(2/7/06) the flying casino; my friend's perverted resolution

(Entered in paper journal at 5:14 PM at Starbucks on 30th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I walked along a path or road along a mountain slope that went down on my right. I saw some bird or birds fly by in the distance. I was excited because I thought it was a red-tailed hawk. It made me feel better about myself, like previously I had been shunned and made to feel like I couldn't see anything special.

But the view of it was for a moment obscured by pine threes and then for good by a wall or cliff which curled around the edge of the path.

As I approached the edge of the path I saw five big, beautiful, white-pinioned birds in a group and flying toward the "wall." I couldn't tell whether they were hawks or "a less special bird." They were incredible to me.

I called one of my friends (possibly KA, a coworker from my Americorps program in the NYC Parks) to come see, even though the birds were already gone. We stood by the railing waiting for the birds to come by.

Now in the distance was a bird that we knew had to be enormous. It was mostly tail, and it was dark, iridescent-like -- like a homogeneity of metallic speckles of dark rainbow colors on a black background. As we faced it it first flew from right to left until it was out of our sight. It flew from left to right, much closer and larger in appearance.

At some point KA asked me whaat kind of bird it was. I said, "It's the phoenix! It's a bird that -- It's a bird that --" But I couldn't remember what the phoenix did that made it so famous.

To mask my shame I tried to come up with some other fact about the phoenix. I felt like I was, within myself, reducing the greatness of the phoenix to preserve my pride and reduce my feeling of shame over not remembering what the phoenix was famous for. Yet, after I reduced the phoenix's stature in my mind, I hoped it would come closer and renew the feeling of greatness with its massiveness.

Now the tail of the phoenix dropped down before us. There were a bunch of people here, mostly college kids.

A man, half-military, half-salesman, stood before us all, announcing that if we climbed up the ladder (which had been the phoenix tail) to the helicopter (which had been the phoenix body), we could have a free test-trip to The Flying Casino. I was actually the first in line. My hands were already on the rungs of the ladder. The whole thing seemed so cheap. I didn't want to do it and demean my conception of the phoenix.

I looked at my left (or right?) hand, which was now not holding onto a rung and was instead down by my waist. I had a "wand" -- a yellow, plastic, hollow cylinder topped with an octagonal (don't know real term) faceted plastic, pale "amethyst" or "purple stone."

This was the pass into the casino. Each person was to go up one at a time. They each got two (or two and a half?) minutes to test the casino.

The "salesman" said, "Climb on up!"

I said, "What am I gonna see up there? Fun and prizes?"

I was trying to joke like this was a funny version of what the salesman had to put up with everyday. But the salesman just glared at me and said, "Huh. Yeah... Get up there."

I climbed up. I put my head up through a hole in the "floor" of the "helicopter." It was green and metallic. Inside, the place felt expansive, though I couldn't see a whole lot.

A guy in a white military officer's uniform and cap knelt at the hole. He welcomed me. I didn't get completely up into the space. If my field of vision were a room, the officer would have correlated with a corner just to my right. I looked to my left. Behind a loose net were a couple other guys at vague tables. Behind the officer's right shoulder was an opening to what looked like the deck of a ship. Behind the officer's left shoulder was another netted or screened enclosure with vague machines I took to be video games.

The officer asked me if I would like to have a cart ride around the ship. I said, mock-ashamedly, "Oh, no. Each person only has a couple minutes."

I felt that everybody up here felt the same dislike for me that the "salesman" felt down below. But now I'd made it worse by acting ashamed when I really wasn't, or, rather, acting more ashamed than I really was.

Dream 2

My friend R (?) stood before me reading a statement from a piece of paper. I listened and reacted pretty strongly to each thing he said. First I was disgusted. Then I was relieved. Then, as his statements go weirder and weirder, I got uneasy in a way like a horribly exaggerated version of a reaction to watching someone bowling begin and then slowly progress toward a gutterball.

R said something like, "I was brought to court" (or put in jail?) "for child molestation charges. But now I will hold my deal with the courts not to misbehave. It is my personal goal to find a young girl -- but not too young! -- but rather young. And then I will do certain things to her she does not like. She will be a little child. And I will do some gross things to her and get away with it."

(12/22/07) the fleshy tree; put it all on red!

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a sidewalk by a tall wall of black-grey, granite rocks. I was clipping vine-like weeds which had grown from the park, a hill of which crested at the top of the fence. I noticed, though, to my right, where the fence was lower, that as I clipped the weeds there grey fleshy, peach-colored, vine-like tendrils. They grew with speed and direction, something almost like will.

I thought, How can I stop these things from growing? I then thought, If these things have a will, are they angry at me for clipping them? I was afraid that the peach-colored weeds would do something like strangle me. But I kept clipping the green weeds around me because the wall really needed the cleaning.

I looked to my right again. The stone wall was gone. There was only a black-iron fence showing a lawn level with the sidewalk. On the lawn was a smallish (maybe fifteen-foot-tall) tree. I realized the peach tendrils hadn't been weeds, but the roots of this tree.

The tree grew a huge, peach-colored limb out of itself, as willed and flexible as the tendrils had been. I thought again that the limb was angry at me and wanted to do something awful to me by touching me. The limb grew into a shape like a phallus.

I stepped backwards, across the street. But then I thought, Wait. You've seen a tree like this before. It was in a dream. This is a dream, too. I was still afraid. But I thought that if I was having another dream with a tree like this, I might as well risk an encounter with the tree to see what it was all about, even if it did something bad to me.

I walked across the street again, toward the tree. As I did, the scene (and my consciousness of the dream) faded out.

I was now walking into something like a parking lot with a group of friends. I wanted to show my friends the tree, to see what they made of it. But the tree was now just a metallic pole, like the perforated poles for street signs.

A woman thought I was crazy for having called this thing a tree. But I knew the tree would reveal itself, mainly once prey had gotten close enough for it to attack.

I was mad that the girl thought I was crazy. I wanted to show her that I wasn't lying. I told her to go smack the pole. So she did. Something invisible smacked the girl on the arm. The girl was now interested, but not really concerned.

I got even angrier. I really wanted the girl to feel how afraid she should be. So I told her to bite the pole. The girl bit into the pole and growled like a dog. Then she stood up. She said, "See? Nothing happened."

But suddenly the girl's eyes went blank. The girl was trying to move, but it was like something was holding her head. Something pressed in on the girl's head. The girl got slapped around a couple of times by some invisible force.

Now the girl was kneeling before the group and directly in front of me. The girl was dressed like an old, Mexican peasant woman, with a dark shawl over her head. The girl was making a weird, hooting, pained noise.

The girl looked up at me. Her eyes had been poked out. But the tree was still attacking her, and now something even worse would happen. I thought, Why did I put her into that kind of trap?

Dream #2

I stood before a conveyor belt cash register in a grocery store. A skinnyish, baldish, white man with a prim attitude stood behind the register. The man had rung up my food order. But a person (an older man?) behind me pointed at a painting on the wall to my right. He said, "I'm intersted in buying that."

The cashier hadn't wanted to help me much in the first place. But now he took the occasion to ignore me completely. I had handed the cashier my money. He'd now dropped it onto the conveyor belt and walked slightly backward from the register, looking over at the painting. I tried to get the cashier's attention, so I could pay and leave. But the cashier wouldn't pay attention to me.

I looked at the painting. It was maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. The scene was a Seurat-style "park," but the painting style was very much like that of Gauguin, with deep and pale blues and deep and pale purples. I looked down at my money on the conveyor belt.

Now an Hispanic (or light-skinned black) woman, another worker, walked up to the register, possibly with another female worker. The woman took my bills off the conveyor belt. She asked me, "This is what you gave him?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "You gave him way too much." She handed me back all my money. I probably kept $150 (???!!!) and handed back the rest. I tried to make a joke about having thrown down so much money.

There were a few people (friends?) around me. We were all laughing at something, I don't know what. I tried to make a joke along the lines that I had thrown down all that money because I thought we were at a casino. But my vision was cloudy and my brain was blurry, and I couldn't think of what to say or do. On top of that, nobody was paying attention to me. My friends were all laughing at some random thing. The cashier and her friend were talking to each other and not paying attention to me.

I threw my money back on the conveyor belt again, as if I were throwing chips on a roulette table. I felt stupid, first because I had thrown the money so messily and violently, and second because my mind was so cloudy that I couldn't think of what to say next.

I cried, "Put it all on red!"