(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.

(4/23/05) political bobcat cartoon

(Entered in paper journal at 12:10 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood in some shrubby or bunch-grassy, tan soiled, desert valley under a grey sky. My eyesight wasn't very good. I was at the foot of a somewhat gentle slope. I saw a wildcat run down the slope. The valley seems to have sloped down even more toward the right or to have curved or something. The wildcat was only trotting along, but it was still quickly approaching whatever landscape obscuration occurred.

I couldn't believe I was seeing a wildcat so close without it getting scared. I hoped it was a mountain lion. But I couldn't see it, though I was pretty sure it was a bobcat because of its fuzzy tail.

I grabbed either my glasses or a pair of binoculars from somewhere. When I put them up to my eyes, though, all I saw was some late nineteenth-century style poster in newsprint-like font with two color drawings about two-thirds up the page. The drawings were of dogs or pigs in dress suits and bowler hats. This, too, was slightly out of focus.

I took off the glasses (?), not understanding what I was seeing. For just a flicker while I snapped off my glasses I saw the valley clearly. I put the glasses back on after a few seconds. Once again I saw the newsprint poster.

I told myself, Oh, I'm in a dream. I got the feeling the poster was something important to remember, especially the event-title in tall letters over the drawings. I told myself to focus. The poster got clearer. I concentrated on the title. But even as I read it the letters seemed to change. Still I told myself, Read this title. You might see or hear words like it during the course of your waking day tomorrow.

Finally the words stopped shifting. I memorized the title (though I no longer remember it). It was rather like something written with the French pronunciation/spelling style but of a phrase or title derived from English but now in only a strange, non-lingual, quasi-English form.

(5/27/09) a surprising reflection; science fiction romance; tragic urusei yatsura; remembering dream

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at Starbucks at 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I stood in a room that had dark, wood walls and was lit with dim, incandescent light. I stood before a mirror and saw "reflected" a thin, wiry, Asian looking man, possibly wearing a tan-brown, vest-like robe. The man looked almost serene, but extremely mean. I gasped when I saw that this was actually my own reflection. But it wasn't quite my reflection, as I was I, and my reflection was this man.

When I gasped, my reflection said, "What? Why are you so surprised? Didn't you call for me?"

Dream #2

I was in a living room with a few other people. The living room was wide, pale, sparsely furnished, and cheap-feeling.

My old friend R was somewhere. He had annoyed me in some way. Now he was sitting, self-satisfied, in a chair across the room. There was a plain table a few feet away from the chair. R may have fallen asleep in the chair. He may have been holding a science fiction novel on his lap. I thought I would do something mean to R while he was asleep to pay him back for how he had annoyed me.

I approached the chair. The chair was tall-backed, cushioned thinly, upholstered with slightly worn, blue velvet. The chair had thin, wooden legs and looked cold and uncomfortable in the raspy blue light that came into the room.

I sat down in the chair, as if R had stood out of it. I now saw R walking back toward the chair, as if he'd been led out of the room but was now returning. I wasn't going to let R have the chair. I would fight for it.

But now I felt bad for having been mean to R. Perhaps, after all, he didn't deserve it. But I also felt afraid. Maybe if I acted mean to R, R would make me pay for it later on. Maybe, I thought, I should just go ahead and make up with R.

Now an older woman stood near us. The woman was tall, thin, and pale, with blonde, well-styled hair. The woman was Southern. She wore a white turtleneck sweater, a beige jacket, and dress slacks. I may have thought of this woman as something like R's mother.

To make up with either the woman or with R I asked some question about the science fiction novel, which now appeared to be full of color plates showing the artwork of some man from the 1950s. The woman explained to me, as if in answer to the question, that the man had been something like an advertising artist, mainly.

I looked at the plates, which did, in fact, show painty scenes in garish colors of tough, shirtless, well-groomed businessmen and scantily clad women, pale-skinned, coiffured, in slips or negligees, laying across beds and perhaps laughing. These plates looked more like romance novel covers than science fiction illustrations.

I rose from the chair and walked to the table. There may have been something like a deck of tarot cards on the table. R and I may have stood by the table and talked, as if I were making up with R.

Dream #3

I saw a room like my great grandmother's dining room. Lum and Ataru, from the anime series Urusei Yatsura, stood at the head of the table. Lum was wearing her schoolgirl outfit, as opposed to her tiger-striped bikini outfit. Lum and Ataru held rocks that were dark grey and porous, like basalt, or possibly like moon rocks.

Either Lum or Ataru had somehow discarded or destroyed one of the rocks. Immediately, Lum began to disappear, from the feet up. She was disappearing very quickly, almost too quickly even to say anything. As Lum's chest disappeared, it was revealed that Lum's heart was itself one of the porous, grey rocks. Thus destroying a rock would destroy Lum. (???)

Lum knew she was doomed. She said "gomennasai." Then she was gone.

Ataru cried out, "Lum!"

It all seemed so strange to me. The TV show, or movie, wasn't over yet. There was a lot to go. But Lum was now gone. How could the show go on without Lum?

Dream #4

I walked along some path, possibly an asphalt path in a park, with a few women. It was early morning. The park may have been a vast field of cut grass, with one single, small tree to our right.

I had been trying to remember some of the dreams I'd had earlier in the night. (I had probably fallen asleep rehearsing my night's dreams and faded right into this dream.) I must have been talking out the dreams with the women.

One of the women, to my left, told me something like not to worry about it, that it sounded like I was remembering things just fine. (I may have been speaking with the woman about some dream before the "reflection" dream, which had a similar "split personality" theme and which involved Zeus. This "remembered" dream seemed to have been shrouded completely in blackness.)

As the woman spoke, she passed ahead of me and joined the other women. The woman was maybe in her late thirties. She was a little overweight, heavy-legged, and she wore a runner's outfit: black, spandex pants, possibly a pink shirt, black sunglasses, and a beige cap. She held two cups of coffee, possibly both in one hand, stacked one on top of the other.

As the women passed under the lone tree I thought how nice it was to have a group of supportive women to help me through things. But I also looked at the woman's rear end and noticed how it was getting flabby, how she had "saddlebags" kind of pointing out from the sides of her legs, and how disappointing that was.