(4/25/05) don't shoot my wife; ten lines; subterranean hangar; morning meeting; nuclear burlap; videotapes and library books

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was possibly in some house where there was a killer. It was dark. A whole group of people were in panic. I now saw a husband and wife sitting in the backseat of a car. A spotlight shined on them. Then someone shot the woman in the face. Apparently it had been the cops who had shot.

After the wife was shot, the man screamed and cried, "No! Not us! That's my wife! My wife! Don't shoot her!"

I saw, in the spotlight, the side of the car behind the back side window. There was a large "Thunderbird" decal.

I was now driving up a winding mountain road with my mom and sister. We were all sad because we were going to a funeral. My mom told us how the person or two people had died. I burst into tears. I could barely control my breath.

My mom said, "What's wrong? Did you dream of something like this happening?"

I cried, "Yes!" But when I tried to remember the dream, I didn't know if I had dreamed it at all after actually seeing it all or even if I was still dreaming.

Dream 2

Someone held something that looked like a candle before my eyes. From the bottom of the candle came smallish roots, like at the bottom of wild onions, but longer. At the bottom of one of these roots grew a potato.

All this time I heard my mom talking about how she couldn't find some item for the longest time, but how some person came into her life and found the item right away.

I now had a small piece of paper before me. I counted ten lines. That was significant. I couldn't believe it. So I started to count again.

Dream 3

I had either arrived somewhere on an airplane or had arrived and was waiting to leave again immediately or was waiting for someone to arrive. I was with my mom and my great-grandmother A.

The plane wasn't quite on time. My mom and grandma explained that this type of plane could only fly when enough people were on it to give it weight for momentum. The number 3,000 was key somehow.

We were way down below ground in some place like a subterranean hangar. I could see people and suitcases in the plane, hanging off of some kind of revolving belt machine in the belly of the plane.

Dream 4

My Americorps crew met our chief SM at some place deep in the heart of Brooklyn. It was still dark outside. We were now driving up to our usual meeting spot (i.e. Morningside Park). We still had to be there at 7:30 AM (though, not noticing the discrepancy, I'd looked at the clock to see that it said 7:52 or 7:53).

I called BA, the Americorps program leader, on my cell phone. I asked if from now on we could do the morning meeting thing more efficiently.

Dream 5

I was part of a group of peasants in a country town that almost looked medieval. The richer citizens had either evacuated the town or were just not letting themselves be seen by the peasants. We peasants had a horse-drawn cart and a maroon van. We were going through the dirt trail town picking peasants up to leave the town.

A nuclear war was beginning here. We even knew we might not have a chance of escaping. The richer citizens might not have known about the nuclear bomb attack.

We were all quite cheerful. Some of us wore burlap-style clothes. Others wore modern clothes. We went past one house, which looked modern. One peasant, with no legs, agilely rushed out of the house and cheerfully got into the van. Another guy, sitting at a computer, said, "Go on! I have more business to take care of. I'll drive on out there."

Something blinked out. When it blinked back in, I was a burlap-clad child in the back of the cart. We were going across a bridge of thin wood, over a small bank and shallow creek. In the distance was a small, rounded mountain.

I felt like flinching all the time. I knew the bombs were on their way.

Something blinked out. When it blinked back in I read from a book, "At the very first instant of the strike only the ground tinted orange."

Dream 6

I had left some movie midway through though I had really wanted to see it. My mom had given me videotapes on which the movie was recorded.

I went to some nice house in the woods that I got to house-sit for a little while. As I approached I saw some kids in the trees, apparently having a good time but also in some minor argument. Seeing me, they yelled, "There's XXXXX! Let's ask him! He'll know!"

I tried to hide the tapes. I had taught these children an environmental lesson which apparently went against the use of these tapes.

A kid asked, "Should we pick up garbage like this?" He pointed to a broken glass bottle.

I said, "No. Only pick up the not dangerous stuff. Leave the rest alone."

I was impressed that the kids had gone out picking up garbage of their own accord.

I went inside. I sat the tapes down in some room. I looked at a book on a shelf. I thought, Maybe I'll read that tonight. But then I realized the book was overdue. I then tried to figure out if it really was overdue.

Finally I realized that this whole shelf was library books. This was part of the library. There were even multiple copies of the book in question. I now tried to decide if I would check out the book.

(12/21/08) L's sick mother; the land of mutated children

(Entered in paper journal at 12:08 PM at girlfriend H's apartment.)

Dream #1

I was inside an apartment. It was smallish, with grey carpet and pale lighting. It might have been early morning or late afternoon. I might have been all alone in the apartment.

My friend R's wife L walked in. Apparently the apartment belonged to R and L. I might have been in there, trying to get something while neither of them were there. But now L saw me. She went in and sat on her bed, which was (apparently) in the living room. The bed was all messy.

I asked L how she was doing. She seemed very mellow, almost depressed. She said she was fine. I asked her how her mom and dad were doing. She said, "Oh, my mom..."

I saw a picture in my head of a cartoon dad and mom at the very top of a greyish-green screen.

The mom popped out of the picture. I understood that this meant that L's mom was having health problems, or maybe that she had cancer.

I had to leave. L didn't want me to go, but, as bad as I felt for L's mom, I didn't want to have or start anymore contact with L or R.

I walked out the door. I wore both my shoes, but my right foot was also wrapped in a brown, plastic bag. I walked down a long, grey-painted, wooden stairway to a small parking lot/road that was bordered by a slightly wooded area. I knew R would be coming around soon. I wanted to be gone before he got here so I wouldn't have to see him. I may have walked another road.

Dream #2

I got onto a small airplane. The seats of the plane were arranged like a bus. The pilots got in. They sat in a seating area like bus drivers might sit in.

The plane began speeding up. The light outside was greyish like on a cloudy day. We coated past a landscape of full, green trees.

As the plane began taking off, I looked to my right, i.e. toward the front of the plane. The light outside was deep blue, like late afternoon, almost night. I saw through the pilots' windows. I thought, I've never been in a plane where you could actually see through the pilots' windows like this!

We passed through two sets of trees, which were arranged on either side of us like gates. We would scrape against the trees as we passed them. The trees may have been half-barren, not full. The horizon was a band of pale purple.

It was now daytime. The pilot was talking to some passengers in the front row as if he were a bus driver. I looked around. We were flying barely above street level, above a highway, following the highway's source. Then the plane was actually driving along on the highway. Finally, the plane had transformed into a regular bus, driving along the highway.

I thought, Well, maybe this is just for the first leg of our trip. I remembered having taken a bus once from Newark Airport to Allentown, Pennsylvania. I thought, Well, once we get to our next place we can take an actual airplane.

I was now skateboarding down the highway. The highway had a weird appearance, like it was smaller or cleaner than usual. The day was warm and bright. There was also a feeling along the highway like it was passing under bridges or just within range of barriers or enclosures, though there were grass slopes on either side of the road all the time. There were no cars. Instead there were kids, maybe teenagers, playing all through the street.

I tried to keep off to the left shoulder of the road. The shoulder was lined with tan bricks. My skateboard kept moving without any effort from me: I was going down a slope the whole way.

I was trying to avoid the kids because I didn't want to interrupt their fun, but also because I didn't want them to think I was a kid, too, and have them start bothering me. But eventually some kids did start to notice me. I skated over to the right shoulder of the road in hopes of avoiding them. But they followed me.

I got off my skateboard. I walked up onto the grass slope. Here, too, were kids in small groups, like picnic groups, playing here and there under the wide shade of the sparse trees.

I reached the top of the slope. The space was empty of trees, completely open to the clear, blue sky. All around me I saw rolling hills of grass, with small groups of kids playing everywhere.

I was being followed again by a group of kids who walked with a zombie-like slowness and will-lessness. I tried to avoid the kids. I walked to my right, toward a rocky cliff. Three zombie children cornered me at the cliff. They all looked like average, slightly troublemaking, white teenage boys. One wore a brown t-shirt.

I knew if I jumped off the cliff I'd die. I hadn't been afraid of the kids before: I just didn't want to be bothered by them. So I figured there was no use being afraid now. I might as well just see what they were planning to do.

But the kids didn't reach me. They may have stopped. The head of one of the zombie kids suddenly re-shaped. It puffed out into a grotesque circle, like out of a Garbage Pail Kids card. The kid seemed to be doing this in order to make me afraid. But I still wasn't afraid. Another kid expanded his head so that it grew a leg and an arm, both of which had a gross, rubbery appearance. I was trying to figure out what kind of disease these children had that was making their bodies do this.

I was now in a house or an apartment. This place may have been underground. The place was only half-lit, as if a few random lights in unseen rooms were throwing into the main room the only light the room had. The place was sparsely furnished but seemed cluttered nonetheless. There was a lot of activity, maybe from a lot of children running around. The place seemed more like a mental hospital than an apartment or house or even a school building.

At first I was floating, as if I were coming down a stairway and into the main room. I tried not to attract anybody's attention. I thought if anybody saw me and tried to connect with me, they'd give me whatever disease they had.

I floated through the main room (over an air-hockey table?) and into a very small, lit hallway. A couple kids ran out of a doorway to my left. As they ran past me they mutated themselves. One added limbs to his head the way the other had done. Another added bubbling lumps, two or three times the size of his actual head, to the back of his skull. A little girl came out and mutated her head so that it looked like a short body attached to a tall body at the neck, with the tall body in a pink dress and the short body in a blue dress.

Finally a woman came out of the room. She looked like Daryl Hannah's Pris character in the movie Blade Runner. She was very sexy and sleek. She wore a black and white striped tights costume and had spiky, pale blonde, almost white, hair. She herself was a mutation. But she was known as the "mother" of all these children. She had hypnotized them to be mischievous. But she was like a role model to them, so even if they weren't hypnotized, they probably would still be mischievous, if that was how she told them to be.

The woman touched me. I knew that since she touched me, I, too, would probably also start acting mischievously.

(2/2/09) not worried about zombies; afraid to skydive

(Entered in paper journal -- somewhere -- at 9:01 AM.)

Dream #1

I was in a big house with a group of people "my age" (probably in their mid-twenties). Some disaster had happened, in this house or throughout the entire world, which had caused certain people to become zombies. We were investigating this house, either to find clues about what had made the people here become zombies or else to find additional zombies. The main group of us was sitting in the kitchen. Some of them may have been playing with "high-tech" devices.

I went upstairs. The downstairs had been small and tight. The stairwell also seemed small, flimsy, cheap. The upstairs was large. There seemed to be three high-ceilinged rooms. I only went into the center room. The room was dim, with natural light coming in through the tall windows along the long wall opposite the stairwell entry. The room felt empty, but I also felt a cluttered atmosphere somewhere. I might have seen something like an Othello game board with pieces on it.

I felt like I was now in danger of running into zombies. I knew if I saw them they'd attack me quickly and make me a zombie.

I was floating in the air, up near where the tops of the doorways would be. I was now floating downstairs, just above the stairwell and just below the ceiling of the kitchen. There was a pretty girl sitting at the table. All around was clutter. The place was bright with natural light.

The girl was either reading a newspaper or looking at some technological device. I may have been trying to get the girl and maybe some other people to come upstairs with me for protection against he zombies. I may have seen the zombies in my head -- a mother and two or three children, huddled together in some corner of the left room, clothes in robe-like garments, looking very poor and tired, but ready to spring like wild animals.

But the girl didn't seem to care about my urgency. She gave me a blank, almost annoyed, stare. For some reason I thought this was an example of why the fight against the zombies (or "zombie-virus") would be lost.

Dream #2

I was talking with a group of people. We were all getting training on skydiving. we may actually have been inside the plane, which may have been pretty empty inside, just the frame of the plane, metallic, slightly dusty, greyish or whitish. We may have been preparing for our first jump.

I wondered if I'd have the courage to make the jump. I thought there was only a slim chance that I'd live, anyway. I thought I was such an absent-minded person that I'd probably forget everything I was supposed to do on the way down, even though the process was actually pretty simple. I thought for sure that I'd get sidetracked by thoughts or looking around and totally forget to count down to the opening of my parachute. I also thought that perhaps the sight of the ground would scare me so bad that I'd lose track of everything.

I thought perhaps I should tell the instructor that I really couldn't do this jump. But then I thought the instructor would call me a coward and laugh me to scorn in front of everybody else. This really seemed awful -- most of the group were girls, and I really didn't want them to think of me as a coward. I thought I'd just go through with the jump, and let happen whatever would happen.

I could imagine myself descending from high up. Then a weird vision of a pinkish-orangish V, laid on its left side, with the base longer than the upper part, now appeared before my imagination. It may have slid into wholeness before my eyes, as if it were a changing measure of speed.

I now stood on the ground in a wooded area with a small group of women. One woman and I stood before a few large, red coolers that were stacked up by each other. The woman was sorting through some of the coolers, pulling stuff out and putting stuff in, making sure we were each prepared for our flight and first jump. I hoped the woman would find something missing in my cooler, so that I wouldn't be allowed to go up.

Another woman came into the scene from off to our left. She was carrying small coolers or boxes wrapped in clear, plastic wrapping. As this woman entered, the woman at the coolers had me help her pull some stuff out of the coolers. She was handing me items like white, plastic half-cubes (like bookends, almost), wrapped in clear, plastic bagging. Some of the items may also have been like plastic cubes with no top and like styrofoam coolers with removable tops.

At some point while I was handling all this stuff, the woman at the coolers may have reproached me, saying something like, "Don't even try to hope that something of yours is missing. You're going to do this just like the rest of us." I felt ashamed for having been called out as a coward before the other women.

(2/18/09) airplane flight and murder; walking on hands

(Entered in paper journal at 8:58 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I needed to get somewhere. I was pretty sure I'd be late. I would have to take an airplane. But I'd heard the airplanes weren't flying, for some reason. But now I was on a private jet. It lifted off very quickly. It was as if it lifted off by tilting its left side upward. We were high in the air. I found this hard to believe -- I really thought that all airplanes weren't allowed to take off.

I sat on the left side of the jet. I sat near the back. There were just a few other passengers on the plane. The interior of the passenger area was grey and dim.

I looked out the window. A gigantic passenger jet was right beside us. We steered under the jet as if it were just a normal part of flight. Another huge passenger jet flew past us, either going straight up or straight down. It was an American Airlines jet. Its underside was gleaming, polished, mirror-like steel. I knew this plane was going to crash.

We were over an ocean. It was now like we were flying low. I could see down to the water. A plane like a gigantic military prop plane floated with its top part out of the water. The only thing I could see were the wings each of which had three propellers. It looked like a blue whale being pulled out of the water.

We had now landed. I owned this jet, apparently. I walked to the front and down a couple of steps. I turned to face some man, with whom I was here to do business. To my left, at the top of the steps, was the pilot, who looked a little rough, grizzled, overweight. I discussed the details of the day with the man and then asked the pilot if he could find a suitable time for us to leave.

I now stood in front of a shack. It was a sunny and hot day. The shack looked yellowish and in decent shape, though the porch may have been greyish and dumpy. The front yard was all barren. I stood in a muddy circle with a shallow layer of something like water or sugar-crystal-like slush.

My brother stood in front of me. A couple messy-looking white men stood off behind my brother and to my left, probably by a pickup truck. My brother was crying to me. He had a very sad face, like he was apologizing, as if he thought he'd disappointed me all his life.

My brother said (holding up his right hand, back-side to me, sideways, in front of his forehead, with his last three fingers extended and his forefinger and thumb bending and touching to form a circle), "There were two of them. But I only killed one. One, two three."

I knew I'd have to turn my brother in for murder. But I also wanted to show him that I loved him despite what I had to do.

Dream #2

I was in a dim kitchen, facing a refrigerator. There were a couple small children aimlessly, quietly walking around. A woman stood to my right. She may have been "my mom." She opened the refrigerator door. The fridge was full of garbagey stuff wrapped in brown, plastic shopping bags.

The woman apologized to me for something. I looked at her. She was tall, tan, blonde, with long hair and pale blue eyes. She looked like a girl who used to be skinny but was now quickly getting fat. Her arms looked skinny, but from her rib cage to her hips she looked distorted -- not fat, but widened, as if her body were widening out before it rounded out. She wore a top that wrapped around her breasts and then behind her neck. It might have been attractive when she was skinny, but not now.

I sat out on a field on a hillside. Behind me, upslope, was a large vegetable garden. All around the garden the hillside had pale green grass, golden with light dew and pale morning sunlight. Beside me sat a couple of women. One of them may have been my mom as a younger woman -- less overweight, with short, dark hair. She reminded me of my somehow of my mother's mother. The other woman was very beautiful. One of the women was talking about how she was becoming a lesbian and how she was becoming attracted to the other woman.

I was now "walking" around by propping myself up with my hands while I was in a asitting position with my legs straight out.

I was acting like I was "walking normally," which was supposed to show I was unaffected by what the woman had told me. But I really couldn't walk normally. I "walked" along the bottom of the vegetable path to the right side, then up to the top and over to the top left corner.

There was a chain-link fence around the area with the vegetable patch. The fence was maybe ten feet high. My mother (more like at present) stood there. A few of "my nephews" were playing around her. Some were outside the fence. My mom was letting them in. One of them, maybe my second oldest nephew, showed me or gave me a toy like an action figure.

Something about the situation was very upsetting to me -- perhaps everything seemed dirty and sticky, and I didn't like it. I started climbing the fence (which my have had barbed wire at the top), oping I could jump over and escape for good.

(10/19/09) dream of exile; borrowing from sydney pollack

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A scene that was supposed to be from the anime Last Exile. Dio was being pursued by his sister. Dio was riding a vanship. Luciola was his navigator. Luciola stood upon the back of the vanship, before a large gun which stood there. He loaded up the gun with purple, circular stickers which had been on a rolled, wax sheet. The stickers had been arranged in a grid-like pattern. I wondered if Dio would actually allow his sister to be killed, and what his personality might be like after that.

Dream #2

I stood before the bar at a bar or cafe. The bar was so tall that I had to stand on tall chairs just to get my chin over the bar. The light in the cafe (?) was yellow, the walls also yellow. There were a lot of people around me.

Somebody asked me something like, if I'd needed money, why didn't I just ask for it?

I looked to my right. Sydney Pollack was standing on the floor, looking into a bagel case, which may have been lit with fluorescent lights. I spoke about how I needed ten thousand dollars. When I said that, Sydney Pollack turned his face just slightly toward me.

I now stood on the floor, to Pollack's right. I may have been talking in his direction, though not directly to him, about why I needed the money.