Showing posts with label back from dead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label back from dead. Show all posts

Saturday, February 18, 2017

(2/27/06) death of a tiger cub; neglecting my best friend; the biker's mistake

(Entered in paper journal at 5:31 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

My friend R and I sat by a smallish tiger whose fur was like a stuffed animal's plush fur. It was R's tiger. I was afraid that if I petted it it would surprise attack.

Now the tiger's cub came up. It looked like a miniature version of a full-grown wolf. I put out my hand to pet it or play a game with it. It bit my hand softly but firmly. It kept squeezing down. I tried to shake it off. I knew that right now it was only a game, but that the tiger cub would soon go too far and devour me.

As I considered this I lost focus. I thought about meat and how meat is packaged. I thought how I myself might be killed and processed as meat. I knew that if I didn't want that to happen I had to kill the tiger cub.

I looked around. R and the adult tiger were gone. I was surrounded by empty Styrofoam and cellophane packages for meat.

I looked to my hand. The tiger cub was now just a fleshy skull about half as long as my hand. Its "jaws" felt like weak, dried-out bones from a t-bone steak. I looked at the eyes, hoping they were still alive. But they were dried-out and, though alive, dying and past the point of hope. I felt awful that I had caused the tiger cub to die by losing my focus in thoughts of rage. (???) I tried to convince myself that I could still keep the tiger cub alive.

I thought of the tiger cub as a fish. I thought, It's only this way because it's been out of the water so long. If I put it back in some water, it will live again. But I was pretty sure this was just a hope that I had, not because I necessarily wanted to keep the tiger cub alive for its own sake, but because I wanted to keep it alive so I wouldn't have to deal with the guilt of having killed it.

Dream 2

I sat at a dining table in a small living room. My friend Y's mom sat across from me. Natural light came in from a wide window to my right. I told Y's mom how bad I felt for neglecting Y all this time. Y's mom said, "Well, you should tell her so."

Y was now to my right, by a couch or a couch facing another couch. She sat on the floor in a knees-front, feet-back position


like she was a kid playing with trucks. She caught me (maybe her mom, too) by surprise by talking suddenly about something very interesting.

I either turned to face her or went to her. I asked her questions about what she was talking about. I could feel her anger and sadness toward me. But I could also feel that she didn't want to talk about my having neglected her. She just wanted to be friends again.

Dream 3

(dream?) -- Drifting as I thought of something, which became a dialogue between me as a woman and another woman. Eventually before me flipped a strip-like animation of many different anime-heroine outfits and body types, until one finally locked.

The strip was on the left side of my view. It took up maybe one-sixth of my field of view. The rest of my view was of a woman in a red suit on a motorcycle on a wide track before huge stands of spectators.

I was alternately the woman and the woman talking to her. The other woman was like a floating vision, like a TV-view that was really there. "I/the other woman" told the biker woman I hadn't meant to compete so fiercely and that the advice "I" was now giving her was completely based on her well-being and nothing else.

I was now one of the two women, not sure which, but definitely on a bike. The other biker gave "me" instructions on how to win the race or maybe just get a lot of points, by performing a huge jump.

"I" jumped my bike and ascended. At a certain height, over the enormous, stands, the other biker told me to perform some pull-back maneuver with my handlebars. I did it. But when it was too late to correct my move, I wondered whether I had made a mistake by listening to the other biker. I thought, We'll just have to see how the momentum carries me.

I now saw from behind the stadium, like I was in  a helicopter outside the stadium. The sky was an incredible mixture of deep blues and deep, vivid blues and deep, earthy blues. I saw "my" biker go all the way above the stands. I thought "she/I" was going to make it.

Now I saw a church wall appear behind the two bikers. The wall was soft, pink-brown stone bathed in pink-yellow sunset light. It was a massive wall, in a "house" shape with a hole at the top and in the center, kind of like a distortion of Philip Johnson's AT&T building.


Seeing that building made it clear that "I" had made a mistake by listening to the other biker. I could feel (though I was no longer in "she/I") the bike tipping backward and descending to the ground far below.

(3/6/06) stomping in my best friend's head

(Entered in paper journal at 5:54 PM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was beside my friend R, to his right. R said a lot of annoying things to me until at last I got angry at him. I jumped up and bashed him in the head. He fell down. I stomped on his head.

I stomped until a sign appeared before me -- it looked like an email or a technical error screen on a computer. It said that I could not push any further because the system I was pushing had been crushed to death.

I couldn't believe I had killed R. I didn't believe it. I stopped stomping on R's head, hoping that he was only "almost dead" and that my stopping would give him a chance to come back to life.

I thought about how awful jail would be.

Friday, February 17, 2017

(3/29/06) death videos back from the dead; the third rail


(NOTE FOR DREAM 1 -- For a while I had the practice of sketching out my dreams as I woke up from them. The sketched out dreams would then be expanded into the fully written dreams later in the day. I eventually stopped this practice. I felt like it was better just to carry my dreams with me and write them down in a brief form later on in the day. However, in this entry, it looks like I reverted to sketching out my dream -- though I don't see the fully-written dream in this notebook. So Dream 1 is in a very sketchy form.)

(Entered in paper journal at 1:50 AM at home in Brooklyn.)


Dream 1

Night -- death videos with friends -- shoot man in head silver gun -- videos finish -- "go to bed" -- "better to be made fun of" -- man call for woman "babysitter" come back -- i'm floating off -- parking lot, mall -- hear sister talk "death videos" "seal eats child, forty miles per hour" -- in mall, woman can't get inside, finds door -- in restaurant, breakfast spot, chinese people -- seals by windows "really children juggling?" no -- everybody smoking -- i order -- order comes -- credit card, lady goes -- i leave tip -- man pushes me -- takes tip -- i tell him be polite, tell him about my job, can't remember, try to talk about Americorps -- now girls all around -- try to tell them move -- have to go -- in camera store -- aquariums, sunlight, fish, blue rocks, want camera -- stroking beard, ask man, beard chokes me, go away, beard fine -- ask man about film camera -- says not worth it, but -- i'll put on hold -- $20? -- makes receipt out of blue gym mats -- ... -- in race with friends after "pit of doom" -- they beat me -- back in pit of doom -- died -- back from dead -- running back into crowd -- see friends, not as cool as i thought -- run with huge crowd down rocky, beautiful slope grass slope to "park gates" -- also symbolize death? -- already see friends down there, out of shape, i'm surprised -- everybody wearing grey t-shirt dark grey shorts or sweat pants

Dream 2

(Entered in paper journal at 5:21 PM on Q-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan toward Brooklyn.)

I was in a car with "my family." It was day. We were possibly driving to someone's house. But now some of us were in the car and already at or near the house.

My mom and my oldest nephew D were by some train tracks and behind me, possibly by another car. I was walking ahead of them, leaving them behind to get to the place. But I looked back because I felt bad leaving my mom and D. I saw D was about to touch the "third rail" on the train tracks.

-----?----- I yelled, "Don't you dare let him touch that rail!" My mom stopped D. I decided that we should all ride together.

We were traveling along a hilly suburban road, like in a developing mountain town. Now we were at the house, which was plain and solidly purplish-blue, like a painted plywood board.

My friend CV stepped out and shook my hand, talking about how long he had waited -- how much everybody had hoped -- for me to get here. I thought his manner of speech was somewhat weird, like a sweet old lady speaking. And I'm pretty sure I didn't think I was supposed to go into the house. At least, I couldn't stand everybody being focused on me.