(1/10/06) i didn't steal the panties; not quite like this

(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM at Starbucks on 56th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a clothing store, coming back into the store, carrying a huge, messy bundle of store clothes, both male and female. I walked past a security guard who took all the clothes away from me except two pairs of green panties.

The security guard was accusing me of stealing the panties. I said, "No. They're mine. I bought them."

But, looking at the panties, I wondered why I'd bought them. They were too big for me, maybe big enough for my mom.

The security guard had an anti-theft scanner and used it on my whole pile of clothes. I tried to show the security guard on the scanner's readout that I had actually bought these panties.

Really, even though I'd bought all of this stuff, now that I saw how big it was, I wanted to put the panties back and try on other things. But now I had gotten caught up in arguing with the security guard.

Dream 2

I was driving in the desert, on a road that looked like the desert ground. It was night. I was actually in a suburban town. I was trying to get somewhere fast.

I drove along the edge of a canyon. I lost my focus. I drove into the canyon. At first I didn't know I was falling. Then I knew. I noted how interesting it felt, like I was floating in an elevator.

But then I realized I was going to die. I was terrified. But I tried not to show it. But I think I did start screaming. I also think I pulled myself out of my "body" through my head and did a kind of back flip into my sleeping body to "wake up."

(7/4/06) the stream test; being part of the hill; my brother wrecks house; suspicion in the video store

(Entered into paper journal at 9:02 AM at Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a stream with a boy and a girl. I was someone like Carlos Castaneda, and this stream was a new test for me. I was eager, excited. But the kids were indifferent.

I stood in the water so it came up near my solar plexus. I looked down to the bed of the clear stream. The bed had a floor of tan and coppery, smooth cobblestones.

I looked back up. Huge waves heaved toward me. They were deep blue like the sea. As the flooded over me I felt some kind of intense magic. I had to battle to absorb it to stay conscious.

But to my left the little girl was standing or treading water as if nothing were happening. And the little boy was scuttering around to my right, near the bed of the stream, which now looked like an Islamic tile floor, and wearing big, clunky, eyes-and-nose swimming goggles and having fun. I felt stupid for thinking my experience had been intense at all.

Dream 2

I was running up a hill in a park. The hill was all lush, beautiful lawn, lit by powerful, white lights so that the atmosphere was dim and the vibrant lawn had a crystalline, undersea look.

I headed toward a log cabin on the hill to get something for a group of friends below. I felt some person below judging me for having been running up and down the hill all day when there were easier ways to do things.

I was a pretty girl. I thought, But I like running up the hill. I like the exertion. Plus, I like being part of the hill. It's beautiful.

Dream 3

I was (possibly) watching an apartment for a woman like my landlady. My brother came in. I told him he could stay, but that he had to treat this place with respect. My brother started bashing all over, making tons of noise.

Suddenly the place was full of noise. The TV was blasting. There were pots boiling full blast in the closet-sized kitchen. And my brother was taunting me about all the noise he could make.

I said, "I'm just giving you a couple more chances to calm down."

My brother went into the bathroom and broke the handle off the sliding door of the shower. He brought it out to show me how he didn't care what I told him, and how he would do whatever he wanted.

I went to the store and pulled out a blue business card from under a gross, damp pile of dish rags. My landlady's phone number was on the top line of the card. Then, written in blue ink on lines below, were three other numbers, one of which was for the police.

I called one of the numbers. Now my brother had to leave, or these people would come for him. I felt bad for rejecting my brother. But he'd already broken one thing in my house.

My brother was now standing on the couch in the living room. He said, "Okay, okay. I'm going before they get here. But just look at this before I go."

A movie was playing on the TV: some comedy starring Owen Wilson. But this particular scene was of a forest. A huge, dull-yellow turtle with brown-black spots walked between pine trees. Now an enormous snake was somewhere.

Dream 4

I went into a video store at night. There were almost no lights on in the store. I went to the back of the store and found something I liked.

I went to the cashier. The cashier yelled at me, "What do you have in your backpack?"

I, without taking off my backpack, showed the cashier I hadn't stolen anything from the store. The cashier was satisfied. But he still didn't like me. Either he threw his arms up in the air or he made me throw my arms in the air. A white bracelet of a loose, rubbery material fell down one of our arms.

The man said, "Next time you come in here, you get one of these," (the bracelet) "which means you leave your backpack right here until you leave the store!"

I thought, Great. Now I can't even bring my backpack into the video store. I noticed the man now. He was short, a little fat, with long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He had a beard that was reddish brown with grey undertones. He was angry-looking but also small and lazy and weak-looking. I thought, Well, this guy is a lot like me!

(3/16/09) killer double; cave museum; stalked, framed, and institutionalized

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

An image of a large man in a black and white leather biker's outfit. The man may have been white, tan, with long, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. He may have worn tan and white makeup in haphazard fashion, and he may have had all kinds of random things attached to his outfit. He looked like a cartoon, like something out of the anime of Akira. I thought (possibly after waking) that this was a double that could attack the people who were after me.

Dream #2

I stood out with my family on a road somewhere. It was a hot, sunny day. We stood before a car at the top of a hill, looking down to a flat city in a desert (?). I may have seen from a very low view with most of my vision on the front, driver's side tire.

I now stood before a view that was real and "in action," but was frozen like a photograph. A group of at least five "buffalo" emerged from a cave. The "buffalo" were enormous and white, with long, shaggy coats, like the coats of mountain goats. The "buffalo" may even have had the faces of mountain goats. They were all frozen in their emergence (though the event was "still happening") in a close grouping, some running along the ground, some jumping through the air.

I now saw a view from far back and high up of the cave's surroundings. The land was almost entirely covered with snow. But the cave mouth was set into a face of black, snowless cliff. There might have been a marshy lake somewhere as well, with green waters and a surface glinting gold in the sunlight.

I was now underground in a cave which was a museum. There might have been windows on the upper parts of some of the walls, letting in some natural light to add to the soft, incandescent light. I walked into one exhibit room. There were colorful murals on the wall and spaces for old exhibit cases and insets that were now gone. The murals were about using geological strata to calculate time periods and the age of the earth.

A small man stood at the other end of the room. He was skinny with a slight belly, bald with a round head, a round nose, a thick mustache, and round, plastic-rimmed glasses. He wore a brownish cardigan, a yellowish shirt, and khaki slacks.

The man was telling me how the museum was getting rid of this room. It was beautifully designed, but it was entirely based on an approach to calculating geological periods that was now obsolete. The approach may have been too linear. I thought it was really silly to get rid of such beautiful, colorful murals just because some new theory (which probably wasn't that great, anyway) had come along.

But now the room was filling up with water, as if the museum people were going to flood the room to empty it out. The water was about halfway up to my knees. I walked out. The other man still stood in the room. I walked into another room that adjoined to the hallway. It was empty, with black cave-rock walls and dirt floors. High on the wall to my left was a window letting in light from a pale blue sky.

Dream #3

I was wandering through a town like a desert town. It was a sunny, winter morning, possibly with frost still glazing surfaces. I wandered through different buildings and areas, through the front areas of small "auto-shop" stores, under canopies of gas stations, through tunnel-like walkways for places like motels.

I noticed an Hispanic man was following me. I turned slightly and reached around me, almost over my own head, to grab his head. I tried to smash his head, or to hurt the man in some way. I told the man, "I know you're following me! Why are you following me?!"

The man didn't answer. There was now another Hispanic man. I thought, Well, I can't get rid of both of them. If they want to follow me, let them.

We all stood in a foyer area that was also like a telephone booth. I had some Greek books from the Loeb Classical Edition. But I knew I had left some Latin books behind somewhere, as well as having left behind my bicycle.

I told the men, "Wait here for me. I forgot all my stuff. I'll be right back." The men liked me and took me at my word. I ran back for everything. I ran through something like the grounds for a flat, multi-winged high school (like the high school I had attended).

I was trying to remember the path I had first take through the school grounds. I thought, If I go exactly backwards I should be able to find everything. I wondered now why the Hispanic men weren't following me. I thought it had been too easy to get rid of them.

I ran through a long hallway and into a main area joining three or four hallways. A couple of white men, one older, one in his late twenties, both probably teachers, sat at a desk off to the side of the large room, as if they were waiting to sign in a group of folks who would be arriving for some fun event.

I had a pretty good idea of where I needed to go to get my bike back, but I told the men, "Tell me a room number. I'm looking for my bike. If you tell me a room number, I know my bike will just show up there."

The younger man said, "Okay. 158."

I knew that room 158 was in a certain wing, but I ran into a different wing. I opened a big, heavy door to a clunky-looking room like a maintenance or repairs room or garage. On the other side of the room from me was a large opening (like a garage door opening) to the outside. There were a lot of workers in here, mostly Hispanic or Native American, all joking around and acting a little rowdy.

There was a row of lockers along the wall to my left. The lockers were dull orange and yellow. They were all in bad shape. Some weren't even standing upright against the wall. They had numbers scrawled onto them, probably in pencil.

One of the locker doors had the number 158 written on it. I opened that locker up but didn't find anything. The workers might have thought I was acting suspiciously. I said, "I thought I'd find my bike here."

I was now somewhere else, possibly in a long corridor of college dorms. I knew someone was planning to get me blamed for something I didn't do. I saw in a girl's room. The girl lay in a relaxed fetal position on her right side. She slept half under the covers, on white sheets. Near the girl's feet the left corner of the bed had the sheets pulled up. Someone had written on the bed in lipstick "LIVE AIDS."

This bed-vandalism was now being blamed on me. I was being called into the room with two cops. The lights were still off. Nobody had woken the woman. The cops showed me the words. I said, "I didn't know anything about them."

Someone turned the lights on. I tried to prove my innocence by showing the cops my legs. I had shaved my legs, I told the cops, because I'd gotten a few weird scars that wouldn't heal, or would always get infected, while I had hair on my legs. The hair was just now growing back. I pointed out the old, healed scars to the cops. I told them, "It even causes me to walk a little strange."

The cops told me, "Go out into the hallway and let us see how you walk." I went out into the hallway and walked for the cops. As I did, the cops spoke with one another (I heard them as if I were standing right beside them). They said I probably was innocent of this crime, but that I was obviously mentally unstable, and that they should probably take me to a mental hospital.