(4/9/05) piss-soaked stairwell; steamboy preface

(Entered in paper journal at 12:05 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a stairwell. I had to climb up the steps n my belly because the "ceilings" on most of the flights had been lowered. The flights and "ceilings" were brick-red-painted. The stairs were concrete. But the "ceilings" felt like plaster. The stairs were all puddled with sour-smelling urine. I soaked my shirt in it once or twice before deciding I couldn't go up the steps on my belly like this.

At one flight I twisted some brass device that looked like a staple-shaped dresser-drawer handle attached to a brass door hinge. It was an effortless turning, and the "ceiling" lifted smoothly. But, for some reason, as I went up the stairs, the clearing was still so small that I had to climb on my stomach. I even tried to avoid the urine by moving to the side, only to find that farther left, where the steps were dry, the clearance shelved down to nothing. I would get up to the next flight and turn the knob to raise the "ceiling" again.

I knew that some big, black, gangster-like guy had pissed all over the stairs and then lowered all the "ceilings" so people would have to climb through his mess. I knew the man would get mad that I was raising the "ceilings." But I had to raise them, so nobody else would have to deal with the urine.

I reached my apartment. The door was open. Someone, possibly my mom or someone like my mom except my age and possibly even male, walked through the living room to the door with a couple baskets in her (?) hands.

She said, "I finally found the bad smell. It was this -- a bunch of dead mice." (She might actually have said, "I found a bunch of dead mice. Let's get them out of here before they start to make a bad smell.")

She showed me a wicker-type basket about the size of a baseball cap, filled with that cellophane-ribbon Easter grass and a few small, snail-shaped pieces of organic (?) matter that looked kind of like imitation crab and/or calamari. Then she showed me the other basket, which was longer, like a bedpan, and full of decayed flesh of some sort and some sundry, garbage-like material.

She walked out onto the landing and threw both baskets down the hole made by winding around the staircase flights. I thought the hole was too narrow for the baskets to fit through. But the bounced and scuttled their way down to the ground floor.

I had shouted for the woman (?) not to throw the baskets. I knew that they'd land in a prominent spot and that somebody would see the garbage and, assuming I had left the garbage there for a long period of time, assume also that it was okay for them just to pile up their garbage right in the apartment lobby, thus requiring me to clean it all up for them.

I looked down at the one basket I could see. I'd have to get down to the ground floor and pick up the baskets right away. But I just really didn't want to wade through all that piss again.

Dream 2

I was watching the English-dubbed version of Steamboy, which had a preface. I didn't recognize any characters in the preface. I felt like something was wrong, like this was a dream-like mistake. But the thought soon faded out of my mind.

A line of the "protagonists" marched alongside a tall structure which was like a box full of columns of different colors of paper: a column of vanilla yellow, a column of mocha brown, a column of pale blue, etc. The characters all also had something like folded towels in their arms. They all marched along like zombies or hypnotized people.

A narrator said, "The scientists were warned to avoid the building and to cease from (XXXXXing anymore). But they didn't listen. At last the calamity occurred."

Now the "building" collapsed. The characters apparently disappeared. Stacks of paper, enormously wide sheets, shuffled down and out of metal frames which formed the skeleton of the building. Dust flew everywhere.