(1/25/05?) satanic pool; lightning television; tannencock; bad shoes for the marathon

(Entered in paper journal at 1 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I don't remember all of it. I flew through some cemetery and avoided the pull of hungry spirits. I might have "remembered" talking to BN about how some insects like to suck your blood. And all of this may have happened twice, too.

I arrived at a Satanic temple. There was a pool or fountain, then a huge balcony of stone with two black, hornlike shapes on the sides of a narrow gate.

Inside the pool was a circle of people in white clothes and a crescent in goldenrod clothes. I said a fighting incantation, which wasn't to the Devil.

Now the first time something different but just as treacherous happened. The second time I called the forces of the people to rise up, to create sky-reaching columns of white and sky-height flowers of gold. But nobody moved.

For some reason I jumped into the pool. Three people had been there to kill me. But now they were my three female friends, who tried to reach me but were grabbed and held hostage. But now they were let go.

Now the pool was like a regular, old indoor pool. The woman were now someone like David Bowie.

Dream 2

I was in a car or train with my mom and brother. We were in a hilly part of the desert, which was crisscrossed by old steam trains. The sky was purple and thundery. In the backs of our seats were TVs. I was afraid even to be "driving," let alone to turn on the TVs, because of the thunder.

But my brother, who was now my crew mate MG, turned on the TV. But then he walked away. I had been talking bad about him. Now he didn't want to share his TV knowledge with me. But I eventually found a show we both liked. I hoped by watching it I could get him to come back.

Dream 3

I was in some dim upstairs art-workshop-type room with a group of people at widely spaced folding chairs and folding tables. Old paintings hung from the ceiling or were propped up on thin easels. A teacher who looked like Angelica Huston had just assigned us to come up with a small skit in reaction to the work we had just seen.

(After a couple skits?) a guy who looked like Owen Wilson stood and said he was going to give his sketch now, so all should be prepared. he walked out the door and was gone for a few seconds.

When he came back in, the teacher was indignant. She said, "That's just a lazy way of getting out of doing a sketch like everybody else."

I said, "No. He's doing a whole sketch based on the plot of a very popular children's book. He just needed to go outside to prepare."

She said, "Oh. That's a wonderful idea."

"Owen" had a bunch of blankets and a children's book in his arms.

Everything was now over. I was hiding somewhere in the workshop. I had gotten dressed in a woman's blue sweater, something like a pink scarf over that, and a maroon, satiny pair of boy-shorts. But someone had spotted me and said they already knew all about me. So I walked along a darkened area with light shining dimly on some tiered displays.

I headed to the bathroom. As I walked up to a urinal I saw, at the far end, Alfred Hitchcock walk out of what looked like a shower area. I waved at him with my right hand, then looked back down to the urinal, hoping Hitchcock wouldn't notice either that I was only half-dressed or that I was only dressed in women's clothes.

(Entered in paper journal at 7:30 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 4

I was running a marathon with everybody from my NYC Americorps program. None of our shoes fit and all of our laces were untied. we had to run a little slower just to keep our shoes on.

We finally got to the final track. The stadium was empty. MG and I were in the lead by a pretty good distance. I thought MG would bolt ahead. I thought he couldn't be having as much trouble with his shoes as I was, and that now he'd finally bolt to the finish. But he actually fell back.

I ran to the finish, which was actually down some stairs to the ramps for the levels of seating. All around me were Mexican workers with brooms, mops, and dustpans. None of them even paid attention to me.

(3/5/05) escape from the doctor's office

(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a doctor's office. I wanted to see my doctor, but nobody would let me. I got mad. I filled out (or had filled out) a bunch of forms which I now handed to a line of receptionists, most of whom were young, tall, and handsome, but scraggly, men. I now found out that all these men were doctors who kept coming at me to prevent me from seeing my doctor, who didn't want to see me because I made him feel less intelligent. But I was coming to see him so he could help me help my brother.

I kept being forced right as I lost more and more forms to other doctors. One of the doctors found a stray scrap of paper on which I had written something nasty.

It was now determined that I was to see a certain doctor, young, tall, with a huge, frizzy head of hair. I handed him my papers and yelled at him that I wouldn't see anybody but my own doctor. He said okay, but I knew he had power to make me see him instead.

I ran out of the office. At first I just wanted to get as far away from it all as possible. But then it was like it suddenly didn't matter anymore.

It was dark, dry, and cool outside, like a late spring night in Flagstaff, perhaps. The building I came out of had a large lawn surrounding it that touched a road that seems now like a somewhat rural road. There were some buildings and a good amount of people, but it seemed like just a row, a longish stretch off road pulling together all the aspects of a high-class, small-town neighborhood without actually pulling itself out of a surrounding of lonely fields and forests of massive, leafy trees.

I felt incredibly happy as soon as I'd left the building a few steps behind. I took four or five steps before jumping and hovering four or five steps. I realized I was about to fly. I told myself to relax the next time I jumped, just to allow my body to float of its own accord. I flew up about thirty feet in the air.

People didn't seem to notice me. Everybody was happy, free, and easy, but unconcerned with anything except getting where they needed to go.

I knew I, too, was going somewhere. I followed this road as it all turned to tall, leafy trees. I knew this was a town I was familiar with. But I couldn't discern what town.

I hoped I wasn't dreaming. I thought, It would be such a letdown if all this flying hadn't really amounted to anything, not even an out-of-body experience.

I said, "No, you couldn't possibly be dreaming. You're going somewhere, aren't you?"

Now the forest road quickly ended in a "T" intersection, the road perpendicular to me, i.e. the top part of the "T,"

being something like a small town's main street strip lit up for the night.

I descended involuntarily only to discover that I was actually in a restaurant not unlike Casa Bonita in Denver, with mazes and corridors of seating areas ramping and plateauing and staircasing into each other.

I said, "Well, shit. I'm pretty sure this is a dream after all. I couldn't be in a restaurant like this today. That's not where I'm going, anyway."

Now a group of "my friends," they looked like the cast from The Life Aquatic, passed me and sat down at a table. There were about seven of them. They told me to sit down. But I had to get where I was going. They pointed me up a ramp (I had long ago forgotten that I was in a dream).

I was leaving, but I kept hearing some conversation from the table that made me want to go back. I kept seeing the image of work gloves with split-in-diameter cylinders of bamboo inside to cradle the fingers. When I got back, the Angelica Huston "friend" was talking about how she had been assigned to serve fifteen years in prison but how a friend had gotten her out in only fourteen.