(5/14/06) my roommate the black ghost; screenplay microorganisms; my boss's calendar

(Entered in paper journal at 10 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in the bathroom. I turned on the shower and heard one of my roommates walk out of his bedroom. I looked through the peephole in the bathroom door (?). I saw the roommate like a black ghost. He walked to my bedroom door. I heard a clicking or shoving. The roommate was trying to get into my room, but he couldn't. He walked back to his room.

Dream 2

I was at work. I received a manila envelope somehow as I was walking down the floor to meet someone. I didn't think about it at first. I mulled over the label and realized the sender, "ADM" (?), was a place I had submitted my screenplay to. I believe the sender's label may also have been in the recipient space.

I walked back to my desk to open the envelope. I thought, It will only take a second, and then I can get to my meeting. I walked over to my boss EB's office, perhaps to tell him about the response I had received. But when I walked to the corner with his office, the light outside his office went out. I took this to mean something bad, and I walked back to my desk. I figured if EB walked out of the office he would see me, but that he probably wasn't in his office. The place felt very busy, but I felt all alone.

I opened the package. Out spilled a typed copy of my screenplay, the notebook in which I had written my screenplay, and a slew of other papers of all sizes, from regular 8 1/2 x 11 to some hotel paper in dimensions like 6 x 9 to scraps and Post-it notes, with all different styles of writing.

I found a (handwritten?) letter which told me the screenplay had been reviewed by three different people, and their criticisms and comments were in the following bundles of papers. I believe the letter also said the screenplay had not been accepted.

I grabbed random papers. One said the screenplay was very good, that it flowed smoothly. Another few papers actually gave sketches for characters in my screenplay. They all looked weird like microorganisms. One was kind of like this.

I fumbled through the papers, trying to figure out why the people would put so much work into a rejection, down to sending me character sketches. I also waited for people in the office to walk past my desk so I could tell them about the response.

Dream 3

I sat at my coworker DE's desk, watching DE do something on the computer. Now he was on Outlook, showing me my boss BS's calendar.

DE said, "Look how much BS is going to be gone this month. That's why we have to XXXXX while he's here, to make sure everything is in good working order."

Looking at the calendar I couldn't see how DE thought BS was going to be gone so long.

Now BS walked down the floor past us without even noticing us. He stood in the corner by my desk. The floor where DE and I were was dim, like ceiling lights had gone out. But by my desk it was bright.

BS looked for me, then, not seeing me by my desk, said something like, "Where did that guy go now?" implying that I was lazy.

I stood up at that, a little annoyed to be thought of as lazy. I called for BS and raised my hand. BS saw me. I walked toward him, saying, "What did you need? I was just over here doing what you said DE and I had to do."

(7/9/06) weak brutality; my brother's fun house; the construction task; the eagle lands

(Entered in paper journal at 10:23 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I lay in "my bed." It was deep night and raining outside. I sat up. I had a window wall that looked out to a front boardwalk area overlooking a river across which were the lights of a tall city. A small car was parked outside: a tiny, boxy, European-style car with a green hood and white roof.

I couldn't see well -- my glasses were wet. I wiped them off as I thought about GS, the star of my high school cross country team. I told myself I had to stop being angry at him and to stop thinking that the things he did to the team sometimes were annoying. I put my glasses back on. I thought, GS was just doing what made sense to him, what he thought would make people like him.

I now saw a group of kids. The kids were black. They looked like troublemakers. The got out of the tiny car. I tried to lay down quickly so they wouldn't see anybody in the house. I thought, Why did I leave my windows open? I couldn't lay down. But I thought at least it was dark.

The kids flashed on the car lights. As soon as they saw me inside the house they bashed open the door, which I had left unlocked by accident, and ran through, right behind the head of my bed, to another door.

I reached around to catch one of them before they left the house. I wanted to show them they couldn't just barge into anybody's house like this. I had a baseball bat. I had they guy in my grasp. I swung the bat. But I swung so weakly that the bat barely even touched the guy.

I was in a living room in the daytime. The place was full of black people. I was very small somehow. People were slung over couches and the floor, lazy and making tons of noise. I had a baseball bat. I tried to hit people. But slowly I got weaker and weaker. Instead of holding a baseball bat, I was now holding something like a small toy bowling pin made out of hollow plastic.

I finally swung at a woman and hit her hard. I thought, Now I can swing and hit! I had a baseball bat in my hands. I thought I had to hit a man now. Hitting a woman didn't prove anything. It was really the men who needed to be taught a lesson.

I stood over a man. Just as I was swinging down at him, he said, "Psst, pssht," like what I was going to do didn't even matter. I lost all confidence and suddenly the bat was just soft, hollow plastic and was so "heavy" in my arms that I couldn't get any speed behind it. It just kept flapping against the guy's face like a piece of paper.

Dream 2

I was in a stairwell with a man and woman. The stairwell was like in a multi-story house: carpeted, with wood railings and pictures on the walls. The man, woman, and I were investigators. A bad person was in the basement. The basement was completely dark. As far as the other floors, I couldn't see them.

A man burst up from the basement. But now somehow he was still in the basement. I said I would go after him. The other two investigators, just sitting on the steps, were suspicious of me but just let me go anyway.

Only a few steps down the steps became a hole about six inches in diameter, lined about three feet down with metal, then opening into the basement. I lowered myself onto the head of a ceramic (?) sculpture of a Chinese lion, white with a green and yellow man and a long, long body.

The light in the basement was dim maroon. I realized now that my brother was down here. In one sense this maze-basement was a kind of terror trap where "the killer" would hunt and kill you.

But in what was becoming more of a reality, this was all just a fun house set up by my brother to impress people. So I went through the maroon into a scary machine room that I had to climb through on my hands and knees. The next room was supposed to be the scariest. But it was just like an enormous tent, with dim blue lighting and a laser pointer shining along the floor. I couldn't wait to see my brother and tell him how good and scary this place was.

I walked into a cafeteria with metal tray counters and glass displays of tons of really good looking Mexican food. I was all alone. A TV played, talking about how important it was to eat healthy. I must have pulled some food together for myself.

I wondered where my brother was. I "spoke with" my mom, asking her where my brother was. I wanted to tell him how good his fun house was. My mom "said" something like, "Oh, don't worry about that. He didn't make up half this stuff anyhow."

Dream 3

I was on the roof of a tall building. It was night and raining. Some people were with me. They sent me to the edge of the building to take care of some construction task which involved moving things from three concrete bins into a shovel at the top of a huge crane.

I moved what were like pieces of garbage into the plastic, white mouth of the "shovel," keeping my stomach to the gravely roof surface the whole time. At one point the "shovel" lifted so I'd have to stand and reach out over the ledge for it. I stood but was suddenly far in on the roof, looking at the concrete bins and crane.

I heard a woman. She and I spoke about my being afraid and about what this whole project really meant.

Dream 4

I lay on a hillside with some friends. It was a sunny day. We all lay on beach blankets, or, rather, knit blankets of bright, gentle colors. The hill was tall, wide, and grassy, with a gentle river at the bottom.

I saw a bald eagle. I called it out to everybody. Everybody treated me like an idiot, saying, "Well, of course that's a bald eagle."

The eagle then flew right up to us and landed. I asked, "Well, it landed right here beside us. How often does that happen?" Nobody answered.

I pet the eagle and spoke a little to it. It wandered away into everybody else's attention. Soon it became a woman, some kind of scientist, who chastised me for not acting as intelligently as my friends had.

(9/14/07) spotting a burglar; pineapple-cinnamon bob dylan; i returned from mars

(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was night or very early morning. I stood with two or three other people outside the house my family lived in during my last years of high school. The sky may have been dark blue. We stood looking into the house as if there were a hole in the front of its right side.

Someone may have broken into the house. We were looking in through the hole to see if we could spot this person. I was afraid that the person would spring out of nowhere and charge uncontrollably and kill us. I might have said something out loud. I heard, as sensibly as in waking life, one of my group silence me with a "Shhhh..."

Dream #2

A group of people sat on a panel on stage in front of an auditorium full of people. One of the panelists was a woman who was supposed to be Bob Dylan. One of the audience asked "Bob Dylan" a question. The audience member was a woman, very tall, obese, pale, with long, stringy hair. She wore glasses with purplish, plastic rims. The woman spoke slowly and dully and was apparently autistic. "Bob Dylan" picked up on this.

The woman asked, "What kind of a person are you?" as if "Bob Dylan" were a magical being and not a person.

In a childish, mock-therapeutic voice, Dylan answered, "I'm pineapple cinnamon." The "autistic" woman could tell this was supposed to be a "magical" answer fit to please crazy people. She was disappointed in Dylan for being so condescending.

Dylan now stood in a spotlight in an enormous, dark room. There must have been a crowd of people somewhere. There must have been a crowd of people somewhere. I sat on a couch maybe thirty feet from Dylan. Dylan was s singing "Cryin'," by Aerosmith, which I took to be a Dylan song.

At some point, possibly because I was drunk or because I was crazy, I began singing the song, as if this were a karaoke bar. I got emotional toward the end of the song. I must also have been embarrassed by myself. At the end I lay down on the couch with my face buried in the cushions.

Dylan said something like, "Who's that person?" as if she wondered either who could sing so emotionally (though not particularly well) or else who would have the audacity to sing during one of her performances.

I saw my reflection in a mirror. It was my left side as I lay on the couch. The couch was dark blue, a rough, velvet-like material. The room I was in was lit as if with soft daylight. I wore only boxer briefs. I could see that I had love handles. I was disappointed with how little care I had taken of my body. My skin looked different -- not rougher, but somehow less soft. I had a couple of little indentations in my skin from scarring.

Dream #3

I was in a basement, which may have been the basement of a library. There may have been some people, some of whom I may have known, down here with me. I started out by looking for something or someone in particular, but now I was just rummaging around. The place looked like a mechanical workshop: there were tables with gears and tools and there was grease everywhere. The walls were starkly white. Although the place was full of stuff, it didn't feel crammed or filthy, just cluttered and unkempt.

I fingered through a bookshelf of science fiction books. The last book looked like it was printed by Vintage. It was a thin paperback with a black cover, which had the typical Vintage-style "grainy" feel to it. It was by Ray Bradbury and was entitled I Returned from Mars.

I started to imagine a choppily drawn black man with wide, narrowed eyes, which may have been green. I thought, How awesome that he makes the hero of the book a black man. (???!!!) I believe that in the story, the man was an intelligent person who returned from Mars to lead people in some way but was slightly overrun by people who were against him.

I stood in some other area of the basement. Two men stood on either side of a red, stell cabinet that looked like a tool cabinet. It was on legs. Its body was maybe two and a half feet tall, with the legs adding another two feet of height.

The men opened the cabinet. Though there were a few door-fronts visible, pulling on a handle opened the whole thing as one door: the multiple door-fronts were just a facade. Inside, there was nothing but ash. The men may have put something like a drinking cup inside. They closed the door. They said, "Now we incinerate it, like for trash." The men told me to stay away, that it was dangerous.

I walked away and thought, It just turns things to ash in a blast! What if that were to happen to my body?

I stood with people I knew, in particular my senior co-worker DS. We all wore robes like Hare Krishna robes, except that some of us had robes with spaghetti-straps on the shoulders. The robes were not the same color. Some people had white robes, some had patterned robes, etc.

One woman of my group picked up a drinking cup. The group said, "Let's take it from him." ("He" being the master of this place, which was some kind of monastery as well as being a library/workshop.) "When he notices it's missing, he'll be pissed. Then we'll see what kind of meditation he does!"

We all went up an escalator, as if we were all heading up to some kind of museum exhibit.

(One might wonder about the mechanism of this dream nowadays -- what with the Curiosity's incinerator system (I think) up on Mars.)