(4/8/06) i am a two-faced, back-stabbing butler; not getting paid

(Entered in paper journal at 10:07 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I had a newspaper unfolded before me. There were articles below a series of cartoons, like the editorials page. But the cartoons were actually comics. The main one I saw was Hagar the Horrible. But the cartoons were superimposed on each other, not frames in one strip, or strips in lines of their own, but all the frames/strips cluttered on top of each other.

The Hagar the Horrible frame was one of the larger of the different sized strips. In the comic, Hagar stood on a boat, but like he was on a stage, and a butler-like person in a black robe stood before him. The butler-like person said nice things to Hagar, but with condescending overtones.

Now I saw a crowd of people behind Hagar, like in an amphitheater, just like Hagar was on a Greek stage. The smug "butler" told Hagar something like, "Everybody is happy to have you back, sir."

But Hagar got angry. He asked, "What are they saying? I can't hear all their voices! I know as soon as you can you'll get away from me and make fun of me with all of them!"

I now saw the voices had captions. They were all supposed to be saying, "HA-HA!" And that's what I thought they were saying. But it actually looks now like "HA-SI" or "HI-SA."

I was upset. I didn't want to upset that I, the smug "butler," could have been such a two-faced back-stabber.

I tried to look to other comics, but I kept looking back to the Hagar comic in hopes that I would see at the end of it that the butler hadn't had such a disappointing character.

Dream 2

I sat on a carpet floor, looking at the side of a bed without blankets. A male friend (we may both have been eleven or twelve years old) was somewhere (behind me and to my right?). As I sat there looking at the underside of the bed I heard a woman's voice as if I, the adult I, were talking on a phone (though the "child (?)" I answered).

The woman, older sounding, like a grey-haired operator, told me that I was not going to receive huge gaps worth of my pay. I envisioned my pay schedule like on a calendar, where boxes were weeks.

The dark boxes were weeks for which I wouldn't get paid. I started to get angry. But when I realized there was nothing I could do I got sulky and desperate.

(8/16/07) my sister the care bear

(Entered at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was a clear day. I was on a footbridge over a large body of water, possibly a river like the Hudson, although it seemed as vast as an ocean. I was in single file with other people who were around my age. The footbridge was like squares of board bound together and floating on the water, with handrails built on for balance. I may have been the second to last person in the line, with a woman behind me.

A small ship came up to us. The ship barely reached out of the water. It had a flat look, like a garbage barge, but its sides had (paneless) windows or portholes and it was plain that nothing was to rest on its tops. The ship was rusted all over. It headed at one spot in the bridge where there was a gap of a couple feet.

I thought the ship's pilot thought the boat could get through that small space. But when I got past that spot and the boat shifted its course to follow us, I knew it was just trying to scare us.

The ship hit the bridge at a spot we had just passed. It lifted up a fair section of the bridge. I told the woman behind me, "Get ready to get wet!"

The part of the bridge I had pulled up now recoiled deep into the water, pulling the nearby sections down with it. I was carrying a backpack. My cell phone was inside. As we were pulled down, about waist-deep, I worried about my phone getting water damage.

The ship had passed. I thought the woman behind me would ask me how I knew the bridge would be pulled underwater. It seemed like nobody but I had seen the ship. I thought of how I would explain the ship to the woman.

I was now walking on a nice, cobbled path in a shaded corner of an area like a zoo or a botanical garden. The trees shading the path were like thin pines. My sister walked behind me. A few people walked around nearby.

I was angrily engaged in telling my sister how rude the ship's pilot had been, first to choose to go under a bridge that nothing could go under anyway, and second to make it clear that it wasn't just choosing any place to hit the bridge, but that it chose to hit right near the line of people walking.

As I continued explaining this,  turned us off one path to go onto a path behind a chain link fence. We had to walk over a small mound made up of soil and old fence parts to get in. Now the fence was on our left, and some small, long building was on our right.

A black man with long dreads followed us. I felt like the man was a security guard. I was trying to explain something, possibly having to do with the physics of the bridge's movement, to my sister. I now tried to do it in an obvious way. I wanted to show the man by my speech that my sister and I were doing nothing to break the law. Plus, I didn't want the man following us around.

At a certain distance the fence curved to join with the building, making a dead end. We had to turn around. But the fence had old chain link fence, and old, red-painted slats and wire fence, piled up against it pretty evenly.

I ran up the piled up stuff, acting like I would jump over, maybe even thinking I would jump over. But when I got to the top, I hesitated. But the man who'd been following me and my sister ran aggressively up the side and may even have jumped over the fence, thus no longer following my sister and me.

During all this, my sister had asked me a question (about the physics of the bridge?). I, having been so frustrated with the man following us, got angry at the question and answered in a snide way. I felt bad: I could feel my sister was sad because I'd treated her rudely.

We walked past the entry and toward the doorway of a house-like building. I went inside. My sister went out to a stone bench just to the right. I only went a step or two into the doorway. In the room were adults, mostly Mexican men. One in particular had a big mullet hairdo. I felt like a child. I may have felt scared of the men. But something about them all was amusing .

I realized I hadn't patched things up with my sister yet. I went out to the stone bench. A weird figure like a plasticky, one-foot-long panda bear doll lay face-down on the bench. The stuffed animal was my sister. It was covered in big, purplish ants. Some of the ants had embedded themselves in my sister, as if they had melted and molded the plastic to encase their bodies.

I knew the ants had all bitten my sister and that she, allergic to the ant bites, was now either dead or in a coma. I called to my sister, moaning and crying. I brushed all the ants off her body. I couldn't believe there were so many. I thought, How could I have left my sister alone where I knew there were so many ants? I wandered down a slope in the sunlight. My sister still lay on the bench.

Now some of the adults (I still saw them as adults while I saw myself as a child). I was in a small living room. The adults, maybe four or five of them, all Mexican, were trying to draw me all the way into the room. I stood behind a corner of wall and a TV on a stand.

The adults told me, "Look -- she's alive again. We fixed her!" I thought, That's impossible. She's dead.

Now a Care Bear stood into a small portion of my field of vision. Its face had a strangely human look. The face, too, was more male than female. The bear could only stand, walk, wave, and smile. I didn't know how they thought this Care Bear could fool me. It didn't look like my sister. It wasn't alive. It was just a robotic stuffed animal.

(8/19/07) i can't live with you guys!; embarrassing pink t-shirt

Dream #1

I woke up in a house I was living in with my family. I realized this first night I had spent with them would be only one of many nights. I didn't know how I had let myself lapse into living with my family again.

In panic I got out of bed and ran into my mom's room. All the rooms in the house were messy and had a half-fashioned feel to them. My mom slept on a low bed, perhaps like one mattress on a floor. Someone else slept on a similar "bed" beside her. The "beds" were at an odd angle to one another.

I yelled at my mom, "This is it! I can't do it! I can't live with you guys! I'm moving out today!"

Dream #2

I was in a car with my mom and my brother. It was night. We were driving around in a white-lit parking lot, possibly just after or at the end of a rainfall. My mom was driving. I may have been sitting in the backseat. I may possibly even have been playing with toys. I was the size of a child. I may have been a child. But I thought and spoke like an adult.

We were trying, by driving, to get into a botanical garden. My brother was getting a little frustrated. He was saying snide things about my mom's sense of direction. I said something like, "Well, she knows what she's doing. We'll be okay." We parked in a pace. We got out and walked toward a big fence that looked like fencing and scaffolding outside a construction area.

In a big, open space of parking lot, a black girl who was maybe about twelve years old was breakdancing. She wore a white t-shirt and pink dancing pants like sweatpants. The girl finished with a long series of barrel-roll bounces off the ground. A mother and another woman, both fat, stood by a car, watching the girl.

We continued our walk toward the gate. My brother and I may both have been adult-sized again. My brother said, "I need to go back to the car. I forgot my XXXXX."

I held my hands close to sternum, like I was cold, or like I was talking cute. I said, "That's a good idea. I need to go, too. I need to take off this shirt." I was wearing a girls' pink t-shirt with tiny sleeves.

My brother said, "It's about time. I was wondering when you were going to take that off. You look embarrassing."

I told my mom (who hadn't been visible this entire time, and still wasn't visible) that my brother and I were going back to the car.

(8/25/07) at the air force base

Dream #1

It was daytime. I flew a jet through a flat desert in a clockwise, square route. I flew up from the ground to a large plane. I turned right, descending all that time, to another point. I then turned right again, possibly descending and landing.

I walked into a bedroom like a hotel suite (?). It was a little messy, with clothes slung all over. It was also a little dim.

I could hear, as if in my memory, my (Commanding Officer?) telling me that I had done a good job for my first run. I had flown to XXXXX feet at three hundred miles per hour. I was slightly disappointed that I had done only that small amount, even if it was only my first run.

A woman walked in. She was dressed kind of nice, like a hip girl from a Jean-Luc Godard film. The woman may have been my roommate. The woman said she didn't think she'd be able to make it in to work today. I said I'd call in for her.

I walked into our office, which was right outside my room's door. There were three or four desks. They looked like receptionist's desks. There were tall plants in pots everywhere. The light from the ceiling was a glimmering, watery white. Two girls sat at their desks.

I walked to the back of the office, where it kind of felt like a hair salon, and then back up to the front. I headed back into my room.

The two girls, who may have been Asian, and who were dressed nicely, like the girl who had come into my room, stared at me, or glared at me, as if they were getting ready to expose me for covering up for my roommate.

I stood in a small bathroom. I looked at myself and talked to myself in the mirror. As I did, I saw how I looked more and more like a woman, namely, like my co-worker FA. I wore a white blouse with a slightly frilly collar and short sleeves and a black skirt. I pulled my blouse down to expose my shoulders and chest. I either had no breasts or I couldn't see them.

I sat on a bench built into a wall by a window in my room. I sat there with a man. I was myself again but maybe as a child.

The man and I looked out the window, through the slits in the blinds, to see a man walking across the street. It was a bright, sunny day outside. I knew that this place was the Air Force base.

I wondered how boring and unaccommodating the base would be for people who lived here. But now I saw a shop like a deli or a bodega. It had no front wall, and there seemed to be nothing but candy inside the shop. I thought, You have everything you want!

I looked down and saw on the bench, between me and the man, a clear, plastic container of chocolate chip cookies. The man and I were taking turns eating a cookie. I was making weird noises as I took the cookies and saying silly things like, "One for you, one for me."

I thought, How can I think I"m able to work with the Air Force when I'm doing all this immature stuff?

(10/11/07) waterbed succubus

(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I and my brother were walking out of a white-walled room and into a small hallway, then around a corner and into another room. We were possibly re-enacting a scene where an old man grabbed two little boys' genitals.

But when we got into the second room, my brother had become a woman, probably around my age, but more mature than I. My brother and I may possibly have been naked (and young?) before. Now I and the woman my brother had become were naked. The room was small, rather empty, but somehow cluttered. It was like a pile of something lay or stood under the blanket on the bed.

The woman lured me onto the bed. Suddenly the bed was like a clear bag -- actually like a clear version of a waterbed mattress. Somehow the woman had pulled us inside this bag. There was water, maybe even plant life, in the bag. The woman had pulled me in here to suffocate me.

A couple of times I could see as if I stood outside the bag. I saw the woman inside the bag, beating against it, herself suffocating. The bag was damp on the inside with evaporated and re-condensed water. The woman lay in maybe two or three inches of water. The water looked pure, distilled.

I was back in the bag now. It was now like a white blanket over the two of us. The woman was young, had a smooth face, tan skin, red hair, and thin, blue eyes. I lay as she sat over me. I may have been an out-of-shape man, in a sense too weak to defend himself against a healthy woman.

The woman had set up the bag so that I would suffocate. The whole bag was losing oxygen, but the bottom part lost it more quickly than the top part. The woman could sit over me and watch me suffocate. When she saw I was suffocated she could get out of the bag before she suffocated. She had tricked, not forced, me into this situation.

As I lay dying the woman spoke softly to me. But her comments were somewhat cruel. The woman said that she and a lot of people were jealous of me, and that was why she was doing this to me. She may have started singing a pretty, gentle song to the same effect.

As the woman continued singing I found myself flying through an enormous structure like a dim warehouse constructed of brick and black iron. I flew through "tunnels" consisting of tent-like, greyish, translucent, thin fabric for walls and ceiling and varicolored, mostly purple, pink, orange, and blue, quilts for floors. I hovered only about six inches above the floors. The tunnels may only have been about two feet tall.

As I flew along I saw lifted up flaps along the ceilings of the tunnel. They were exposed to windows which showed high, deep, blue sky. I flew along through sloped tunnels now. The sloped tunnels led up to the ceiling. I thought, If the woman doesn't see me and doesn't suspect, I could fly through one of the flaps and out one of the windows (or out through the ceiling?).

I feel like at one point I flow along over wall-less quilt-floors. I could see down to the floor of the warehouse. I could see all the multicolored" floors filling the warehouse.

(One little thing I think is kind of -- though not extremely -- interesting reflecting on this dream is that, in waking life, about three or so years later, i.e. in about 2010, The American Folk Art Museum, which was at that time located next to the Museum of Modern Art, and was, by then, one of my favorite museums in New York City, went a little quilt crazy, showing an exhibition by Paula Nadelstern, then showing a two-floor exhibition of the history of American quilts, and finally putting on a gigantic show of red and white quilts at the Armory on 66th Street and Park Avenue.)

(4/5/08) the murderer's heroic journey

(Entered in paper journal at 7:42 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A man, with whom I was possibly identified, had killed another man who had been abusive to the woman the first man loved. This took place in a small town. The killer fled and went on a journey in the woods. Eventually he took on the appearance of an archaic hero. He was engaged in battle against mystical creatures.

At one point the man entered a cavity in a cliff wall. Against the back wall of the cavity was an altar-like structure that was also an oracle or a monster. There was a domed, oven-like structure, atop which were two pots with torches in them. At the back of that was a gigantic sculpture in the image of the top half of a human skull. Inside the oven-like structure was a sword stuck in the floor of the structure and standing before the fire.

The man jumped into the domed structure and somehow managed to defeat the skull. There was a rope before the man. He grabbed it, jumped, and swung down and backward into the oven. He grabbed the sword and tried to pull it out. But he missed.

The man should have been thought of, at this point, as having failed. He hadn't been able to retrieve the sword. But he managed to get another chance, knowing that he was the only one who could pull the sword out of the stone.

The man jumped down into the oven again by means of the rope and pulled out the sword. But this time he couldn't swing himself back onto the domed top. He had to grasp onto an edge and pull himself up very awkwardly. As he did, people could be heard booing him, as if this were all a show like American Idol.

The man stood up, hoping he hadn't been counted as having failed. But he had failed, and he was killed in a strange way -- possibly by being shot out of the cavity and against a tree, and then having some implement fly at him from the cavity and cut his head off.

Through all of this episode, the man had been long-haired, big, and muscular, dressed in a bear-skin chiton or robe. But he now looked much like he had at the beginning, when he had been the small-town murderer: shortish, of medium build, olive skinned, with stubble all over his face and wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans.

The man walked through a particularly beautiful area of the woods, with trees flaring orange. He was heading back to the small town, hoping he could live here, having failed at the heroic test. The man arrived at the outskirts of the town, at an enormous lawn of baseball fields. The man then realized he had left the town because he was a murderer and a fugitive.

At this point I was the man, though at certain moments I still saw from outside the man's body. I hoped that the townspeople would somehow no longer recognize me. But I sat down on bleachers, watching some boys play baseball, with the specific hope that one of the boys, an old friend of mine, would see me and be happy to see me.

The game ended. The boy did see me. But as soon as he saw me, I hoped he would stop recognizing me before he remembered that I was the murderer.

The boy said something like, "You should get out of here or you'll be in trouble."

Another boy, kind of fat, kind of tan, with blonde hair, came up from the other end of the bleachers. He asked the first boy, "Who is that? I feel I should know him from somewhere."

I was now a boy about the age of the other boys. I felt that if the fat kid found out I was the murderer he would bully me and then go tell the police I was in town. But he came around behind me as the other boy said, "Does the name Hanley sound familiar?" The fat boy tried to be mean to me, but he only seemed to be happy now. I was acting defensively and trying not to let on who I was.

But as the fat boy continued talking to me he turned into a pretty girl. Another pretty girl, pale skinned, with pale blonde hair, also walked up toward me. Both girls were so happy to see me that they were hugging each other. The two girls and the first boy were all saying something like, "Hanley's back!"

(8/21/08) instructor of the flying building

(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was in a flying building. I might have been a kid, with a couple other kids, or myself at my age, with a couple other people my age. An instructor or guide was with us.

The building was flying all over an enormous city like New York, as if it were giving us a tour. They daylight was golden, and the city seemed to expand forever.

We went past one building I found particularly beautiful -- it must have been enormous, larger than all the other buildings around it. It had a sleek shape, and its glassy walls had a metallic, purple, pink, orange, and gold iridescence to them.

After a while, the building started to go into a spin. I thought we were going to crash. We seemed to regain control, and we were now floating over the outskirts of the city. But it was still like we were going to crash.

We floated over a baseball field which I called Ebbets Field. We descended down to one of the top rows of seats, twisted around, and slammed into some kind of netting which stood at the end of an aisle. This was our crash -- and apparently our building was now small enough for this all to be possible.

For one moment I stood down on the field, looking up at the bleachers. They didn't seem to rise very high.

Now I stood in a big, dim, grey room. I stood in an area that was slightly divided from the rest of the room. The floor between men and the rest of the room rose up (like a step) about six inches, then made a platform about six feet wide. On the platform were possibly a few glasses with thick, figure-eight shapes with yellow and green fluid in them.

In the main area of the room were a group of people who were around my age. We were all waiting for our instructor to arrive. I made a comment about how if she was this late she might never arrive.

Now our instructor was here. The glasses were all replaced (or smashed?), each by three six-inch by six-inch squares of pale wood, the top square of which was painted a slatey grey on its top surface.

There was a comic-book-style drawing of the woman on the platform between the piles of wood. The drawing was of the woman looking over her shoulder, back at the spectator. The drawing was mostly in black and white, with some shading in a pine green.

I looked up. The woman stood before me in almost the same pose as in the drawing. The woman had a tough look about her. She wore a black tank top and green pants. Her skin was olive-toned, her eyes were greenish blue, and her hair was dark red-brown. The woman said something to me about how I shouldn't have thought she would never arrive.