(10/28/04) scottish dream; big underwear and push-ups; quarters for laundry

(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM at my friend R's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

My oldest nephew's school puts on a performance of Macbeth. "My nephew's dad" there. We must avoid him.

Also visit old lady who doesn't want to be seen. See story of using hot water.

Play about to start. Now we on stage, I am one of Weird Sisters.

Play ends after short scene -- becomes videotape -- some kind of whale attached to man's head, then video involving different eras and cars.

Lesbian couple constantly in foreground -- some "narrator" says that people are given what they want.

Dream 2

I am in large room, try to prove to someone I can't do push-ups cause of hand. But I suddenly can.

Dream 3

Went out walking. Come back. See pile of old cassettes, etc. Also quarters. Take quarters for laundry. Then hesitate, might be brother's. Then look through stuff and decide alright to take quarters.

(Daytime journal entry.)

Before time gets too close I need to get my dreams down in a brief but coherent form. Three remembered from last night.

Dream 1

My oldest nephew's school was putting on a performance of Macbeth. "My nephew's dad," some strange, violent man, was there, somewhere. He wanted either to kidnap my nephew or to hurt or kill him right here. We had to avoid him -- strangely, it may have been that had we seen him, we would have been obligated to let him be around my nephew.

My brother and I now went off while the kids were rehearsing. We may have thought my mother was staying close to my nephew or that the teachers would watch him closely enough. So we went to a classroom in some small, dim hallway. Inside it was like a mix between an elementary school classroom and a one-bedroom apartment. A thin, old woman with nice, grey hair greeted us smugly in a little doorway.

Things got kind of weird. It was now like we were in a dark, empty room, almost a stage. The woman didn't really want us there. But we weren't "we" as much as we were participating as characters in one memory of hers of people who never wanted to see her because her place was always so strange and unkempt. She had "us" sit on log stumps.

Then the scene changed to something like a small apartment in the 1940s in New York City, although the Nazis were invading. The woman was using hot water to clean something. But there was something about the hot water that she was afraid would tip the Nazis off to alcohol or some kind of alcohol-based cleaning product.

Slowly the scene changed back to the setting like the classroom. She said she could offer us seats, but nobody ever wanted to sit in them anyway, so why would we? The seats were folding chairs with the backs swinging halfway unattached from their poles. They might also have been slightly damp with hot water.

We must have sat in the seats, because I remember saysing something along the lines of, "You've underestimated me. I don't mind this a bit."

But now we three were standing together in the classroom, which was nicely lit and mildly colorful, with no desks and still that feeling of also being an apartment.

I could hear lines recited. They were coming through some speaker system. It sounded like the kids were either already performing or else they were far through their rehearsal that they would suddenly start performing.

One of we three said we had to get out there to guard my nephew right now (perhaps it sounded like he wasn't there). One of we three said it was still only rehearsals and no need to worry (and perhaps that we weren't leaving my nephew because this was only the first scene, and he didn't come on until later).

But now I had blended into the play, being one of the Weird Sisters. We stood on a grey stage that depicted a dark stormy shore of grey sand and grey-black waves. We Weird Sisters huddled together.

I spoke a spell and in punctuation threw out my arms, hoping for some strange effect. I got lightning over the sea, two bolts forking off from one bolt.

But the left bolt was almost not there, like a niche in stone, hollowed out to make the shape of something without actually having the material substance, color, or light of a thing.

Now from the sea came a quickly running, jittering crowd of colorfully, ritualistically dressed people, all speaking parts. They must have overrun me.

Suddenly the play was over. I asked myself, What happened to the rest of Macbeth? Now it was like all of this was on a videotape. I rewound the tape and didn't watch but knew it ended the same way.  Suddenly I understood this was all a variety show, and that this section was only the first scene of Macbeth, and that there would now be other acts and performances.

But the videotape once again engulfed my perceptions. It was like the variety show had been taped over.

There was now a show of some guy, a business guy typing on a computer but sitting submerged under the "ocean," which actually looked like the warmish, blue water of a whale aquarium. The man spoke and breathed normally, like he was in air.

Some narwhal-looking (except without the horn) sea creature swam up over the man, then sucked its mouth around the man's head. The "narwhal" was black with barnacle-like white, circular blemishes. It let go and then came back and did this again, as the man said something stupidly obvious, like, "This kind of" (whale?) "likes to suck on humans' heads as a show of affection."

Now the "video" showed a music video of all kinds of couples dancing in front of a nice car. Most prominent was a hot lesbian couple wiggling with and fondling each other. Now the view changed to an identical scene, but with a different time period car and with all the couples in (supposedly) different time period clothing.

The two girls were still wiggling with each other and feeling each other up. I was trying to ascertain if they were doing this because they were really together, or if their boyfriends were somewhere else and they were just showing off.

But the "time period" changed again. Now the view was pulled way back. But the girls were still right up front, in plain view. they were now pressed up against each other, lifting up each other's skirt and grabbing each other's crotch. I felt it as if I were one of the girls.

I'm pretty sure I woke myself up, as I didn't want this to turn into a messy situation in waking life.

Dream 2

The space is kind of vague to me now. It may have been outside at first. But now I see a kind of audience area, full of wooden benches, maybe twenty or so rows, very long, the benches painted a sea green.

This was inside something like a classroom. But all kinds of big guys, mostly black, were doing something athletic. Most of them ran around in sweatpants or something like long-john pants but no shirts. Some of them may have been only in underwear. Whatever they were doing -- some kind of running, jumping, tackling drill, was something I knew I couldn't do at all.

I thought, Well, these guys are huge. Look at them. All that extra flesh gives them extra energy.

They had finished their exercises and were mainly heading out, although their pants and underwear stayed around. I looked at the underwear and pants to see what size it was, to see if I was right that these guys were huge compared to me. The one pair of long-john-like pants I picked up were so huge to me that they felt loose even without my having to put them on (?). I looked at the tag, which said something like M-26.

Some guy yelled at me from thirty or so feet away. I looked over and walked over to him. The long, flat benches were now plastic seats of a dingy, turquoise-grey.

The guy said something like, "What are you, a fag, to be looking around in other guys' underwear?"

I said, "No. I'm just trying to see how my body needs to be in order for me to be as sharp as these guys athletically."

He said, "Shit. Can't you do push-ups?"

I said, "I used to do push-ups every day. But then I fell and bashed up my hand" (I held out both hands) "and haven't been able put any weight on it since."

The man looked at me like I was an idiot. I said, "Watch." I got down on the floor in push-up position and discovered I didn't hurt anymore. I started doing push-ups quickly, happily.

I said, "I guess I can do them after all!"

Dream 3

The only thing that need to be added to my dream journal entry here are that one of the CDs was some Beatles or KISS CD, and that there was a piece of paper with writing on it, either the name/names of some boy-band or else a boy-band name with song lyrics underneath.

(4/15/05) not interested in love; payphones outside the party

(Entered in paper journal at 5:40 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

My NYC Americorps crew mate VT had found some boyfriend who looked like a tall, chubby, Middle Eastern, middle-class guy. I found this out somehow. I was now in some area that looked like the courtyard for some Ancient Greek building, or a stage set for Agamemnon.

VT said, "I know you're sad that I'm with this man now. But I can't help it." I kept trying to tell VT that I was actually indifferent. But she kept interrupting me. And the more I tried to tell her I didn't care the worse and worse her interruptions would become, and the more her mouth would fill up with some kind of bread-like food.

VT said something like, "After all, I know you are attracted to me. But that can't be. Now I have this man. Or maybe it can be. If you're attracted to me enough. Or maybe I'm attracted enough to you. I think I am attracted to you. You should feel lucky. You're right. I'm going to dump that man and be with you."

VT was right by me now, trying to rub up against me. I put a hand over her slobbery, food-filled mouth, and said, "Shut up! Listen to me!" She was still talking, even muffled by my hand.

I yelled at her, "Listen! My mom and you have the same name! My mom is only five years younger than you! Do you see now? I'm not attracted to you!"

VT stopped talking. For a split second I saw her stare at me as if I had punched her in the stomach.

Now I was laying on what seems now like a very low transfusion cot in some aisle (maybe makeup) in a Duane-Reade-type store. The cot was yellow, I think. VT was now split with my mom, so I could see and hear "them both" "singly." It like there was thunder in the distance and in the center of my head.

I was apparently waiting to have a baby. "VT"/"my mom" was going to deliver the baby -- though I only saw "them"/"her" in my head or at some very close range hovering over my rib cage.

We spoke about how I wanted to be a woman and how I wished I could have a baby. But now I was finally going to have a baby. But now it was discovered that I was really a man, so I couldn't have a baby, not even the kind they give you in the store.

I was now float-flying stomach-down throughout the store, which was a little ragged and which looked to front out into a mall-like area like Port Authority. All the  time I heard "VT"/"my mom" talking about how I must be gay since I'm a transvestite and I want to have a baby. So they were going to find me a nice man. I told them I didn't want a man. I wasn't gay, and I wasn't interested in being with anybody.

It seems like that voice finally stopped. I realized I'd left something, perhaps a yellow, vinyl bag, by the cot. As I got there a youngish mother lay down on the cot. Her little boy wandered nearby in the aisle as his mother waited to have/get her baby.

I don't know whether I could see my bag. But I decided that since the mother just lay down for her baby I wouldn't go near the cot and make her feel like I was trying to get into her space.

Dream 2

I was at a party at "my friend R's place," which was dark and full of strobe lights and dim-colored lights and rooms. My friend CV kept hanging around me like I had all the answers. Finally, just to get away from him, I left the party. But he came outside with me. It was wet, like it had just rained. The area was like some college campus's dormitory area.

CV said, "I just had to get away from that party. I'm going to use the payphones over there." I saw, by some small student building, a little covered patio area lit in orange lights with four wide seating booths with payphones and these brown-grey painted metal walls on some stand-up payphones.

I was very interested in how wide and comfortable those phone booths looked. But it also feels like there was something technologically interesting about the phones, something a little strange or different that made them slightly alluring and slightly repulsive.

(6/12/05) kid rampage; shitting rocks in the lingerie store; testing gun rights

(Entered in paper journal at 8:55 AM at Starbucks on 110th and Broadway in Morningside Heights.)

Dream 1

Either I or a kid was climbing or trying to climb up a smallish (four- or five-story) building. The building had a smooth face, like it was made, block-like, out of a coppery-grey concrete. I think I may have been the one trying to climb at first, and then it was like the view switched and I was on a far sidewalk, watching the boy trying to climb the building.

I felt like the kid was trying to get up the building to do something destructive to it. I was a guard for the building, so I had to stop him. I was bitter that kids could never stop trying to do mean things to the things I was protecting.

Dream 2

I brought some man into a board room, in which also sat some unidentifiable "good friend" of mine at a long board table. The room itself was wide and long, with wide windows and a blue-grey tint in the free air.

The man I'd brought in sat down at the head of the table while I sat by my friend. The man was tall, black, and very serious. He gave us some information, and then it was like he repeated it. In the midst of this repetition, though, it was like I was with my friend at a play.

We watched some heavy woman on the stage far below. She said some line or gave some monologue and then repeated it. I think it was supposed to be funny. The first time, it was natural. The second time, it was exaggerated.

Now it was suddenly like we were back in the board room, listening to the man finishing his speech. But my friend and I discussed how we liked the first, natural delivery of the woman's line/monologue better.

The man stood up and said, "Fine. You two haven't taken me seriously from the beginning. He didn't even get dressed up for this meeting. If that's the way you treat your bosses, then don't be surprised when you don't get anywhere in life."

I walked after the man down a nice, tall, wide hallway, telling him I was taking him seriously. I was trying, though, also to figure out why my friend and I had started talking abou tthe woman's performance out of nowhere like we had.

The man opened the door to a stairwell. I grabbed the door as he went in. I was about to tell him that I had at least dressed up (in my NYC Americorps "dress outfit" -- khakis and a red-and-white striped, button-up shirt). But I looked down to see my shirt was now unbuttoned.

I looked up, flabbergasted,, at the man as he walked down the stairs. I asked, "Has my shirt been unbuttoned all this time?"

He said, "Yes. Can't you take this meeting seriously enough even to remember that?"

I closed the door to the stairwell and walked back down the hallway. Now I was wearing a ribbed tank top. I looked at my reflection in a pane of dark glass. I was think, nice-looking, and I was just wearing a tiny, white tank top and green, satin panties. I may also have had breasts. I thought, Do I really look that nice? I had to find a mirror to confirm how I looked.

I was now going down an escalator. Downstairs I rushed through some shop-like area to the wall with bathroom doors. I couldn't decided whether I should go into the male or female bathroom. I was wearing some really short, satin robe with fur-like, white trimming and a leopard pattern.

For some reason I thought this was a unisex-looking robe, so I could (and should) go into the men's bathroom and look at myself in the mirror once everybody was out. But as I was about to push open the door, a tall, black man opened the door. I suddenly got afraid. I didn't want to be caught.

I guess I'd needed to go to the bathroom. I shit out a rock-hard, pine cone-shaped ball of shit. I tried to catch it in the robe, but the robe was too short.

The shop was now a lingerie shop. The ball of shit rolled all the way across the shop to the cash register. I ran and picked it up.

I'm pretty sure that ever since I had gotten into the shop I had been an Asian woman, but that now I definitely was -- even though I still thought I was "I."

I quickly picked up the shit-rock, hoping hopelessly that nobody would notice the shit-rock or me. I rushed back to the men's bathroom and into a toilet stall, where I tossed the shit-rock into the toilet and flushed as quickly as I could.

But as soon as I flushed I fell to my knees. I got sick. It felt and sounded like I was vomiting all over the place. But I couldn't see any vomit.

Dream 3

I was in some small, house-like building with a crew of folks, either my NYC Americorps program or my college improv comedy troupe. Some old man had been teaching us. Now he took us into a room of lunch tables and gave us a test.

We had finished the test. He said we had all failed because none of us had listened. He gave us another test. But as we took it I "saw" that the man had sneaked out and away, along some western-style hillside of grass and barbed wire,wood pole fence.

All my crew mates knew the man had left. They also knew that the teacher was going somewhere to get your guns, so that when we all walked out of the classroom he could shoot us. But we all had guns. One of us took the lead. We had to get out of the schoolhouse now and ambush the teacher before he reached full power.

When we got out of the house we were all ourselves and "in our clothes," but it was also like we were in clothes from the TV show Little House on the Prairie. We all crawled close to the ground and inched toward the fence. Somehow, we knew, the teacher could see us if we stood. If he saw us, he'd attack us. We had to catch him by surprise.

(12/8/05) priest and wife of the zombie cult

(Entered in paper journal at 7:30 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

Two teenage boys were on a bus at night. One, the younger, was in the driver's seat. He said something to the older boy in the seat right behind him. The older boy said something like, "We should get going." The younger boy hunched over to his right, heaved a couple sobs, then straightened up and began driving the bus. The bus pulled down what looked like the main street of a small town. "I" saw it from about ten feet in the air.

"I" saw the boys one more time, like they were sitting in seats in the middle of the bus now. They imagined/saw themselves as older, though the people they saw were kids who didn't even look like them and were dressed in older people's clothes and wore fake beards.

One of the boys said something like, I guess it's a bit sooner than I'd like to go. But life is nothing more than a block of flats. I thought to myself, Block of flats? What's that supposed to mean? The phrase kept repeating in my head.

I was now looking at a cemetery on a hill down a side street from the main street. Down the center, there was green lawn. But on either side of the hill-dome were tall, shaggy thickets of phragmites. In the lawn were headstones of various heights.

I thought, Are these the flats the person (woman?) was talking about. But none of the headstones here are actually the flat ones. I took the meaning though, and for some reason knew I had to leave the town.

(Dream entry continued at 8 AM, at my job, apparently, according to the address I gave.)

The streets were full of zombies. Everybody, hopefully, on the bus was alive and were escaping the zombies. As long as you didn't touch the zombies you were fine. But if you touched them, they'd lure you in and attack you. I tried to stay out of their field of attention altogether.

I thought of a TV show where people were talking about some zombie movie where the zombies keep going to the malls. All these zombies were walking around like they were leading normal, dull lives. The only time they'd attack you is when you'd get into their attention. Some would veer toward me as I walked to the edge of town, like they wanted to be attracted into attacking. But they'd never get close.

As I got to the edge of town I thought to the boys again. I hoped neither of them would fall asleep on the bus because the zombies would also attack people who were asleep. In fact, I wondered if I wasn't actually in one of the boys' dreams as his physical body was being destroyed.

The edge of town faded into a vast lawn hillside. I moved smoothly, gliding down the hill (one or two trees, but otherwise just the vast ramp of lawn) as a zombie here or there would come up the slope, dressed up and with nice hair, as if heading to church.

But soon this view faded into a dim, scary, windowless corridor in an airport. I went down a gradual, white-tiled slope with strips of gritty traction. There were more zombies here. These ones were more drawn to me. The zombies mainly looked like 1970s-style businessmen and were in worse states of decay than any other zombies I'd seen yet. Some were hardly bodies These ones would rush at me to surprise me or pop out of doors and try to grab me and scare me.

With these ones I had to keep calm. If I let them scare me they would overcome me and eat my brains. In fact, with one of these guys, if I saw them starting to rush at me to scare me, I'd rush at them and touch them on the shoulder or arm to show myself I didn't have anything to be afraid of.

Slowly the airport changed into a hospital, so slowly I wondered if it hadn't always been a hospital. The zombies were less offensive again. But now they knew I was here, and while they went slowly about their business they stared at me.

I could see the hallway's end: a white wall. I kept waiting for a fade-out into some new place. A "nurse" zombie stood on the right side of the hallway, talking on a payphone. Either she or a male "doctor" zombie was hacksawing into a full-size tin of "ham," which was actually a human brain.

The "nurse" on the phone said things like, "Yes, we're trying to capture him right now, and we know he wants it. We're operating and we'll get it to him right away."

I now directly faced the wall. I felt zombies waiting to attack me, maybe even beginning  their attack. But the fade to a new location wouldn't come.

Finally the nurse said to me, "We need you to take this to him. Will you take it?" I said yes.

I had the tin in my arms. It was simultaneously a brain, a huge chunk of ham, and some little crumbles of greay meat like well-done chorizo. I was taking it to a "live" man, not a zombie, who was the priest of a cult that was turning people into zombies. I thought there was something I could do to "catch" this man or stop him from eating at least this one brain.

I was now a woman, something like the wife of this priest. I walked through a maze-like "hallway" of wood frames and sheer curtains in golden light. I walked into an all-wood sanctuary, up onto the octagonal platform, on which there was a rectangular, narrow, two-foot-high altar.

I lay a tin on the altar.It was something fake, not the actual tin I had been given. Somehow when the priest ate this he would be compelled to confess his guilt, of which I could not yet be sure, and then he would be easier to defeat.

"I" (the woman) heard the priest call, "Is it ready yet?" "I" thought he was down the hallway. But now I saw him sitting in one of the wooden folding-chairs of the sanctuary. He had seen my movements. I was sure he knew I'd planted a decoy.

I walked to the priest. he sat at the very left edge. He was a thick, but maybe short, black man with golden- or yellow-irised eyes. He had a predatory look on his face, which "I" just took to be anger that he'd been betrayed.

I don't know where "I" was now, but "I" felt like "I" was being chased. There was a chance, I realized, that this priest wasn't alive at all but that he was a zombie and was just making himself up to look alive.

Now I "was him," though I still felt "my" (the woman's) fear of being chased. "I" (the priest) jumped out of the chair and onto the platform. The back "wall" was a huge, sheer curtain billowing in the breeze.

"I" called out a saying having to do with the power "I" had gained through "my" evil acts, and how "I" was still alive with them, as if the empty sanctuary were full of "my" disciples. Then "I" continued "my" momentum (?) and jumped through the curtain to an enormous tree at the top of a vast, grassy hill among vast, grassy hills.

"I" (the woman) was almost relieved. "I" knew that if the priest made it into the tree he would stay there for it was the symbol of ultimate attainment of power. But I (the priest) only jumped high enough to brush my fingers against the hedge-manicured underside of the canopy, the limbs and branches and leafs of which looked like those of a Zelkova tree. So, failing to reach the canopy, I flew back into the sanctuary.

I ran after the woman now, demanding to know why she ahd set a bad sacrifice before me. I was now watching both the woman and the priest, though I was still feeling the woman's emotions as if I were still a part of her or identifying with her. The woman was being shoved and thrust against the wall. Now she was naked. The priest threw her back and told her that she would have to sit naked suring the service.

The woman sat in a back row, a row of wooden chairs with very ornate cushions, while everybody else, a half-zombie crowd, sat in the very front rows. The woman (I still feeling her emotions) admired the artistry of the chairs, until it dawned on her that these chairs didn't exist.

The woman moaned in desperation. She knew she had been knocked out or hypnotized or caught asleep. While she had been asleep the priest manipulated her dream to seem very real. She was still in that dream, and her body was up on the altar.

The crowd of half-zombies looked back at the dream-woman and laughed. The woman's dream-body was in the physical sanctuary, and the woman knew it, even though she was mainly perceiving the dream.

She/I looked as intently as she/I could to the altar, to see what they were doing to the physical body. But what I saw was three women on a bed, wrestling with the woman, alternately trying to seduce her and beat her into unconsciousness or death with rolling pins. Some of the women were naked, some were not. There may have been blood. The crowd below laughed at the woman, like she had clumsily gotten herself into an embarrassing situation.

Meanwhile I/the priest stood at the back of the sanctuary. I looked down some steps into a basement, where I could see piles of meat. I called for something to be fetched from down there.

I/an old, nun-like woman, came from somewhere and told the priest, "We don't have any more water from the XXXXX containers." (Something like white plastic or white-coated cardboard.)

The priest said, "It's okay. Just use the water downstairs in the XXXXX containers." (Like cone-shaped paper cups of cardboard color, except as huge as barrels.) "Nobody can tell the difference, anyway.

I'm not sure if I/the nun or I/the pries actually said the container names. We may just have seen them through each other. When the priest mentioned the second type of container, I/the nun could actually taste the delicious, cold water.

(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.

(7/28/06) a place as nice as this should be full by now; my feminine hairstyle and identity

(Entered in paper journal at 9:10 AM at Starbucks at 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I and a group of people went into a very quiet restaurant/bar. The place had yellow, stucco-like walls and a Latin feel. A few of us walked up to the bar. The bartender, a woman, said she was surprised we had the place all to ourselves.

I turned to a friend (who looked like my coworker DE, except with long, black hair and skater clothes) and chuckled to him that what the bartender said was kind of quaint.

"DE" got indignant and said, "Well, it is surprising! A place as nice as this should be full by now. I mean, it's a bar!"

Dream 2

I was in a "barber shop," which was like a basement of some old, Latin-style, cathedral-like building, very plain, dank, etc. I sat in a barber's chair before a plain, arched entrance to a hallway full of arched hallways and stairways. The barber brushed out my hair and styled it in a feminine style. I stood and walked to a woman and hugged her.

Now it was like I watched myself standing (again) and walking to and embracing the woman. "I" was supposed to be a beautiful, skinny woman. But I didn't have a great body, and my face and hair were kind of dumpy. My hair was enormous, below my waist, frizzy, messy. "I" said something romantic to the other woman.

Now (seeing from "her/my" point of view again) I looked to my left, up to a TV on a stairwell wall, to watch the whole scene. Now I saw the woman ("I") standing where the TV had been. She was dressed in a rough robe like a prisoner or a resident in an old insane asylum.

I thought, Well, my hair didn't get cut at all. I have to get it cut.

I sat back down in the barber's chair. A guy stood behind me and began cutting my hair.

(8/17/06) i looked so good -- except my huge erection

(Entered in paper journal at 7:25 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I ran down a street like the business area of the my old, small hometown. I wore a yellow sundress, which was clinging to my skin (because of sweat or wetness?) and clung up over my belly, so my whole front was exposed from my sternum down. I had a very feminine body but a big penis. I was also, not fat, but like I am in waking life, where I am mostly skinny but also have a "food-stuffed" belly. I had long, curly hair.

I ran like I was crazy, hysterical, though I remember being happy in an almost gentle way. I wanted to get home and show my family how feminine my body looked.

I got to a place like a long, narrow shop, like an antique warehouse full of barber booths. This was my mom's house. Nobody was around. I thought that was good -- I could arrange myself better -- put on some panties and smooth down my dress. But I had an erection that wouldn't go away.

I got some panties. I lay on some bed. I kept wanting to wet the bed.

At some point I, standing, saw myself in a mirror. I was shocked to see myself. I was surprised I looked so good -- except my huge erection.

My mom might have come into the room near the end of the dream.

(8/20/06) i can't throw dog toys well; humble thyself; the student project

(Entered in paper journal at 9:20 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a dim living room with a lot of people. I had been throwing a ball to a dog, maybe my friend R's dog. Now my friend R threw the ball to show how well the dog caught when he threw, to prove how much she liked him, and how well he through.

Everybody else in the room felt bad for me, and eventually R painted over his strategy by saying something like, "Well, maybe she wasn't warmed up enough."

I threw a hamburger squeak toy (one of the dog's favorite toys in waking life). The dog fumbled it. I threw the toy some more. After a couple throws and fumbles, the toy became a cassette tape, which was also playing somewhere -- the song "Wild Horses," by the Rolling Stones.

The dog was now somehow my brother. "He" said, "I can't catch when this music is playing. Something about this band blocks my attention."

Dream 2

I walked into a church/classroom. My boss BS was there. The atmosphere was deep yellow from light through the windows.

BS was indignant because he had to teach a certain group of children. I was trying to tell him that there was really something good about these children. I told him, "Remember, the Bible says, 'Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord.'"

BS started yelling at  me, "I don't want some nobody like you telling me to humble myself. I'll humble you if you give me that shit!"

Somehow BS calmed down. The kids came in to learn. I was down steps as if walking toward a lower-level side-exit. I could hear myself somewhere, singing the "Humble Thyself" song. I could feel that BS had accepted his role.

Dream 3

A group of Latino kids and I were outside in a gnarled garden that was their house. Something about it couldn't be helped. We all had to pack up and go to a place in the mountains to fix up the forest there.

We got to the spot. An area of the ground was plowed over. The rest was thick with vegetation.

Some of the kids said something like, "We don't regret having to do this at all, regardless of what you might have thought. We've been looking for a project we felt like we'd actually have a chance to succeed at."

I was now a woman (the teacher or leader of the kids, as I had been as myself). I was also some non-present observer. "I"/"the woman" was driving in a car with a man. The car was full of stuff, like the man and woman were moving across the country.

The woman was so happy (about the kids) she was singing. She was singing a song in Spanish that turned out to be an advertisement for Coca-Cola. When she realized the absurdity, she began laughing. But now she sang a song about a product called SoyPro.

(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?

(10/8/07) perverted hand-washing church; NYC tranny in denver; aztec chess

(Entered in paper journal at 6:04 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was with my family in a house. We had finished eating or preparing dinner. We were washing our hands. The room we were in was dim. I mentioned that one of us, a man who appeared to be tall and pale with dark hair and eyes and wearing a kind of nice suit, had a different religion from us and so had to wash his hands in a sink at his church.

My brother and I walked down a suburban road in dark blue night. We came to a Catholic church. I said, "I can wash my hands here."

There were a lot of black people coming out the front of the church, like a service was just ending. My brother and I had to sneak into the church through the back so nobody would question why we were there. We went in through a back door and into a dim hallway that was pitch black at the far end.

The bathroom was near us, just to our right as we entered the hallway. When we got into the bathroom it was light as day. I looked into the stalls. I saw a pale white man's legs. I thought, But didn't we just turn on the light? (???) Then this man has been sitting on the toilet in the dark all this time.

I thought the man may have been a pervert, lurking in wait for prey. I didn't want to be here long enough for the man to attack me and my brother or to have us be associated with him.

My brother had a box of all kinds of fruit. We might have been washing it off in the sink.

Dream #2

I sat on two beds that were arranged in an L-shape in a dim room. I faced three mirrors. This room was an office for my company, but in my hometown of Denver instead of in New York. I had come back to Denver to work.

In the mirror I saw that I had long hair. As I arranged my hair I realized how much I looked like a woman. Each mirror gave me a different reflection that made me look like a different woman. Each reflection was the image of a woman I actually knew. The women were all girls I had gone to school with or worked with. They were probably all Hispanic. I hadn't liked them a lot, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to be them. But I was impressed with how good I looked. I may have been wearing a black dress.

Now some women walked down the hallway and past the room I was in. They didn't seem to see me, although they looked into the room.

One of the women said, "He's here from New York." I knew the woman was talking about me. I couldn't let the women see me this way, not while I looked like a woman. I was lucky they hadn't seen me already.

I reached forward and slowly closed the door. When the door clicked closed I worried that the women, hearing the door close, would feel alienated, like I had shut them out of the room for no reason other than my not wanting to see them. But, I thought, as soon as I changed back into looking like a man I would open the door again.

Dream #3

I was playing checkers or chess with my brother or my oldest nephew. The board was tan with brown squares. My brother/nephew made the opening move, some specific move he always liked to start with that somehow effectively "finished" the game in his favor. I would usually make normal moves from there on out and eventually lose the game.

But this time I stepped back and thought out how I could move. Apparently the move would always force me to bring out my front pieces, which would leave my back pieces defenseless. This time I moved one of my back pieces in a way that caused my brother/nephew to have to move again, thus taking himself out of the spot where he could constantly take out my front pieces.

Around this point the port had switched back and forth between a real board and a touchscreen computer board. When the board was the digital board, I found it hard, from my angle, to see which piece I was actually touching.

My brother/nephew was at a loss for a moment. I explained to my brother/nephew how I had come up with that move. As I did I saw one of the pieces on my brother/nephew's side of the board, in the lower, left quadrant. It was a big, tan square, like an Aztec glyph. I imagined it clicking two moves to the right. I tried to remember what role this glyph played in the game.

(11/2/07) dirty bathtub; wes anderson's mother movie; fired and buying stock

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my house" with a couple friends. The house was big, but it was very dim, as if light were always coming from some other room. The ceilings were high.

I heard my bathtub start gurgling. I knew my upstairs neighbor was making the water screwy in his apartment to send dirty water down into my bathtub.

I walked into the bathroom. The light was on. The "bathtub" was a wide, flat, rough surface, like a public shower. I thought, This place is so big and nice. It's almost just right. Why does my neighbor have to come in and screw it all up?

The floor of the "bathtub" was all dirty.

Dream #2

I (I might have been a woman) was in a bedroom with a woman who might have been my mother. The mother sat in bed in a soft, thick, white nightgown. She had thick, white blankets pulled up to her stomach. She had red hair. I knew I was a part of a movie. I, as this woman, was trying to get away from the mother. But the mother kept playing games to keep me close.

I looked around this room and thought, Wes Anderson pays such attention to detail, doesn't he? And he's so original. The wallpaper (mostly on a purple, blue, and tan scheme) was like William Morris' style. There were flowing leafs and flowers in stylized, wide forms, making intertwining patterns. But there were also geometric divisions of the patterns, especially a cross-like window pattern which abruptly displayed (???) other patterns.

I thought, Wes Anderson has taken the old and added something new to it.

I turned around and took in the room. There wasn't really a shape to the room. It was like the whole house was a big maze. I now saw into the bedroom (though not quite seeing as the daughter) as if through a billowing, gauzy, white curtain separating the two rooms (and maybe an additional small, dim space).

The movie now seemed to have been made by a different director, possibly Stephen Daldry, the person who directed The Hours. I thought, Well, maybe my old friend R would like this movie, anyway. After all, there is a strange emotional twist to the movie.

The mother was reaching out for the daughter. The whole atmosphere had a plasticky feel to it, as if the characters were plastic toys or robots, not humans.

Dream #3

I sat in some place like the basement of an office building. We all got news that we had been fired. I was outside, trying to figure out what I would do now. I thought perhaps I could practice buying stock and eventually make a living that way. I thought I would start by buying Seporcor.

I walked back down into the basement. The room was full of computers, all at long desks. I found my old computer. I logged in in some way or another. There was a statement about how I no longer worked here, but how I could access information if I wished. I thought of some conversation I had or needed to have with my boss BS.

(1/21/08) not an airport; yo-yo kiva; a real hole in the wall

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Starbucks on Christopher Street in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bus or van being driven to the airport. It was a grey, drizzly day. I sat near the front of the bus. The bus was empty except for me, the driver, and another man. The other man was slightly nervous. He told the driver, "I hear that when bad weather makes flight delays, they sometimes reroute you through different cities on different planes."

We drove along a group of planes that looked weird. One was a small jet with a very sleek face, like a Concorde mixed with a fighter jet. Another was an enormous plane with a very tall bulkhead (?).

The driver assured the man (as we dove around a large building with passenger drop-off areas for passenger for some airlines) that even if his flight got rerouted, he most likely wouldn't have to get on a flight that he didn't like.

I thought to myself, noticing that the driver was making a second round around a large building, that my flight was set to leave at XXXXX. It was already 12:19. Most airlines liked you to be present one hour early. But here I was, less than half an hour from my takeoff time, and still on the bus (which now seemed a lot like a plane).

I noticed that instead of airline signs in front of the building we presently drove around, there were signs for supermarkets (Albertsons?) and drug stores.

The driver said, "I don't see why I haven't found your airlines yet."

With some hesitance, not wanting to tell the driver how to do his job, I replied, "You drove the wrong way off the highway. This isn't the airport. It's just a shopping center." I pointed to my right and said, "The airport is back over that way and on the other side of the highway."

Dream #2

I and a small group of people looked down on a cylindrical hole dug in the ground. The hole was about eight feet deep and twenty feet in diameter. The floor and walls were smooth, probably soil. In the center of the floor was a small square dug out of the soil. There was also a rectangular niche of soil dug out all the way up one section of wall. Near the square on the floor was a pile of soil.

A blue toy like a yo-yo had been buried at a precise spot under that soil. Now we would fill the entire cylinder with soil, thus immovably fixing the blue toy in its spot.

But now we heard that GPS or satellite measurements showed that we had placed the toy in the incorrect space by just a few feet. We would have to unbury the toy, get rid of the soil, relocate the toy, then bury it under a pile of soil again, and again confirm our location.

I suddenly felt like all this activity was a joke, or that the people who were telling us how to do the job were laughing at us for actually taking such pains with the job, since it was all pretty useless, anyway. But I couldn't let myself believe that the job was useless, and I couldn't let myself believe that we were off in our burial location of the toy.

There might have been a white "X" somewhere on the ground, which had determined my choice. I felt like the "X" proved that I had put the yo-yo in the correct spot -- though the "X" was not under the pile of soil (i.e. it was not in the current location of the toy) and was almost on the opposite side of the circle. I was going to tell the people with me to fill the hole up as things were, that we were fine.

Dream #3

I was in a bus driving down a city street at night. I was a beautiful, rich woman. We drove down a street full of shop fronts and hole-in-the-wall bars. I thought wistfully about just relaxing and going into hole-in-the-wall bars. But I knew I couldn't. As the beautiful, rich woman, I had elevated myself to a position where I could no longer just pop into places like that. I could only allow myself to go to high-class places and events, like the one I was going to right now.

I saw one particular bar, which seemed to have no front wall at all. I stood in front of it, possibly as myself. The place was small, dimly candlelit, with a few tall-backed, black chairs, a couple tables, a small register-counter, and a long, black bench along the right wall.

Two women and one man walked around inside, talking about some way they had managed to trick somebody into giving them a good deal with something. One of the women, probably wearing a tiny, fluttery, pink skirt and a white tank-top, looked at me as if she were sexually attracted to me.

I walked into the bar. The two girls sat on the bench, the man in one of the seats. I thought I would sit between the two girls, to sit next to the girl I thought liked me.

But now Mexican man wearing a baggy, black, button-up shirt and black jeans, with long hair in a ponytail, sat down between the two women and held the girl in the pink skirt. The woman was obviously the man's girl. She had only been acting like she liked me in order to trick me into liking her. The man sitting in the chair now sat next to the other girl, so that now each woman was already with a man.

The four people continued talking about how they had gotten their way, how they'd tricked someone into giving them a good deal. The four of them looked at me and spoke with me as if they wanted me to be their friend. But I thought, There's no reason. There's nobody here for me to be with.

(3/11/08) fight for your flight; miniskirt women; weird movies and weird sayings

(Entered in paper journal at 5:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a space shuttle which had just launched. But my point of view was from outside the shuttle. I could hear myself talking with a woman who was also in the shuttle. We were talking about how the propulsion tanks appear to drop off the shuttle so quickly when you're watching launches on TV, but how they seem a lot slower when you're actually on the shuttle.

I watched the propulsion tanks drop off the shuttle a couple times, from a couple different angles. Each time they seemed to drop off quickly and, in my opinion, too early. The shuttle itself seemed like a huge propulsion tank coated in big squares of beige tiling.

Now it was like I was coming back down, in the shuttle or in my body (?), over a city. As I descended I thought how I would, according to my memory of this event, land on a building-top in the city. I thought, This time I'll fight for the rights (of astronauts? of workers on the moon?).

Now I was back up in the air, headed down into the sea, which had a dirty, brownish color. The people at ground control who had been directing my flight learned that I was going to fight for people rights. So they misdirected me so I couldn't land in the city and begin fighting directly. I think the people even hoped I would drown.

I dove head-first into the water, did a roll at a considerable depth, and surfaced. I was now  person like David Bowie, or like an alien character that David Bowie might play. I would have to head back toward the city. I stood onto a large square of well-manicured lawn.

Dream #2

I was possibly in a big vehicle (like an RV?) at night with a group of black women. The women all spoke about how they had to lose weight so they could fit into some really small miniskirts. I may have been a woman as well. I sat behind a woman, my legs cradled around her legs, my arms around her waist.

Dream #3

I stood before a thin, plywood wall like scaffolding in an open field or a vacant lot. On the wall were old movie posters. I looked at one in particular. It was supposed to be for a Fellini-esque movie. Depicted on the poster were Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin, and a character/characters who looked like Saraghina from the film 8 1/2.

I tried to remember some of the movie's scenes, which I could feel were very surreal. I heard someone in a group of people behind me say, "Oh, no, not that movie again! It's not even very good!" I may now have felt ashamed for having recognized the movie.

I had wandered down to my left, to a wall of scaffolding behind the first wall. I stopped there to look at a more colorful movie poster that I can't remember. Looking to my right I saw a lot of these "scaffolding walls," like a maze or a small city-street, all with movie posters on them.

I wondered why I should be ashamed to remember the movie from first movie poster I saw. I went back to the poster. I was now carrying "my oldest nephew" on my shoulders. We tried to quote some lines from the movie.

Now we were inside a nice grocery store, like a small version of a Wild Oats store I used to visit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My nephew was saying weird things. A (tall?) thin man with pale skin and red hair stood into my nephew's face and told him not to act in such a weird way.

I told my nephew, "That man didn't say that to be mean. He's really thinking of your own good."

My nephew agreed happily, as if complying with the man's statement, but continued saying weird things.

(6/1/08) my ancient friend; rescued from cannibals

(Entered in paper journal at 9 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was near the edge of a tall plateau that overlooked the ocean. A black dog sat before me at the very edge of the plateau. I was afraid the dog would attack me, but I walked up to it anyway.

There was somebody, possibly a woman, possibly my mother, standing down at the foot of the slope. The person called up to me, yelling something disparaging about my interaction with the dog. The person wore a strange costume, multicolored, like Chinese or Caucasian dress, with a triangular headdress of some kind.

Possibly out of defiance, I knelt and put my right arm around the dog and pet the dog. The dog was like a Black Labrador. It was very friendly. Suddenly I realized the dog was mine or had been a friend of mine.

I was now somewhere like the kitchen in my great-grandmother's house. I was still petting the dog. I grabbed the dog's left foreleg. Something about the leg seemed sickly thin.

I felt the presence of people, possibly Ancient Egyptians, behind me. I may have realized that the dog and I had had a relationship in Ancient Egypt, as if it were a court dog and I were its caretaker, or as if I were some member of the court and the dog had been mine.

Dream #2

I was a woman. I was with two other women. We three were all beautiful and blonde. We probably wore sundresses. We were investigating a house. The people who lived in the house were suspected of doing something bad.

The house was all or mostly basement-level. We had gotten down into the house, into the living room. It seemed like there was nobody there, although we could see that the table was set for dinner. The food seemed to be orange: maybe orange-colored blossoms and oranges or peaches.

Somehow I had gotten separated from the other two women. I was in a dark bedroom. The living room, which I could see through the half-closed doorway, was also dimmer than it had been.

I knew that the other two women had been caught by the people living here and were either dead or being prepared to be killed. I knew now that the people in the house were cannibals and had trapped us to kill and eat us. I knew that the people who lived here were home now, with guests. I had an idea that I could get out of here if I left the bedroom and moved through the living room at just the right time.

But now the man and woman who lived here came into the room. They turned on the lights. The couple were older. They looked like a couple in their fifties might have looked in the 1970s. The husband looked like Larry Tate from the TV show Bewitched.

I knew that the couple had had me trapped in the bedroom this whole time, though I hadn't suspected it before, and that I couldn't have left, even if I'd been given time to try.  A few of the guests also funneled into the room. They all stood around like this was just part of the dinner party.

The husband produced a book, which he opened in order to show me pictures. The book was like a 1960s style cookbook, with photos in black and white and line-drawings (like in CPR manuals) of people preparing food.

But the whole book was on preparing human body parts for being eaten. One series of photos showed an arm being chopped in pieces. It may have been the arm of the woman preparing the food in the photos and line-drawings. The woman may have been cutting her own arm, while it was still attached to her body.

The husband now took on an angry demeanor. He yelled at me for invading his space. He told me something about how all the people around me would eat me sooner or later, and how I would never be able to rescue my friends.

The lights were off again. It was like I was by myself again. But I could still hear the husband. He may have been in the room. He told me to read the book, and that if I started getting hungry I could just start cutting pieces off my own body and eating them.

I now saw, as if I were watching the situation as a movie, a stone-floored outdoor area, possibly near a building. There was a square hole leading to an underground cell. I knew my two friends were in that cell.

Suddenly a group of people like ninjas ran into the scene. They were dressed in thick, navy blue fabric. Their bodies were covered completely except their eyes. Their head coverings were wrapped in layers, more like Arabian turbans (except around the head and face) than like a ninja's small face mask.

The ninjas ran quickly, making windy, shuffling sounds with their clothing. They all slid down a pole or rope and into the cell. They were here to rescue my friends.

(8/23/08) zit as sex toy; i'm a lesbian with my female friend; lured into dead end

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I had three small, dry bumps on my face. I thought they were zits, so I "popped" one of them. It peeled off my face like a film or a dry piece of paper.

There was a hard ball of "pus" inside the film. I pulled it out and looked at it. It grew, became a little gooey, and took on a weird appearance. It was about two inches long, bean-shaped, with prongs coming out of it. The "body" itself had some consistency, but the prongs were soft and flaky. It was almost like a toy, maybe even a sex toy, except that it was gooey, like phlegm or pus.

Dream #2

I walked into a small side hallway (to my left) in some place like a mall or perhaps like the shopping areas in Grand Central. A lingerie shop caught my eye. I looked in as I walked past, trying not to be conspicuous, but interested in seeing if the store's style was something I wanted to wear. But most of it seemed to be things like camisoles, a kind of rigid, fancy style that I didn't like.

The hallway was very small and narrow. A decent amount of people walked through the hallway in both directions, mostly young women. All the shops in the hallway were lingerie shops. I knew I would want to stop into one, and I hoped nobody I  knew would see me.

I turned right, into another dim hallway. I saw a rack of panties, of a cloth, cottony, non-stretching fabric. I thought these panties would be fun to wear, but I realized they'd probably be smallish and awkward on my body, like most feminine-shaped but inflexible articles of clothing always ended up being for me. Plus, I felt too fat to wear those panties.

I grabbed the waistband of my own underwear at the back. I realized I was actually wearing a pair of panties like the ones I had been looking at just now, so that I really didn't need another pair, especially sine this pair already fit less than perfectly.

I now realized that, in fact, all I was wearing were these panties and a matching bra or camisole!

I continued walking down the hallway. The atmosphere alternated between a dimmish, plaster-walled hallway like a hallway in a small, dingy office and a marble-walled hallway, like in a well-built or fancy building.

I turned right, into what may have been the end of the hallway. It was a very clean, white-floored, white-walled lingerie shop that also seemed like an enormous dressing room. There were a lot of girls there, but the place wasn't crowded. The lingerie was all brightly colored, like summer, or like sweetgum leafs in the fall.

I looked at myself in a mirror. I was wearing a pair of vivid pink, almost hot pink, gingham panties and a matching shirt/tank top. I probably looked just like a woman. I might actually have been a woman.

Now I saw KB, an old friend of mine and one of the people I'd worked with on my Americorps program in 2005. I tried to hide myself. But KB didn't seem to mind how I looked. She was more interested in being able to see me after such a long time. But I was still upset to see her while I looked this way.

We were in an adjoining room, which was even more like a fitting room than the last room had been. There was a door outside on the back wall. It seemed to lead out to a foresty area, like around the visitor center at the National Park where I'd done my Americorps program in New Mexico in 2002. The door was open. Bright, comfortable sun flowed in.

KB was sitting on a deep-blue-green couch. The couch was full of girls. I seemed to be having a conversation with KB as myself. But as the girl I also (?) was (?) I seemed to be cuddling with KB and kissing her.

Dream #3

I was walking down a street in a relaxed shopping district type area (which kind of reminds me of some shopping block in Queens). I was on the shady side of the street on a sunny, slightly breezy day. The sidewalk was busy with people, but the overall mood was relaxed.

But I soon found myself constantly having to get out of the way of different groups of people. The first group was a group of white teenage boys, all tan, with golden blonde hair, very cheerful. Then it was two or three tall, smart-looking black men, who were all laughing with each other. I didn't feel stressed out by these people, but I felt overwhelmed, like I was avoiding a tide which would sooner or later carry me away.

These groups of people had been coming toward me. Now I had to get out of the way of a person who was walking in the same direction as I. He was a white man, maybe in his early twenties. He might have been walking with another man who was like him. He carried a bundle of twigs on his shoulder. He had straight, brown-black hair and olive skin, and he wore a dull, navy blue shirt and dull, army green shorts.

The twigs, which the young man might have been carrying for his mother, were supposed to serve the same decorative purpose as cherry blossom twigs or willow twigs. In fact, I even called them willow twigs. The wood was a rich tan color, like on young mulberry trees, and the leafs were compact and vivid green, ridged very tightly, somehow (not completely) like rose leafs.

I had to swerve completely off the sidewalk to avoid this boy, and even as I did this, the edges of the branches still brushed against me, as if the boy were purposely trying to get back in my way.

The sidewalk was now in the sunlight. I walked behind a mailbox and then back onto the sidewalk. I was walking toward a subway entrance (a lot like the PATH train entrance at Hoboken). The building was brick, very clean, topped with a pristine, arching, aluminum or stainless steel structure. The building seemed to back into a grocery store parking lot. This area was even busier, like there were a fair somewhere nearby.

A young boy cut in front of me as I headed down the stair. I got competitively upset and hustled to cut him back off. But as we went down the stairs, which curved to the left, it was very hard for me to walk. It was, in fact, hard for me to move my legs at all.

The young boy and I seemed to be going at the same pace. I thought I could do something like slide down the handrail or even hold onto the handrail and "fly" or "hover" down to beat the boy. The boy seemed to have the same idea. But when I saw he was going to ride the railing down, I decided not to. I decided that riding the rail would be cheating. I could beat the boy, I thought, just by moving quickly, or perhaps by flying.

Nevertheless, I grabbed onto the railing like I was going to ride down it. But it was all covered in brown packing (?) tape. I could feel that, underneath the tape, the railing was broken in a lot of different places. It wouldn't be practical to ride down at all.

Now I was on the right side of the stairwell, where the boy had been. I was sliding down the railign, but the stairway was getting narrower and narrower. The stairway narrowed to a point and became a wall, I saw, before it even reached the actual floor of the subway platform. I'd have to hop the railing to get to the train.

The boy had stopped a few steps up from me, i.e. behind me. His mother had been calling him. He ran back up the stairs to meet her. Originally, I knew, the boy had been heading down the stairs to the train in order to take care of some task for his mother. But now it was like he was an overzealous boy who had headed for the train ahead of his mother, thinking he could be independent of her. Now he was being lightly scolded for having run ahead. The boy would have to go back up the stairs to his mother and then come back down with her.

But I also knew that the boy had run down the stairs to "trick" me. He wanted to rev me up into a competitive state so I'd get stuck in the exact position I was in at this moment -- facing the hallway that narrowed into a  blunt wall. The boy knew well enough to stop ahead of time and head back out of the station, never having had any intention of coming down to the level I was at.

I felt tricked, frustrated. But I still also had to catch the train that was arriving at this station. I was now more concerned with how to get over the railing so I could get onto the train.

(11/30/08) protection lost; return of the bugs; bug operation

(Entered in paper journal at 8:19 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a long staircase like a courtyard with tall, pink, sandstone (?) walls. It was night. The long walkway had a stairway on either side, and in between was an area filled with vegetation, possibly trees and shrubs. There was a huge cupola structure in the center of this area.

I had walked into "my room," as if this place were a college residence. I lay on my bed, the door to my room possibly still open. It was raining outside.

I heard somebody -- in another room, but within earshot of mine, as if we were in adjoining cubicles of an office -- talking about how announcements for who would get fired would actually be today. I had a feeling that I myself would get fired.

I decided to head down to the office of one of the heads of my department, DM, to talk to DM, just to be friendly. I hoped DM wouldn't think that I was talking to her just in order to save my job.

I had a device like a camera on my bed. The camera was broken and I was playing with some kind of glass tube attached to some plastic gadget. The glass tube was filled with a black, powdery substance that might also have been moist or liquidy, blue ink. I took this tube and device with me.

I now stood with my girlfriend H outside the gates of some place like an estate. The light was like early morning, darkish grey, as if invisible clouds were covering the sky. The area all around us was like a desert wood, like a pinon-juniper forest.

I looked behind us to the thick, pink-red stone gates. Behind the gates the land seemed to dome up a bit. Near the top of the dome I could see the dome of a beautiful building that was made of heavy grey and pink stone, looming just over the vegetation.

Looking forward I noticed how much more tangled and wild the vegetation looked.

H asked me, "If we sleep outside the gates, are we going to be able to keep the vampires away?"

I knew we would sleep in a cupola-like (or gazebo-like?) structure that was like a "camp house" tonight. Within the gates we were protected from vampires. Out here, we really weren't. But I told H we would be fine, even though I wasn't sure that was true.

I didn't know if we could go back behind the gates. I might have needed or wanted to do something beyond the gates, anyway.

Dream #2

I was in "my bathroom." It was night. There may have been a light on somewhere, but probably not in the bathroom. I walked out and caught a view from the corner of my eye (on my right side) of a shirt (? -- maybe red, possibly a bandana or a rag instead of a shirt) with a few flecks on it. There were also some flecks around the piece of cloth. I wondered how this dirty stuff got into my house.

I looked closer to figure out what the flecks were. They were pill-shaped, little, brown things. I then recognized they were roaches. Something about them looked less "dry" than roaches, somewhat liquidy or gooey. At first I thought all the roaches were dead. But now they started to move. I could tell they were just now reviving and that they would disperse and multiply if I didn't stop them right now.

I ran into my kitchen and grabbed a green can of Raid out from the cupboard below my sink. I was in total desperation -- I thought I had finally gotten rid of the roaches in my house. But here they were, all back.

From the time I had headed to the kitchen, I had been moaning in sorrow and fear. Tears were streaming down my face. The can of Raid had a thick, rubbery or plasticky nozzle with a green, plastic tube sticking out of it, like the red, plastic tube sticking out of the nozzle of a can of WD-40, except that this tube was a little shorter and stubbier.

Still moaning and crying, I stood before the doorway to the bathroom. The door was only half open. I stuck my right arm in with the can of Raid. I sprayed the Raid. The spray came out in a continuous mist, much more moist than the normal aerosol spray. I kept spraying and spraying.

Even though I had averted my eyes, I could see that some roaches were standing up, trying to get away from the poison. I did my best to spray every inch of the floor, so that no bugs could escape. The spray was collecting on the floor in pools. I now hoped I would be able to drown all the roaches.

Dream #3

I was down in the basement of a house, possibly in "my mom's house." The basement was big and somehow nice, but it was cluttered, both with furniture and things like clothes. I stood in a small clearing in all this space and stuff.

I stood before a television which may have been playing a music video by Smash Mouth. The music video may have been showing a montage of gogo dancers (possibly including one dressed up like Wonder Woman).

I was dancing along with the video, and may have been or have thought of myself as a woman. As I danced, my mom (?) looked down the stairwell to me -- even though there couldn't have gotten a view of me at all from the top of the tall, twisty stairwell. I kept dancing, thinking I was a pretty good performer.

My sister (?) and brother came downstairs, each possibly carrying a board game. My sister may have asked me something about dancing. We started discussing dancing (or whatever) as I continued to dance. My brother kept trying to get my attention, but I was having a hard enough time focusing on what my sister was saying.

Suddenly my brother burst out in an hysterical laugh (which seemed to produce in my mind little, brown, pill-shaped images, like bugs). He walked back up the stairs, continuing his hysterical laughter. I felt bad, like I had hurt my brother by ignoring him.

I followed my brother upstairs. When I got upstairs I saw my brother (as a kid?) standing before my mother in a big, but dirty, kitchen. The sunlight in the kitchen was bright, yellow, and warm. My brother held a game like Operation in his arms. The organs for the game were, I knew, brown and pill-shaped, like bugs.

My brother was acting like (perhaps in truth) the only reason for his laughter was that he had finally succeeded in figuring out how to play this game. But looking at my brother's face, I could see that my brother was in intense pain.

(I woke from this dream to the laughter of a person down on the sidewalk below my bedroom window. The person was laughing really loud, hysterically. The two people were speaking back and forth in Spanish.)

(2/28/09) bar house; equations and jet flight; the fairy's burden; team change

(Entered in dream journal at 8:40 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was at a bar, which also looked like a living room in a small townhouse or apartment. I actually started up in a bedroom upstairs from "the bar." I could hear my co-worker BK arguing downstairs. I stopped whatever I'd been doing (probably sitting on the floor doing something like a puzzle or board game) and walked a few steps down the stairway.

I saw BK at the end of a line, arguing with some people who were maybe halfway up the line. The people were maybe three black men in black jeans and black, puffy jackets with their hoods pulled up.

The floor was split into two rooms, something like a living room and a dining room. The living room was before me. The dining room was to my right. There might have been a third room to my left, beyond the view of the stairs. The line snaked through the living room and dining room. The living room and dining room were offset from each other, i.e. not having their walls in a straight line with each other. There might have been a stairwell going down to a basement level. The light of the whole place was a pink rosy-white.

I knew BK was getting himself in trouble, so I went downstairs and tried to console him and calm him down. he was a lot smaller than in waking life (I may even have noticed this in the dream). Whereas he's usually a couple inches taller than I and probably fifty pounds heavier, now he maybe came up to my chin and had a roundish, but tiny, frame.

(I also keep on feeling that throughout this whole sequence, from the beginning up to this point, I may have been a pretty girl, skinny, with tan skin and long, slightly ring-curly, black hair.)

I may have told BK that he was drunk and he needed to go upstairs to rest. I may have managed to get BK going up the stairs.

Now I was upstairs. (I was myself now.) BK wasn't a part of things anymore, apparently. (I don't quite get the space of the dream here.) I sat on a couch somewhere, as if I were in a small hallway-type area that may possibly have been overlooking the room below. There were three bedrooms, one on each side of me and one before me and down a short hallway. All the rooms were dark.

I had a light in the room where I sat. I may have seen myself as if from a point outside my body. (I actually can't say whether I was myself or a woman.)

A pretty, Hispanic girl with coppery skin, blondish hair, and a thickish but smooth and sexy body, wearing a short, blue party dress (sprinkled with tiny rhinestones or mirror-like beads?) walked up the stairs. She said she was too drunk to party anymore, and she wondered if she could sleep here tonight. I said of course.

I thought I'd guide the woman to my room, but she said she wanted to sleep in my brother's room. I saw the woman get into my brother's bed and lay close to the wall, the right side of the bed, as if she were snuggling with the wall. The bed had its mattress high up, propped maybe two and a half or three feet high, on red, metallic (?) bedposts.

I walked into my room. I may have turned on the light. I may have heard my brother downstairs. I was a little jealous that the woman had wanted to sleep with my brother instead of me. But I thought it would only be right for me to let my brother know the woman was waiting in bed for him. So I went downstairs (possibly as my brother was coming upstairs) to let my brother know.

Dream #2

I found a box or shelf full of DVDs that looked really interesting. I brought some into a dark room, like a bedroom that had been made into a film viewing room. The DVD I put in projected onto the wall with the same crisp, but used, quality of an old 16mm film.

The beginning image was a table, like a table of contents, with black background and white lettering. The table looked like something out of a 1970s (or earlier) government tet. It was actually manipulable, like the tables of contents on a DVD.

The top of the screen had a strange warning, about how this was an educational film relating either to the air force or to piloting jets. I knew this meant two things: first, that there was a lot of stuff the average viewer would find tedious or useless (this was strongly implied by the wording of the warning); and second, that there would probably be real scenes of people who had been injured or killed in jet accidents, crashes, shootings, etc. (this is something I thought by myself, by deduction, from what "I knew" about "films like this.").

I had second thoughts about the film, and I thought I'd just surf to the spots I wanted to see: the parts having to do with the functioning and flight of high-altitude jets and rockets.

But the "DVD" started automatically. It began with a narration of what was apparently a history of fighter jets. But the imagery was all of people, alone and together, scribbling out equations on paper, at desks in small rooms like laboratories, bigger rooms like classrooms, and even at chalkboards in large rooms like lecture halls.

The imagery was all "live" -- i.e. it showed the actual scientists in the moment of creation; it wasn't a dramatization. But it also wasn't a history. I realized this as soon as I started paying attention to what was being written. It was a lesson. All the scenes were linking together various pieces of an equation or set of equations relating to propulsion or trajectory.

I was fascinated; nevertheless, I kept waiting for a sudden intrusion of images of people who had been killed while flying jets. Now there were images (almost as if superimposed on the pages with equations) of rockets like the X-15 ascending steeply into the air. There may even have been footage of an SR-71 doing the same thing.

Now (possibly as a second dream?) I was in a room like a workshop (?) with my old friend R's wife L. L was telling me about an air and space museum that she thought I'd be interested in.

In particular there was a ride or simulation where you stood on something like a yellow mat (hexagon shaped?) and were lifted into the air, possibly by means of something like a sphere-like object, like the EPCOT Center sphere, which may have expanded in order to make the yellow mat rise. This ride or simulation (the whole experience may just have been part of a small virtual reality machine) was made to demonstrate the speed and angle at which the X-15 would accelerate on its missions.

I got giddy and afraid even thinking about something like this ride. I knew I probably couldn't do a ride like that. But I thought I'd have to make myself do it. After all, how could I fantasize all the time about these flights and then chicken out when I finally had the chance to experience something like them? And beyond that, if L and R had done it without my having done it, they'd always gloat about it and hold the fact over my head.

I thought I'd have to go to this museum. L told me the museum was in Dixie, which I assumed (almost envisioned in writing) meant Dixie, Kentucky (or "Dixie, KY").

Dream #3

I was in a field like an orchard or a nice valley in a park. It was a nice, sunny day. There were a few people around, all friends, relaxing.

My old friend R's wife L and I were flying about in the air, about ten feet up, or even higher, under or within the canopy of a wide tree (like an elm?). L carried me on her lap. I realized at some point in the dream that something else was carrying L, something like a fairy (like a human-sized version of the fairy in an episode on disc 7 of the Urusei Yatsura anime series DVDs).

L and I perched on one of the lower limbs of the tree, near the trunk of the tree. The sunlight through the canopy was silvery all around us. L and I may have moved apart from each other. There were a few people below the canopy, relaxedly playing some game like tag, but also slightly paying attention to me and L.

I thought I'd like to go even higher up the tree, maybe even higher than the tree. But I didn't want to fly without L wanting to -- I didn't want her to start claiming that I was a burden to her. But then I thought, Isn't it the (fairy?) that helps us fly? L doesn't even feel my weight on her lap, let alone the effort that would be required in making us fly.

I thought I would ask the fairy either to help me and L or just me fly even higher. But now I saw that the fairy (which was really invisible, or else so crystal clear that seeing her was nearly impossible) was a few levels of limbs below me and L, as if L and I were no longer on the lower limbs of the tree. I thought I would be making too much of a burden out of myself if I called the fairy from all the way down there (about ten feet below me?). So I decided not to ask after all.

Dream #4

I was in a meeting with somebody. We were in an office lit with whitish, fluorescent light. The room was small, and it was just the other person and I, but the room felt very busy.

The meeting ended. I walked out into a small office which ended with a little area like a snack bar. This area also seemed to be busy, but there didn't seem to be anybody around. Very hurried, I asked for something from the person behind the counter.

While the person was getting my order, my co-worker BT came up from behind me. He stood to my left and slapped his arm around my shoulders. He said, "Hey, boss, did I see you coming in here to have a meeting with somebody at 5 AM today?" I said yes. BT said, "We need to have a talk a little bit later on. Alright? Seriously. Stop by."

I laughed a little bit -- I was pleasantly shocked that I'd been recognized for actually coming into work early. But my laugh, instead of sounding pleasantly surprised, sounded almost condesending, as if I were trying to say, "Why would I need to talk to you?"

I understood that both BT and I had either gotten fired from here or else that were were going to get fired. BT wanted me on his team at whatever company he'd be working at next because he realized how hard I worked.

BT had gotten whatever he'd ordered, but either he didn't pay the cost of his meal, one dollar, or else he only paid one dollar for his meal when it actually cost five dollars. He walked away. I now paid for my order. The order cost one dollar. I gave five dollars. The cashier didn't give me my change and moved onto the next person in line.

I thought that a change machine in front of me (which looked like either a black, metal change-making machine -- like in laundromats -- or a clear, glass tip jar half-full of bills and change) was supposed to scroll out my four dollars in change. I waited, but the machine didn't give me my change. I was about to ask the cashier to give me my change.

But now BT came back up. He gave the cashier the money he hadn't given before. He then turned to me and looked me in the face. He said, "Hey, about what I said, I'm serious, okay?"

I knew BT had taken my laugh as if he'd thought I was laughing him off. I tried to be as serious as I could. I told BT, "Yes. I will definitely come talk to you."

For some reason, however, I may have felt like it was now already late in the afternoon. BT must have thought I'd blown him off by not coming to see him for the whole day. (Also, BT may have been shorter than he is in waking life. In waking life he towers over me by a head. But in the dream he was looking at me eye to eye.)

(10/8/09) in the snares of an evil man

Dream #1

I was in a movie. I and a group of friends were up in the woods, in some cabin. An evil person or spirit followed us there. We knew the evil person had committed some crime, and we were going to expose him for it. But now the evil person had killed some people in our group and managed to trap the rest of us in the cabin. The cabin was smallish but well accommodated, with couches, bookshelves, rugs, well furnished rooms, even a desk with a nice computer.

We were trying to escape from the cabin, but we knew the man was keeping a close watch on us and would terrify us as soon as we left the cabin. But even inside the cabin the evil man was beginning to terrorize us. He possessed one of us either to commit suicide or kill someone else in a grotesque way.

Now I was a woman. I think everybody could feel the man's spirit influence. But I particularly could, as if the man were about to possess me and make me do something awful to myself or others. I now saw, from more of a "camera" viewpoint, the woman/I standing before the computer. The woman had been possessed to download something to the computer. This, we were all certain, was a demonic program that would kill the woman.

However, instead of a demonic image, a cartoon image, like from the cartoon Heavy Metal, of a naked man appeared on the screen. A man from among us now stood before the woman. Both the man and woman were naked. The man began kissing the woman's chest and neck. The man and woman were now both like computer-cartoon (Heavy Metal style) characters, almost floating in the air, maybe not quite life size. The man had an enormous penis, which he thrust toward the woman, maybe rubbing it against the woman's belly, but never penetrating her with it.

After the man and woman had passionately kissed, they seemed to return to normal, though they remained naked. I was the woman again. I felt completely fine. I went to sit in a chair. All of us were relieved that nothing bad had happened to the man and me. I felt completely normal -- even fresh, as if I had just woken from a good rest.

But suddenly I got sick to my stomach. I realized that the demon or evil man had poisoned the man's lips. The man had kissed me and I had ingested his poison. I now felt extremely sick. I began vomiting up fountains of white glop like milk and cottage cheese. The vomit tasted a little sweet, like rice pudding. I stopped vomiting. I was now extremely tired.

We all thought how cruel it was of the evil man or demon, to cause me, the woman, to vomit, to lose whatever nourishment I'd had in me, after the evil man or demon had already put me through an energy-sapping ordeal (some ordeal that had occurred outside, before we'd gotten trapped in the cabin). We were sure I, the woman, was now on the brink of death.

I was now myself. Something had just happened in the cabin, possibly the violent death of another person. We decided that we had to leave the cabin once and for all. Our car, some kind of black sedan from the early 1980s, was outside. There was a chance that we could get to the car without the evil man knowing. People were afraid to go, but I convinced everybody we had to do it.

We got in the car and drove away without the man noticing. We were down in a small town like Los Alamos, New Mexico, driving through the parking lot of a multi-building shopping plaza, like the parking lot was a wide path through a blocky maze. It seemed like we were actually managing to escape.

But now the evil man had discovered we'd left the cabin. He tracked us down. He was going to play a trick on us to recapture us. He disguised himself as a demon (or used a demon cohort of his?). The demon was an anime-like figure, a black shroud, almost triangular, with a white, oval mask with just enough slits for eye holes, and no nose or mouth. At first the figure looked like a cartoon ghost. But then the figure looked like a human dressed as a cartoon character, like a good thief who was an awful charlatan, a parody.

The trunk door of our car was half open, unable to close because a TV-sized box was lodged there, unable to fit all the way into the trunk. The figure ran up to the trunk and stole the box, running away with high-kneed strides like he was a caricature thief in a second-rate play for kids.

I knew the figure had stolen the TV just to get us to turn the car around. The TV didn't matter so much, I thought, as long as we got out of here. And as long as we just kept driving, the evil man couldn't catch us, and we could get out of here.

I may have been driving at first, but now I was possibly no longer the one driving. And now the person who may have been driving, a young, slightly overweight man with red hair and a red beard, got angry at the figure and decided to pursue him.

The figure ran into a certain building. We drove into that building and found ourselves in some place like a smallish, vacant warehouse. The car stopped, possibly as if it had been broken, i.e. possessed and self-destructed, by the evil man.

We all got out of the car. The evil man now appeared before us. He may have had a few different aspects. One was a red-haired, red-bearded man, like the person who'd been driving our car. Another was a pale man in his early thirties, dressed in a men-in-black style suit, with greased, combed hair. Another aspect may have been covered in gore. We knew, or at least the evil man tried to make it clear, that we were now done for.