(12/16/04) brownstone out-of-body experience; r jealous of me and y; being stalked as a transvestite

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 PM at my friend ML's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was possibly at ML's house. I came down from the top bunk of ML's bed, possibly by floating down. I either heard or said some things and was either scrutinized for my speech or not noticed at all.

Then I was suddenly in front of a brownstone staircase. It was still night. The staircase light lit the brown steps, which stood behind a tallish (?) cast iron gate. I could only see a bit of it, though I saw it intensely, as if my vision were overexposed.

I turned around. I scared some guy in a suit. I told myself either that I was having a dream or that I was having an out-of-body experience. I told myself to calm down and focus.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I was on something like a tall building's rooftop with my friend R. We sat at a small, rectangular table that was made of wood and was covered with a white tablecloth.

R spoke to me about some bad things his ex-wife and my best friend Y had done. He kept talking about what a bad person Y was. I knew mainly he just didn't want me to talk to her anymore, out of jealousy for our friendship.

I picked up my phone and put it to my ear to call someone. But Y was already on the other end of the line. I was somewhat happy to hear from her. The conversation continued for a "few minutes," then seemed to vanish. The table switched from the right edge of the building roof to the top edge, and my position switched with R's.

I told R that I didn't call Y or even plan to call her behind his back, that she'd called me, but that I also wasn't going to just blow her off. But R still looked at me as if he wanted to kill me.

(NOTE (2017) -- Unfortunately in waking life I did neglect my relationship with my friend Y and ended up killing one of the best friendships I ever had in my life.)

Dream 3

Barely remembered. I had some letters. They were either addressed to me obliquely or not addressed to me at all. But somehow R was about to intercept them. But somehow, again, R had sent them to me.

The "letters" were all postcards that implied that R was stalking and hunting me because he was sexually attracted to me as a transvestite. The postcards showed increasingly lewd scenes of garishly costumed transvestites in a dance club with naked, muscular, attractive men.

Knowing R, I knew that he had sent these postcards to imply that these men, like R, were planning to kill transvestites, like he/they would kill me, because R/the men believed we deserved to be killed.

(3/16/05) legend of the recorder

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I stood up in "my room," which I don't remember, mainly because it was very dark. I walked out into the hallway and saw that it resembled the stairway in my old landlady UG's house. I thought it was the stairway in UG's house -- just like I really thought it was my room. But it was a much wider, taller space, and open, not closed and walled off, with a dining table and a single, dim, incandescent bulb.

I walked hesitantly out to the stairway because it didn't make sense that I should be here coming out of my room.

I told myself I was dreaming. Excited now by my lucidity I walked more steadily. I jumped over the railing to float down to the table. And part of my self actually did float down to that area, but "it" slowly dissolved as "it" thought, Why didn't I ever eat at this table?

The more coherent "me" actually slid over the front of a seat back for a chair like in my great-grandmother A's living room. In fact, the place even somewhat resembled that living room, except that there was dim, incandescent light like a jewelry display case, and all over were tall-legged coffee tables of the darkest, most lustrous wood. On one of those tables was a recorder (the musical instrument) of brass or gold.

I may have been shocked by the incongruousness of the balcony and my sudden slumping down into a chair -- I know I did need to tell myself to keep a hold on my lucidity. I told myself, oddly, to act like this was the normal world as much as possible so as not to overload my mind with all the apparent absurdities of dream-life.

I stood up and walked to the recorder. I had something in my hand that would play music. I sat that down and took up the recorder. I blew into it. I hesitated because I knew this was like a flute in a video game -- it would take me somewhere else.

I didn't press any holes or blow with any rhythm. I just heaved a breath into the recorder and it seemed to play itself. It played a broken, untuned melody that got more and more raucous until it sounded like a hurricane of cheap, screaming notes. The world broke. The last thing I saw was the recorder.

I was in a dark bedroom again. I looked over at a wide mirror and saw a figure

on a wide bed's edge. I flew toward what I actually thought was the figure. He looked like Buddha. He seemed to be staring sentient at me. I thought it was my teacher -- my dream-teacher. I thought I would get as close as possible, though I was very afraid. But when I got there I hit nothing. Nobody was there. I was looking into the mirror. I couldn't see myself, though I didn't realize or fully appreciate that fact.

I turned around. The bedroom was now like the apartment I'd lived in in Albuquerque in 2004. I flew from in front of the mirror to the bed. I may have seen a faded image of someone sitting on the bed. but now the world fragmented slightly and I lay on the bed. I told myself, Keep the lucidity. Don't move so crazy.

I rolled over and grabbed a book titled Politics in lettering like might be seen on novels about the Old West. I thought, Here's my book, then, that I was reading before I went to sleep. I'm back here. I'm going to go exploring out-of-body.

I broke through some window and into a blue morning. I was on slope-side like the slope at Jackie Robinson Park. I told myself I would be this high in the air because my apartment was seven floors up. I flew over maybe six apartment buildings that were white brick, hexagonal, and columnar.

I told myself, Go slow and remember this stuff. You're having an OOBE that you need to verify upon awakening. For instance, pay attention to what's on the roofs of these buildings, since you never really see the roofs.

But I ended up flying, as if pulled, over to some walkway like the walkway at the top of the slope at Jackie Robinson Park, except that it was lined with makeshift, booth-like shops and some hole-in-the-wall shops like you see in the older areas along Saint Mark's Place.

(Continued entering dream in paper journal at 12 PM at Riverside Park in Manhattan.)

There were a lot of people along the walkway. It was now implicitly early evening, though it was still early morning, i.e. just at sunrise. I flew, but with my body upright and just high enough that my feet hovered just above the ground, almost like I was walking. I also flew through people -- I only felt I had my body: I was projected.

But at some point three bullying guys all clamored into a tight crowd, blocking a path I was going to take. I had seen them moving in this direction, and I had tried to beat them. But though I don't think they could see me, they hustled faster to get in my way.

Somehow my speed and the force stop changed my direction. I turned into a building like a library. The walls of the hallway I was in were wood. The hallway was long, with a good number of doorways on each side. There was plenty of light. I moved through with a lot of speed, intensely interested in my location, telling myself to remember, but not exactly sure what the heck this place could be.

At the end of the hallway was the main library area. Near the entrance were some folding tabbles and small chairs. A couple people in the hallway had noticed me. Now a kid came up to me. This unsettled me in some way. I woke up.

(4/22/05) parking structure

(NOTE: At this time, I was really into trying to have mystical experiences. I would try to have out-of-body experiences at night. But I would also try to have lucid dreams. I would try to have lucid dreams for the experience in itself. But I also saw lucid dreaming as a means to achieving out-of-body experiences. Another way I saw to be a gateway to OBEs was spontaneous imaginations -- a kind of induced reverie I learned, partly from the paranormal books I read and partly from the works of Carl Jung. In this practice, I would try my best to let my mind wander and spontaneously create imagery, landscapes, atmospheres, etc., in which I would then wander around. I had greater and less success with this practice. In some cases, these imaginations would fade into dreams. When I had spontaneous imaginations but not dreams, I would record the imaginations in my main notebook. But, as below, when I wouldn't be sure whether I had dreamed or had a vivid spontaneous imagination, I would write the experience in my dream notebook. The dream below is also interesting, because it also seems to meld into a lucid dream.)

(Entered in paper journal at 5:40 AM at home in Harlem.)

I'm not quite certain that this was a "dream."

Dream 1

I suddenly realized I was in a "scene," like a spontaneous scene I'd have in my imagination practices at night. But I felt myself there and was really surprised at that. So I told myself to calm down, focus, and move slowly.

The scene shifted weirdly. At first it looked like a covered walkway before the huge parking lot of a barely visited strip mall I would occasionally walk past in Albuquerque. But as I walked toward the parking lot the concrete walkway and ceiling continued stretching with new columns until the place seemed more like a parking structure on the side of a road. All the time the atmosphere had a sepia-crimson tint. I didn't take much note of this.

I finally got to the road as a van (?) passed. The sky was dark grey. Now something else happened that I don't quite remember. It's like I was walking toward a busy intersection that would allow me to get my bearings in what I thought was New Mexico. But as I approached and "reached" that intersection it became something else, and a new intersection appeared up ahead.

I was a little discouraged. I tried to understand what I was experiencing. Was it my imagination practice? Was it a lucid dream? Was it an out-of-body experience? And what caused these scene shifts? I didn't know what caused them, but I was disappointed in my "lucidity power," not in my inability consistently to change things (which is what I'm usually disappointed in), but in my inability to keep things consistent and "realistic."

I walked up to the intersection. Right before I reached it another vehicle passed me slowly. I think it was an old, wide, 1970s style car. The man inside, white, fleshy, balding (I think), in a yellow t-shirt (?), flatly, blankly stared at me, as if he didn't have a face at all, but also as if his fleshy face portrayed a distinct and yet relaxed loathing toward me. But perhaps this is a wrong impression, because I also remember wanting to ask him a question, to interact with him.

I stopped walking. I was just a couple dozen steps from the intersection. But some kind of tension got me nervous. I woke up.