color in the dark. Then I saw or imagined a stretched-out sideways version of a classic grey alien's face, as if the alien were lurking in the shower to capture me.
But my vision cleared, and I actually could see some of the bathroom, as if it were lit by faint moonlight pouring in from some distant window. As I went to the bathroom I thought that, just beyond the wall against which the toilet backed (this wall now no more, apparently, than a couple of plyboards slapped up so on layered over the other), there was a room or a deeper basement, unfinished, skeletally "divided" into rooms, which was turned into a "classroom," -- or, basically, just a small, old school desk.
This place, I knew, was where my brother studied, my mother having taken my brother out of school. (I saw an image of my brother crouching down before a wind of my old high school building.) I thought that something seemed cruel about pulling my brother out of school. It was cruel the way my mother locked my brother so far away from people.
I was now in an enormous living room. The windows let in grey light, probably from a rainy day outside. I stood between a couch (of maroon leather?) and a small, wide table with a television on it. The carpet was pale grey. The living room seemed to stretch on, at least fifty feet on each side.
The television showed a rainy scene in front of a church in Venice (?). The TV announcer, probably a woman, was talking about the rain, but she might also have been mentioning a service at the church, possibly a funeral.
I now stood in a hallway or foyer area. The walls were almost all made of glass, giving me a pretty full view to the rainy area (Venice?) outside, although there were some structures, columns or wall, made of pink stones, obstructing my view.
I saw, somehow framed by the metallic skeleton of beams holding up the wide, glass panes, a very modern-looking, American-style church. The front of the church was A-shaped, made of gold-yellow bricks. It had a large circle of stained glass in the center, near the top, with an A-shape of arched-rectangle windows tapering down under that. I thought of the church as a Methodist church.
Just to the left of that church I could see the corner of another red-stone church, which was Catholic and, it seemed, more of the traditional Venetian style (?). I knew tha tthis area of Venice had nothing but churches all over the place.
(The area felt to me like an outskirts of the Denver suburbs, just a couple wide streets away from a main highway.)
To my right, the wall before me all red stone, was a doorway with a heavy wood (?) door open just a little. I assumed that beyond the door was a sanctuary. A priest (?) in a black robe with a white collar stood before the door. He may have told me that the event I had come for wasn't actually happening today. He then walked into the room and closed the door.
I now looked to my left. In another room that was all empty and walled and ceilinged with windows, stood my grandfather, who had died about a year previously in waking life. My grandfather had his hands clasped casually behind his back. He was looking out the windows. He turned away from the windows to face me.
He looked different. He was huge, at least six feet tall, and, proportionally, wider than he had been. His skin was patchy-dry and red-pink, like the skin of someone who smoked way too much. He had a strange bowl-cut of red-gold hair, which almost looked like a wig. He wore a beige-olive suit jacket and slacks and probably a deepish blue shirt and a tie.
He didn't look like he was completely alert mentally. But he recognized me and walked toward me. His eyes were almost vacant, like those of Frankenstein or a zombie. He may have been carrying an empty or almost empty, black duffel bag in his left arm. As he continued walking toward me he said, vacantly, "I've been meaning to ask you, Son, are you okay? Have you been having a rough year?"
My grandpa was now in front of me. But he kept trudging forward. I walked up to him and squeezed both of his hands, which were folded together before him, just above his bellybutton. I told him, "Yes. It's been a really awful year."
My grandpa kept walking forward, off to my right side. He said something like, "Well, keep up your hope."
My grandpa walked through the heavy, wooden door and let it close behind him. I understood that I wasn't supposed to follow my grandpa past the door. But, like I might doo when suddenly remembering I needed to tell one of my bosses something important, I rushed up to the door and pushed it open.
Before me was something like the living room of a Pennsylvania Dutch house. My grandpa was already across that "living room" and into an area like a largely columned, medieval interior (of a castle?) mixed with a parking lot.
I called out to my grandfather, telling him something like I loved him or I thought about him a lot. I couldn't stand thinking that our exchange had only been about how I had been doing. I wanted to let him know that I cared about him.
My grandpa turned toward me. In some sense or another it was like he stood outside, in a well-lit (with white, halogen lights) parking lot at night. He faced me at a quarter-turn, so that I saw him almost full on, but with a left profile. He looked normal now, not all distorted like he had looked before. He wore a beige, windbreaker-type jacket, khaki slacks, a blue, button-up shirt, and a hunched hat. He may have had his hands in his pockets.
As I spoke, two people sitting at a table in the Pennsylvania Dutch living room began speaking, telling me something about how the event I was looking for wouldn't happen today. The director for the event hadn't showed up. They kept on speaking so that my grandpa could never hear what I said.
It also seemed like there was a huge wind blocking my voice from my grandpa's ears. My grandpa kept calling out, "What? What?" Finally he said he couldn't hear me and that he had to go. He walked away into the night.
I looked down to the two people at the table. I was somehow concerned about them, now, and interested in what they were saying. They were two children, one boy and one girl. They wore stereotypical old-European peasant clothing. They sat at a thinnish, wooden table.
Both children had their faces painted. The boy, blonde, may have had his face painted a ghostly white with black circles for eyes. The girl, wearing a yellow kerchief over her hair, was made up so that she looked like wood. Her entire body, in fact, wherever it showed out from under her clothes, looked like the painted feathers on a wooden decoy duck. The girl also, when she first spoke, didn't even look like her lips were moving. But as I looked at her longer, her lips did begin to move.
(As I later reflected on this, I thought that my shock at how wooden the girl looked actually broke my connection with my grandpa, at which point my grandpa said he had to leave.)
I sat down at the table, across from the boy and girl, who sat side by side. The girl told me that she and the boy were here for something like an audition or else to be extras in a movie. But the director hadn't shown up and wasn't likely to show up.
A girl, who I now thought of as my grandpa, walked up to us from the nighttime parking lot as I told the boy and girl not to give up hope, that there was still time for the director to show up. The girl/my grandpa sat down to the wood-painted girl's right.
The new girl looked to be maybe in her late teens or early twenties. She was tallish and white with slightly tanned skin. She had blue eyes and chesnut brown hair pulled back and up into a ponytail She wore a green t-shirt, which she tucked into white jean-shorts that extended to just below her knees.
At some point I stopped thinking of the new girl as my grandfather and just started thinking of her as some girl I knew (?). The new girl was cheerful. She agreed with what I'd previously told the children, even bringing, I think, some evidence that the director was, in fact, coming.
Even thought I no longer thought of the new girl as my grandpa, I did know that she was, like my grandpa, dead, a ghost, if only because she'd come from the same place toward which my grandfather had departed. In fact, I thought of the girl now as the spirit of a boy who had died.
I could see the boy in the dark. He had longish, bowl-shaped, blonde hair, and he was wiry and thin, looking a little like a punk rocker in the toughness of his face. The boy seemed terribly upset. Then he was dead.
Now the new girl said she had come extremely prepared for the audition. She pulled out a notebook and pen and began writing down, in outline, all the steps she took to get ready for things, mostly to illustrate to the boy and girl, who were like good-hearted, but somewhat clueless, directionless, and unmotivated peasants from out of town, that they shouldn't give up hope and that they should keep fighting for their dreams.
As the new girl kept on writing her stuff out, I realized how incredibly bright and motivated she was. But he's dead!, I told myself. This boy's dead, and he's still working like this! It all seemed so absurd and yet so joyful that I suddenly broke out in a joyful cheer. I screamed, "Yeah! This girl! This is who I love!"
I stood and walked around the table to embrace the girl. I may have been able to embrace the girl. But I think something happened that made the girl inaccessible, as if she were walking back through the nighttime parking lot, up to a chain link fence, or possibly already beyond it.
Dream #2
I walked down a wide sidewalk in some part of a big city full of one-story warehouses. It was a cold afternoon. The sky was pale tan-blue, as if the sun were finally below the horizon.
I heard two men across the street. I recognized one voice as that of my old friend R. I looked across the wide, empty street to see two white men in grey, hooded sweatshirts, each man having the hood over his head.
The men spoke in a casual, sports-like, but also business-like, tone. But it sounded like they were talking about the next time they'd meet, to go out on a date, in somewhat sexual and romantic terms.
The building the men stood in front of, another one-story warehouse, was white, the paint job looking rough, like stucco, with a gate drawn entrance and the walls lightly misted in a pale, faded, blue graffiti.
I looked more attentively at the men and saw that one of them definitely was R. I called out to him. He at first looked shocked to see me, as if he'd been caught engaging in an extramarital affair. The other man had walked away casually.
I crossed the street to meet R, making nothing of the situation I'd just seen. R asked, a little suspiciously, what I was doing here. I couldn't quite place where "here" was. This place could have been Red Hook, Brooklyn. But it didn't seem quite right. We were at the top, it seemed, of a long, shallow hill. And I knew there were other long, shallow hills full of wide-stretched warehouse blocks like this beyond us.
But eventually, as we briskly walked toward the corner of this block, I settled on the idea that we were on Smith Street and Ninth Street in Brooklyn, I told R that it was coincidence that we met here. I always walked down around here.
We decided to cross the bridge together. Somehow, though, we walked on the suspension beams of the bridge. These beams must once have been copper: they were now corroded to a bright Statue of Liberty green. The beams, I saw, octagoned up, flat, and down, repeating along the length of the bridge.
I was surprised we had taken this route, but I knew R had chosen it as a test of how honest I was being regarding my accidentally having seen him in this neighborhood (and having caught him with that man).
As we ascended the bridge I looked out at the cityscape, seeing how monumental everything looked: we were so high; the bridge was so tall; the buildings and building tops so vast. I remembered that I'd had this kind of vision and feeling in dreams about riding trains across bridges in the city, but I couldn't remember the dreams I'd had.
R and I walked down one of the beam slopes and into an enormous, white-walled, wood floored loft. The walls were at least thirty feet tall. The room was probably one hundred by one hundred feet. The wall opposite us was one big window, looking out over the river.
All throughout the room, gigantic plastic (?) boards bearing the heads of famous Disney cartoon characters were suspended from the ceiling by white rope or thick, white twine, the heads suspended about three feet above the ground, and the heads themselves maybe six feet tall. There may also have been occasional abstract plastic models, also large, through the room. There were one or two other people in the room. One of the people was, I think, a curator.
We walked through the gallery of Disney heads. R asked me, as if, again, to test my innocence, what I knew about these cartoons, or how involved I felt with these cartoons. I may have said something.
We were now in a different exhibition room. The room was rectangular, versus square, with ceilings as high, white walls, and wood floors, maybe slightly smaller (or larger?) than the other room. Heads hung from the ceiling again, though not through the entire room -- just in the lower left area of the room; beyond the "quadrant proper," though, so that the display took up a little more than half the room.
The heads were also more varied, being not only Disney heads but also anime character heads and the heads of real-life celebrities, both "cartoonized" and taken from photographs of the celebrities. This room was dim, as if it were now dark outside (if this room even had a window), and as if the room were lit with just a few watery, incandescent lights, like track lighting from the ceiling.
R and I were alone at first, although eventually there may also have been an old man, who kind of looked like Orville Redenbacher, and who was the curator for this gallery.
I may have been kneeling or sittin gin front of one of the heads. I noticed that R, who stood to my left, was talking to a woman. I looked to my left to see R engaged in a flirting conversation with a woman who was in a place where a head had been.
The woman was cluttered around with a couple wooden boxes. The woman wore chunky, frizzy, knit wool clothes. She had frizzy, long, blonde hair, smooth, clear, tan skin, and pale, blue eyes. She may have been bound, either bound standing or bound to a chair. The woman's responses to R were cheerful, but almost robotic, as if the woman were a program, something made to be part of the exhibition.
I thought, R figured something out. He learned how to speak to the hanging heads and bring them to life. I thought I would try to do the same thing R had done.
I looked to the head before me, which was from a photograph (black and white, or sepia and white, the pixels (?) very visible with the enlargement of the photo) of a great composer. I asked the composer a question, like, "Can you speak, too?"
The composer, first as the large head, then as the composer "himself," standing before me, responded, "Of course I can speak to you, you idiot. What do you think I am? What do you think this is? You already saw him speaking to the girl? Why would you think I couldn't speak to you? God. Why'd I have to get stuck talking to you? I thought I'd get some good questions."
(Once the composer had become real, he took on the appearance of a white man with slightly pinkish skin. He was tall, thin, older, with a loosely wrinkled, but dignified face. He had a full head of pure white, soft hair, which glowed under the soft lights here. He wore a nice, grey suit with a white shirt and a tie.)
I was ashamed for having spoken to the composer. I looked away from the composer, at least hoping that I could console him for my dumb question by not talking to him at all.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
(1/28/10) dance how you want; hungry or not?; uncle not getting better; her first lesbian lover
(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at the Starbucks at 49th and Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, right across the street from where my office was at the time.)
Dream #1
I was in a park-like area, like the plaza area like the MetroTech Commons park in Brooklyn, except hillier, with the rolling ground covered with Belgian blocks or stone tiles.
I was listening to music that I was playing on a boombox. I danced to the music in a slow, backward and forward "locomotion" movement. I smiled and cocked my head up and down like I was happy with myself, like I thought I was smooth and impressive. I suddenly got afraid that I would go crazy if I allowed myself to act like this, or that, at the least, people would think I was crazy.
My great grandmother appeared before me. She was short: she stood up to about my chest. I may have told her what I was doing, as if I was uncertain whether I should be doing it. My great grandma told me, "Well, keep doing it! Enjoy! Have a good time!" My great grandma walked away. I think we were planning to meet each other again at some point.
The boombox was now playing either classical music or an NPR-type show. I jumped around among Belgian blocks which had been pushed upward like little stubs. I may have thought of myself as a little bird while I did this. I was moving my way around a little planting bed with a small shrub-like a boxwood in the center.
A couple of girls sat at a green-painted, metal table to the right of the planting bed. They may have been talking about something having to do with their job. I was hopping around naively, as if I were oblivious, like a child, to what the women could were talking about. But I actually was connecting to the things they were talking about.
Dream #2
I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen. The light may have been a bit brighter and warmer than usual. I stood before or sat at the tall stool before the kitchen counter. My great grandma came (from the dining room, to my left?) and stood across the counter from me. She told me that I must be hungry. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. She may have offered a grilled cheese sandwich.
I was indecisive. I thought that I was hungry, but that I'd possibly be smarter waiting to eat until some dinner that I was heading to later.
My great grandma got a little annoyed with me and asked me, "Are you hungry or are you not hungry?" She was now mixing something like oatmeal in a big, black pot. The oatmeal looked gooey, like it already had milk in it, and i had red strips in it, which I thought of as something sweet, like long strips of stuff like the pink pebbles in Pebbles cereal. But the strips also looked like long strips of tomatoes or red peppers or even meat.
I told my great grandma that I was hungry. My great grandma may either have spooned some oatmeal into a bowl or left the iron pot in front of me. She then walked into the living room. I thought that I really didn't want to eat the oatmeal if it had tomatoes or meat in it.
I walked into the living room. A couple of my family members, at least my mom and brother, were in the living room. My mom sat in my great grandma's usual favorite chair. My brother was farther back in the room. Looking out the front window, I could see that it was night.
My great grandma opened the front door and walked out. She may have been bundled up in a padded, beige jacked and a wool cap, so that she looked like a little kid. She said she was going somewhere. The TV was near the door, instead of farther back, on the left side of the room, as it would have been in waking life, when my great grandma was alive.
The TV started showing a program about my cousin N, who had done a lot of really good stuff, apparently, with cars or a car company. I and my family members were very proud of N. We wanted my great grandma to see.
I called to my great grandma to catch her before she headed out the door. But she didn't seem to hear. She kept moving, very slowly, apparently, out the door. I called louder, but she still didn't hear. Finally I just walked up to her, grabbed her, pulled her back into the house, and forced her to look at the TV.
As I held my great grandma, I was kneeling down, so that I had to reach up to get my arms around her waist. I basically had my great grandma pinned in place. I was holding her so that her arms were pinned to her sides.
Dream #3
I was at "my dad's house." I sat at or stood before an oval dining table of dark wood. The table was covered over in cluttered papers. The floor around the table was similarly cluttered. The carpet was grey. The room was dim. To my left may have been either a large window or a sliding glass door.
My dad sat before me on a stool before something like a breakfast bar. The breakfast bar was kind of incongruous in its setting, being nowhere near the kitchen, and kind of serving to separate the dining table from the living room.
My dad started talking to me about some football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I laughed and listened, as if I knew what my dad was talking about. But then he started asking me about specific players. I didn't admit that I had no idea who they were, but my kind of blank responses to his questions gave me away.
My uncle R came into the room. My dad and uncle may have decided that it was time to go. We left. My uncle R was much taller than usual, and thin. We walked through a hallway, which had glass walls on the other side of which were restaurants and shops.
My dad asked my uncle how he was doing, if he was getting any better. My uncle said he didn't think he was. My uncle said he needed to stop and go to the restroom. We stopped outside a restaurant which may have been a Chinese or Indian restaurant.
My dad and I stood in a little alcove before the door. Two small steps led up to the glass door of the restaurant. The alcove was just a little square, maybe six inches by six inches. The walls of the alcove were yellow and stucco-like. There may have been a small table with a potted plant on it. Just inside the door of the restaurant were a curtain of little red lights.
My dad and I stood silently for a moment. Finally I asked my dad, "Do you think Uncle R will get better?" My dad had possibly been looking at the wall, his left profile to me.
We now stood in a different hallway. One wall was still a window-wall to the restaurant. The wall across the hallway was possibly, however, to the outside. My dad shook his head sadly, to tell me that no, my uncle R would no get better.
My dad still looked "like" my dad, but he was much shorter, white, with pale blue eyes and pale, grey hair. He now acted like a little kid, or even like a little puppy. He began cuddling with me, hopping all over me. He was, I thought, trying to make it clear that he was happy to see me.
(At this point I stopped my paper journal entry so I could head into work. I then restarted my paper journal entry at 8:30 PM, when I got back on the B-train into Brooklyn, after work.)
Dream #4
A woman sat in a restaurant ora cafe. Something suddenly reminded her of a former lover of hers. She caught her breath as if thinking how silly it was to have forgotten. The woman was a fair-skinned, white woman with slight, chestnut-brown hair. The restaurant she sat in was dim.
After recalling her lover, the woman remembered a scene with her lover. The scene took place in a dark room, lit only by a candle or two. The two women were on a bed. The woman's lover was an Asian woman with long, silky, black hair. She wore a pink teddy with black lace trim. The teddy may have been pulled down below her breasts. The lover knelt on the bed, her legs wide apart, and arched her breasts up in ecstasy. The woman may not have been visible.
The woman was now in a bookstore with another woman. The bookstore was lit with fluorescent light. The store was wide, with high ceilings. The shelves were all pretty close together. They were tall, made of a kind of cheap wood, dented or chipped a little, or with the finish kind of wearing off. The place had a run-down feel, like an old public library.
The two women were far back in the shelves. They spoke with one another either in French or in English with French accents. Their words were palpable, very soothing, as if I were haring them from under a blanket while I had a cold.
The women walked up to the front desk. A very tall man walked up and stood beside them, across the counter from the cashier. The man was possibly overweight, a little pear-shaped, with long, scraggly-curly, grey hair. He may have worn drab, green and black clothing.
The man tried to strike up a conversation with the women, ostensibly about the books they were buying. But the woman asked her fiend, loudly enough to make it understood she wanted the man to hear, but also with an intonation of mock-embarrassment, "Oh, do you think I should tell him about this book?"
The friend said, "Oh -- you mean that it was the book you read with --"
The woman interrupted, "The book I read with my first --"
I knew that the woman would next say, "With my first lesbian lover."
Dream #1
I was in a park-like area, like the plaza area like the MetroTech Commons park in Brooklyn, except hillier, with the rolling ground covered with Belgian blocks or stone tiles.
I was listening to music that I was playing on a boombox. I danced to the music in a slow, backward and forward "locomotion" movement. I smiled and cocked my head up and down like I was happy with myself, like I thought I was smooth and impressive. I suddenly got afraid that I would go crazy if I allowed myself to act like this, or that, at the least, people would think I was crazy.
My great grandmother appeared before me. She was short: she stood up to about my chest. I may have told her what I was doing, as if I was uncertain whether I should be doing it. My great grandma told me, "Well, keep doing it! Enjoy! Have a good time!" My great grandma walked away. I think we were planning to meet each other again at some point.
The boombox was now playing either classical music or an NPR-type show. I jumped around among Belgian blocks which had been pushed upward like little stubs. I may have thought of myself as a little bird while I did this. I was moving my way around a little planting bed with a small shrub-like a boxwood in the center.
A couple of girls sat at a green-painted, metal table to the right of the planting bed. They may have been talking about something having to do with their job. I was hopping around naively, as if I were oblivious, like a child, to what the women could were talking about. But I actually was connecting to the things they were talking about.
Dream #2
I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen. The light may have been a bit brighter and warmer than usual. I stood before or sat at the tall stool before the kitchen counter. My great grandma came (from the dining room, to my left?) and stood across the counter from me. She told me that I must be hungry. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. She may have offered a grilled cheese sandwich.
I was indecisive. I thought that I was hungry, but that I'd possibly be smarter waiting to eat until some dinner that I was heading to later.
My great grandma got a little annoyed with me and asked me, "Are you hungry or are you not hungry?" She was now mixing something like oatmeal in a big, black pot. The oatmeal looked gooey, like it already had milk in it, and i had red strips in it, which I thought of as something sweet, like long strips of stuff like the pink pebbles in Pebbles cereal. But the strips also looked like long strips of tomatoes or red peppers or even meat.
I told my great grandma that I was hungry. My great grandma may either have spooned some oatmeal into a bowl or left the iron pot in front of me. She then walked into the living room. I thought that I really didn't want to eat the oatmeal if it had tomatoes or meat in it.
I walked into the living room. A couple of my family members, at least my mom and brother, were in the living room. My mom sat in my great grandma's usual favorite chair. My brother was farther back in the room. Looking out the front window, I could see that it was night.
My great grandma opened the front door and walked out. She may have been bundled up in a padded, beige jacked and a wool cap, so that she looked like a little kid. She said she was going somewhere. The TV was near the door, instead of farther back, on the left side of the room, as it would have been in waking life, when my great grandma was alive.
The TV started showing a program about my cousin N, who had done a lot of really good stuff, apparently, with cars or a car company. I and my family members were very proud of N. We wanted my great grandma to see.
I called to my great grandma to catch her before she headed out the door. But she didn't seem to hear. She kept moving, very slowly, apparently, out the door. I called louder, but she still didn't hear. Finally I just walked up to her, grabbed her, pulled her back into the house, and forced her to look at the TV.
As I held my great grandma, I was kneeling down, so that I had to reach up to get my arms around her waist. I basically had my great grandma pinned in place. I was holding her so that her arms were pinned to her sides.
Dream #3
I was at "my dad's house." I sat at or stood before an oval dining table of dark wood. The table was covered over in cluttered papers. The floor around the table was similarly cluttered. The carpet was grey. The room was dim. To my left may have been either a large window or a sliding glass door.
My dad sat before me on a stool before something like a breakfast bar. The breakfast bar was kind of incongruous in its setting, being nowhere near the kitchen, and kind of serving to separate the dining table from the living room.
My dad started talking to me about some football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I laughed and listened, as if I knew what my dad was talking about. But then he started asking me about specific players. I didn't admit that I had no idea who they were, but my kind of blank responses to his questions gave me away.
My uncle R came into the room. My dad and uncle may have decided that it was time to go. We left. My uncle R was much taller than usual, and thin. We walked through a hallway, which had glass walls on the other side of which were restaurants and shops.
My dad asked my uncle how he was doing, if he was getting any better. My uncle said he didn't think he was. My uncle said he needed to stop and go to the restroom. We stopped outside a restaurant which may have been a Chinese or Indian restaurant.
My dad and I stood in a little alcove before the door. Two small steps led up to the glass door of the restaurant. The alcove was just a little square, maybe six inches by six inches. The walls of the alcove were yellow and stucco-like. There may have been a small table with a potted plant on it. Just inside the door of the restaurant were a curtain of little red lights.
My dad and I stood silently for a moment. Finally I asked my dad, "Do you think Uncle R will get better?" My dad had possibly been looking at the wall, his left profile to me.
We now stood in a different hallway. One wall was still a window-wall to the restaurant. The wall across the hallway was possibly, however, to the outside. My dad shook his head sadly, to tell me that no, my uncle R would no get better.
My dad still looked "like" my dad, but he was much shorter, white, with pale blue eyes and pale, grey hair. He now acted like a little kid, or even like a little puppy. He began cuddling with me, hopping all over me. He was, I thought, trying to make it clear that he was happy to see me.
(At this point I stopped my paper journal entry so I could head into work. I then restarted my paper journal entry at 8:30 PM, when I got back on the B-train into Brooklyn, after work.)
Dream #4
A woman sat in a restaurant ora cafe. Something suddenly reminded her of a former lover of hers. She caught her breath as if thinking how silly it was to have forgotten. The woman was a fair-skinned, white woman with slight, chestnut-brown hair. The restaurant she sat in was dim.
After recalling her lover, the woman remembered a scene with her lover. The scene took place in a dark room, lit only by a candle or two. The two women were on a bed. The woman's lover was an Asian woman with long, silky, black hair. She wore a pink teddy with black lace trim. The teddy may have been pulled down below her breasts. The lover knelt on the bed, her legs wide apart, and arched her breasts up in ecstasy. The woman may not have been visible.
The woman was now in a bookstore with another woman. The bookstore was lit with fluorescent light. The store was wide, with high ceilings. The shelves were all pretty close together. They were tall, made of a kind of cheap wood, dented or chipped a little, or with the finish kind of wearing off. The place had a run-down feel, like an old public library.
The two women were far back in the shelves. They spoke with one another either in French or in English with French accents. Their words were palpable, very soothing, as if I were haring them from under a blanket while I had a cold.
The women walked up to the front desk. A very tall man walked up and stood beside them, across the counter from the cashier. The man was possibly overweight, a little pear-shaped, with long, scraggly-curly, grey hair. He may have worn drab, green and black clothing.
The man tried to strike up a conversation with the women, ostensibly about the books they were buying. But the woman asked her fiend, loudly enough to make it understood she wanted the man to hear, but also with an intonation of mock-embarrassment, "Oh, do you think I should tell him about this book?"
The friend said, "Oh -- you mean that it was the book you read with --"
The woman interrupted, "The book I read with my first --"
I knew that the woman would next say, "With my first lesbian lover."
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