(10/6/05) all-you-can-eat buffet scuffle

(No time/place info for paper dream  journal entry.)

(10/5 -- I will try tonight to influence my dreams with thoughts of Ghost in the Shell II the anime movie.)

(No dreams were recorded in my dream journal for the night.)

***

(Daytime paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I can't remember the beginning. I was somewhere with my friends R and Y. It was like we were doing some job outside. I had eaten a burrito that had been wrapped in aluminum foil. Once we finished we walked to the end of a parking lot and stood by something like a gas station. All I remember now is that it was a bright white building. The parking lot was empty. The sun was bright.

I sat or stood against a wall, either in the sun or the shade. R and Y were up by the front of the gas station. Possibly one of them was in or kept walking in and out of the store. One of them was talking on a cell phone. Someone had invited them to a "roller coaster park" or amusement park. I knew they would also invite me, though I didn't really want to go.

I don't really know what happened next. Something about an errand was mentioned. We walked down the parking lot toward a building that looked like a closed Kmart. It was a white building, the doors of which were boarded up with what looked like plywood painted aquamarine.

The errand had apparently become getting lunch. I thought about this with a little dread. I'd already eaten a burrito, and I didn't want to go out for a big lunch. Now I pulled two more burritos out of my back pocket. I definitely didn't want to buy lunch now, now that I had two more burritos.

I thought there was possibly a way for me to get away from these guys. But, seeing some guys opening and closing the aquamarine boards, which I now saw were steel, I knew I was just going to have to go with them.

I was now in some restaurant with them. It was like the cafe at the back end of the old Kmart on Colfax (and Wadsworth?) in Denver. But it was huge, like three or four cafe lines put together. R and Y had gone up to get food from the buffet-like lines. I stood at a table, about to sit down, but looking at my burritos and feeling guilty for even eating these. After all, hadn't one burrito been enough?

But now Y came up and told me to come check out the buffets. Apparently there were three buffet lines, each set up like they were different restaurants, with different styles of food. I walked up to the buffets with Y, telling myself not to buy any food, just to look out of interest.

The buffets were set up so that on the left and right sides were two immense, long buffets, and in the center was a small, pagoda-like buffet with something like soups on it. Y and I went to the left buffet first. It was all sub sandwiches, just a long, stretching bin full of sub sandwiches. The wall behind the buffet was wallpapered with a slightly grainy photograph of a blue sky dotted with puffy, white clouds.

I thought, Well, it's never worth it to spend this much money on a sub sandwich. But maybe I can just get a soda.

I walked away from the buffets altogether, though, back to the seats. I was about to sit down when I heard Y say, "Hey, Preemie! Come check this out!" She was now on the right side buffet, which, I could only barely see, was some kind of exotic food. I ran up through the soup buffet, which, I could only barely see, was some kind of exotic food, to get to the right side buffet.

R stood at the soup buffet. As I ran toward Y, he shoved me with his back and butt and pinned me against the guardrails for the buffet. Holding me there with his back he said, "No you don't. You aren't getting anywhere near Y."

I slipped away but he moved quickly and trapped me again. He was pissed. I tried to struggle against him, but he kept slipping out of my reach.

Trying to figure out something, anything to do to him, I stuck my hands first into a beef mushroom-type soup (kind of a french dip au jus consistency) and then into a guacamole-consistency soup, which I grabbed a hot handful of and flung into R's face.

R backed up (?) and away from me. We now stood by a trashcan by the chairs and tables. R gave me a look that scared (and scares) the shit out of me -- it was like that of a psychopath who finally decided to kill and thus saw his object as already dead, like I was just a stupid fucking absurdity for still choosing even to breathe and talk. It was a blank, petulant stare.

R was pissed that I had gotten him off of me. He was even more pissed that I had gotten a bit of his glasses and his left jawline messy with the guacamole-type soup. But he was most pissed that I had gotten some of the soup on the left side of the collar (?) of his "expensive" shirt, but that if R didn't wipe off his neck, which he wouldn't, he would let the soup get on his shirt. And he wanted that, because for so long he had wanted an excuse to kill me or embarrass me so badly that I would wish I were dead.

I half-apologized. But I mainly told R, "You just have to get off of me when I tell you to get off of me, that's all. Besides, Y's my friend, just as well as you are, and I have every right to talk to her."

He pushed me away and said, "I am going to kill you or embarrass you really bad. You don't ever tell me what to do. You are mine."

Now he was gone. I sat across from Y. She asked where R had gone. I told her he just got a little pissed and decided not to hang around for the rest of the day. She said, "Well, he should just learn to deal with the fact that not everybody in the world is going to do things whenever he wants them to."

Now I sat staring out toward the front of the restaurant, where the Kmart used to be. It was now a skyline, behind a couple skyscrapers and across a river, of what I possibly thought was New Jersey and/or lower Manhattan. It was in pinkish-orange sunset light, the buildings looking orange-purple in their shadows. I sat on the thin tile floor like I was sitting on a hilly lawn, waiting for a concert.

I was trying to think, as my friend ML sat beside me and spoke (Y now gone), how on earth I would make do back in New York if I couldn't stay at R's place. I thought that I should perhaps ask ML to let me stay with him. But right as I was about to ask him, turning up to him and lifting up my arms as if to embrace his chest like I was a fawning girl, he disappeared.

Now, instead of ML to my right, My mom's old longtime boyfriend JT was to my left. I didn't see him, but he was there. The skyline was moving now, from my right to my left, a bridge coming into view, as if we were on a boat.

JT pointed out some smallish, greenish-window-walled building kind of where Battery Park would have been. He told me, "See? That's the Jewish Aquarium Museum" (?) "right there."

I said, "Oh yeah?" first trying to figure out which building JT was talking about, then trying to figure out what made certain aquatic life Jewish.

I don't know how, but things now changed quite a bit. I was in something like an apartment that was the entire floor of a skyscraper. The floor was concrete (?) painted black and with Arabian rugs all over. There were a few nice couches as well.

The walls were either brick or black-painted concrete. There were huge holes for windows. But I don't think the windows had any panes. The window holes were from ceiling to floor and about ten or twelve feet wide, so that the "wall" was more like a wide column between the windows, more than like a wide space of wall between windows.

The space was like an artist's space, or, rather, like a space where artists could just hang out, not work. A few people were there, talking, and I was their friend. But I don't know them, nor could I really see them.

The strangest thing was that the building or the floor was revolving, turning counterclockwise. At first I thought it was just my changing perspective. But even when I held my head still I saw that building tops were "moving" from left to right before my eyes. The city looked clean, new, with buildings made out of red bricks and copper-colored, tan bricks. I was very interested in the views, but I also had a feeling that the turning of the building meant it was going to collapse.

I now heard (Y?) call for me. She told me to look out a "window" to my right. I immediately saw some neighborhood, which I thought was an incredibly beautiful yet dangerous area of Brooklyn. I was enamored with the spooky starkness (even in full, shining daylight!) of these buildings. But I don't remember them now.

I don't know what happened next. But now I was walking to a bedroom after having made an unsuccessful joke to my friend PD. There were no windows in the room. A yellowy, incandescent light shone from the center of the ceiling.

There was something like a couch-like mattress in the center of the floor. I flopped down in it and sighed to ML that PD didn't think my joke was funny. ML just grinned and was about to say something kind of rude and annoying about my sense of humor.

But apparently I predicted what ML was going to say. I butt in as he got a few words in and said something like, "Oh, yes, now it's time for you to repeat some word I characteristically say until you beat me down with a sense of being completely known and understood. You're such an ass."

But ML didn't take my comments too harshly. I don't think I meant them so harshly. He just gave me a lazy, half-dazed smile and rumpled his head under a blanket and made a joke about me.

Now a dog like my friend R's dog ran into the room from a door to my right (I had come in from the left). "She" kind of attacked my right hand, biting it softly but repeatedly.

I said, "Oh, I forgot, you like eating people's hands, don't you?"

"She" said, "Yes, I do, but I also like being petted," in a voice like a 75% feminine, 25% masculine, watery-timbered computer voice. "She" now lay back on my lap and resembled soemthing like a naked boy covered in short, silky, black dog hair. I pet it and it opened its mouth in "pleasure" that looked more like the breathless gasps of a burn victim.

Now someone somewhere said, "Oh, he's coming! Just open the door for him." They meant to use the electric door opener to open the door on the first floor but not to use the buzzer.

My sister said, "Oh, I know how to do that. I've done it before." But before she could get to the door opener the person there buzzed up to us. "My friend's dog," who was now much more, though still not quite, like the dog, sprang from my lap, barking insanely.

I now understood that the man coming up was my mom's new husband, a Japanese man. I got up from a room that wasn't quite the room I had just been in and walked down a dim hallway with a couple doorways to wide, airy, classy rooms and into a "central" room where the front door was located. The light was a rich tan-yellow.

The man had just come into the house. He was about five-foot-five, maybe 150 or 160 pounds, wearing a blue, hefty, knit sweater, slacks (or jeans?), and plastic-rimmed, black glasses. His face was kind of thick. He was wide-lipped and weary-eyed. His hair was alternately thinning greatly and full but obstinately messy. His skin was very dark, almost brown, a dull brown.

He walked toward the kitchen, where my mom was, only half-regarding me. I told him, "Hello, sir, nice to meet you. Can I ask who you are?" He just grunted and kept walking.

I said, "You have no business continuing if you don't tell me who I am." He now said something politely and slowly, but so quiet that it looked like he was on an almost muted television. He kept walking.

I told him, "You cannot continue until you tell me who you are." But he walked past me and almost to the "kitchen," which was now just another dark hallway.

I turned, sternly called to him, then walked up behind him, grabbed him with both arms, and attempted to pull him out of the threshold. It wasn't really working. It was like I had no power of resistance.

But now a son of this man ran up to him and said, "Dad, where have you been?" I now felt like a fool for having tried to stop the man. I had only done so because I wasn't being respected and the rules I had been asked to uphold weren't being respected.

I was now somehow in the kitchen, which was nice, light, airy, and clean. My mom was at the stove, apparently boiling a pot of mussels (?). The steam clung in the air, but it smelled and felt nice. My mom walked to the refrigerator (black and shiny like glass) and opened it as I told her, "I tried to get him to tell me who he was. But he spoke with almost no voice at all and then just kept on walking."

My mom said, "It's okay. He's very understanding. You don't need to worry about having embarrassed anybody."

I saw into a pan in which my mom was frying wide, thin, purplish cuts of sausage with other meats and a lot of green peppers and onions.

I now sensed that this man's wife (!) had arrived, as well as all the other children. The wife was Indian (i.e. from India). The children (maybe three or four of them) were Indian- and Japanese-looking. I was excited to meet them all, because I felt like they were skilled at some kind of mysticism, not consciously, perhaps, but deep down.

They ran around in different rooms. I flew through a dim hallway and into a dim living room. My position was cross-legged, sitting. Dim, cobalt blue light from the dark sky outside poured in through the big window in the living room. The only other light was from some other room, perhaps from the "entry room" or the kitchen. A couple kids and the wife were in the living room. I flew in through the right and flew out through the back, i.e.

Having seen the kids I thought I shouldn't really fly because they might first think I was showing off, and because they might second think I was flying because I guessed, based simply on their racial backgrounds, that they, too, had the ability to fly.

When I got out of the living room I landed. I was in a dark room. I walked into another dark room, the floor of which was littered with JUMP Japanese comic books, all arranged in a horseshoe shape. I think I thumbed through some of these, trying to find an issue that would be interesting to the kids, so I could have something to talk to them about. But I abandoned that idea as well, thinking that their Japanese background didn't exactly mean they'd like manga.

I walked through the hallway and back into the living room. Only the wife was there now. She looked like the mother in Monsoon Wedding, but she also seemed like some kind of businesswoman in her early thirties, American, possibly white, very attractive, with a slight intent to seduce or at least tease me. She was standing and walking in front of the couch, which was an L-shape on a bluish rug on a hardwood floor. (It seems like this apartment was a huge apartment on a high floor in a Manhattan skyscraper.)

The woman came up and asked me, almost furtively, "So... with all that... of yours, then... is that something you're going to keep for real?"

I said, "What of mine? Do you mean then...?" She said, "Yeah, the moving around stuff." (She meant the flying, of course.) She now sat down and was from now on, I think, only like the mother from Monsoon Wedding.

I sat on the floor, flopping my arms up on the couch just to the left of her lap. She told me, "Yeah, we have a friend who practices that stuff. He's even started to make a business out of it, charging people $188.10 to..., so I guess he's..."

She now started crying, not wailing or weeping. Her voice stayed normal, but tears gushed out of her eyes in three, wet, solid streams. She looked forward as she continued speaking, as if preoccupied. I had a feeling she had lost a son.

I asked her if she was alright. She said, "Oh, yes. It's too hot, that's all. Too hot, but it's too cold. I need to change the thermostat."

I got up and walked to the wall with the thermostat. There were two arch-shaped, aluminum bars resting against the wall, stacked against each other. On top of them was a cardboard ad-sign for a thermostat or CD. This confused me at first (!).

When I understood this wasn't the thermostat, I fumbled with the sign to get it out from in front of the thermostat. After I fumbled clumsily for a couple seconds, the wife cluttered up behind me and just grabbed the sign and threw it away.

I looked closely at the thermostat. It was a round one with an orange needle telling what the temperature was set at. By turning the casing, a metallic, pale copper-green plastic, you could move the needle, behind clear plastic, around, to bring the temperature up or down.

I saw that the needle was right at one hundred, which meant that it was neither too hot nor too cold. I showed this to the lady, but she grabbed the thermostat and twisted it. Satisfied she walked back to the couch.

She was incredibly depressed. I wanted to understand who she had lost in her life. I felt like it was a son, who had died in the World Trade Center collapse. But I didn't quite know how to ask her. I did say something. But as she started to respond I woke up.

(12/4/04) y on trial; ansi test; murdering my doll friend

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I walked into a cold, sterile room like a bright-fluorescent lit police investigation room as my friend CV, who sat in a hefty, steel chair, interviewed my friend Y, who sat on a tabletop, possibly next to some radio device.

Y was trying to justify her activities to CV. But CV kept interrupting her with insults and frustrated outbursts. I walked up to CV to defend Y. I don't know whether I had "physically" been there before.

Now the place changed into an outside storage area or a columned patio like at the Meem Library at Saint John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I hadn't been able to interact with Y in the previous scene. I hoped I would be able to now.

I yelled at CV, "Leave her alone! Let her talk, at least! Let her at least say all that she has to say!" Y, still sitting on the tabletop, though the tabletop was now a bit farther off, looked over at me. I was elated.

I said, "It's okay for us to listen to each other here if nowhere else. This is a dream. It's only a dreamworld."

As I said this a chair slid before my face, its metal backing blocking my face like prison bars. I held onto the chair back, almost as if from the side now. I looked down a bit. I thought, I wonder if I can fully wake myself into this dream and if that really is Y I'm seeing.

I looked up. Now, inside the now shed-like building, I saw Y as a tall, fat, round woman with short hair and even a goatee and mustache. She was droning on and on to me and yet automatically, as if playing a repeated inner monologue to herself about some female lovers she had and how it was good she'd finally come to understand her sexuality. She looked off into the distance, like an automaton.

Now three women, all butch-looking and tall like "Y," walked out of some nondescript shadow like they had arrived just on time, if not a second or two late, to illustrate "Y's" point.

I thought, I don't like them. Then I thought, No, no. You'd better like them, if you want to re-establish your friendship with Y.

Dream 2

I was in a classroom that didn't have any lights on and got its light from some half-shaded windows, possibly behind me. I'm pretty sure the desks and room kept shifting. I felt very small in my desk. I was surrounded by kids "my age," whatever that was.

Our teacher, someone like my high school US History teacher, walked through the desk aisles. He had just administered an aptitude tests which might put us into secret, advanced programs. He handed out papers I thought would give us our scores. But he told us to write something on them and then pass them back to him. They looked like blank tests to me. I worried, thinking he had messed up our tests and that we'd have to take them again.

He now said he was going to give out our results by calling out our names and giving us a score on a scale of one to one hundred. I cringed, thinking I'd get a ninety-six, knowing that ninety-eight was the minimum score for entry into the advanced programs.

The teacher got through a few names before stopping and letting us know that the science section of the test has been almost completely ANSI questions, which was somewhat unfair, since few of us had been experienced with ANSI. He asked if any of us knew what ANSI stood for. I said something about American Nautical or Navigational... XXXXX. I don't think the teacher heard me.

The teacher now asked if we knew what the special molecular structure of a XXXXX rope was. I "saw in my head," as if the image were projected onto some wall in the classroom, a coil of rope, wet and soiled as if it had gone through a slightly muddy river. I could see that the rope was porous and extremely flexible, though its construction made it look tight-wound and rigid.

Dream 3

I sat on a couch watching TV beside some pretty girl who sat beside my friend R. The pretty girl asked me some question. I tried to answer, but R interrupted me, bragging about how he was doing so much more in his life than I was.

I tried to tell R to stop it. R was now in a sleeping bag, laying across the couch. The girl was gone, apparently. Even as I began speaking to R, he interrupted me, whining out in a slimy way, "So you don't like what I do, huh? Well, I can do whatever I want."

R's feet, which were behind me, slowly slipped up to my back, like they themselves were the couch cushions. R rolled me right off the couch and against a coffee table. He laughed like a worm, "Heh! Heh! Pretty embarrassed now!"

I flipped around and grabbed him, yelling all kinds of things I can't remember now but which were so vivid that I felt upon waking like I could physically hear them. As I yelled I began punching and punching R, who laughed at first, then was slightly surprised, and finally ceased to be a real person. I could also sense the pretty girl on the second floor of the house, looking down from a small balcony like a ghost in shadow.

As I continued yelling the scene shifted. I now held some kind of stuffed version of a decapitated R (in overalls) against a wall. I kept punching and punching, hoping I could just murder R with punches.

But now I finally realized that the thing I was punching was just a "doll." I couldn't "remember" if I had already murdered R or if I was still just thinking about it.

(8/10/05) bad-looking shoes; phone bully; rematerialize at random; "weird al" bloomberg

(Entered in paper journal at 6 PM on Brooklyn-bound Q-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

It was a nice, sunny day. I was riding in a van possibly driven by mother or my NYC Americorps coworker VT. We may have been in "Harlem." I saw a building at the end of a plaza or a circle lined with buildings. The building at the end was tall and wide, like a fancy hotel, but flat and featureless, red brick with a patching wearing away of tan plaster from the bottom and counter upward and outward.

I was in the van with a few other people, probably "coworkers." Someone mentioned the event we were attending and how it would last into the night. I think I saw the surroundings now like it was late at night. I asked about how we would get to certain subways. Apparently I had to backtrack and go a little out of the way to get to my subway, but it wouldn't be so bad to do.

It was day. I sat on the floor of the van. There were no seats. I think I was the only one back there. I had my old boots on. They looked bad. I was putting my new shoes on, but I noticed they looked bad, too.

Dream 2

I walked into something like a bodega with my friend and NYC Americorps coworker KA. The place had one main area, then a dark hall, then a door with a window into a room where a group of old, Mediterranean-looking men sat, smoking.

KA walked to a payphone in the small, dark hall. She put in twenty-five cents and made a call. She spoke a while before one of the men came out and asked me if I could please get her to get off the phone. He seemed really apologetic, but I wasn't going to ask KA to get off the phone. I didn't want her to think I had let the man bully me into compromising her space.

Instead, I walked up to KA and told her, "Don't get off the phone. This guy wants you to, and I feel like you should, but don't. Don't be bullied."

But KA got off the phone, both as if she were disappointed that I had let myself be bullied, and as if she were disgusted that I should be so stubborn about the request of such a nice man. The man came up to KA and thanked and thanked her for getting off the phone. He kept pouring all kinds of change onto the counter (where the payphone had been, but on which now was a regular phone).

Dream 3

I was outside, leading a group of kids. Some or all of the kids had magical powers. They could (maybe I could, too) dematerialize at will. But they rematerialized at random. I thought how dangerous it was to walk through objects when you were dematerialized because if you rematerialized unexpectedly you'd be smashed by the matter.

As I thought this, the lead (?) child, who looked like a cartoon version of an anthropomorphic elephant, dematerialized. He walked through a large pin oak tree and rematerialized right as he reached the center of the trunk. The only things sticking out were his elephant trunk and his arms.

I panicked and ran into a (library?) where a woman, maybe my friend and coworker KB, sat near the doors at a table, studying. I asked her to come help me. She said, "Oh, not another problem with one of those meaningless children. If it's somebody famous I'll help you. Who's in trouble?"

I looked at what KB was studying -- three DVD boxes of the work of Nam June Paik. So I said, "Nam June Paik is in trouble." KB stood up and walked out.

Now the tree, wherever it was, was in an area of wood beam frames hung with black wires. The woman walked up and began clipping away all the wires. Some of the wires made some sparks, but they all died as soon as she clipped them.

She now involved me somehow. I apologized. I said, "It wasn't Nam June Paik that was in trouble. It was a kid." The woman didn't hear me much, or possibly, she split into two people, one of whom walked away from me, while the other led me to an "archaeological site." It was a square, maybe ten feet by ten feet, of sandy ground, like in a dirt parking lot, fenced off by a wood beam fence.

The woman was down on the ground, dusting off what now looks like eyeglass lenses. She started telling me about some boy who got lost here a long time ago.

Dream 4

I was in "my great grandmother A's guest bedroom," which was empty except for a radio, which played some news story about how Michael Bloomberg came up with a new education funding event. Bloomberg had "Weird Al" Yankovic play at the event. I thought that was funny.

I walked out to the living room, which was also empty except a couch, and maybe told two male friends how maybe Bloomberg wasn't such a bad guy if he was cool enough to make "Weird Al" a guest at this fundraiser.

My older friend (?) told me, "Just remember that you have a liberal grandmother and a conservative friend. And if your grandmother doesn't like Bloomberg -- I mean, she's old and she doesn't like him! -- that ought to tell you something."

I hit my forehead and said, "Oh, of course Bloomberg is no good. Man, imagine if we were in Harlem."

My older friend said, "We are in Harlem."

I felt disoriented. I tried to remember if I was in Harlem and how I could have lost so much mental composure as to forget such a thing.

(12/29/05) murder by self-defense

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

Dream 1

I was on a field with some young guys who had attacked me with something like clear baseballs. I was close up in the guys' faces. The guys lay on the ground. I had attacked them in return. They now seemed knocked out or dead. But now the guys shouted at me somehow, like they had only been pretending to be out or like they were shouting from outside their bodies. Either way, they were trying to ridicule and frighten me.

Now I looked at a magazine article about a young woman who had, at maybe only nineteen or twenty years of age, gotten the death penalty. A few of the photos in the articles were like videos. Some showed the woman going to the electric chair. One may have showed her dead. A chilling one at the end showed her walking away from one interview -- it was strange to see a picture of her dying or dead right beside one of her before death.

Another series of photos, all squares one-third inch to a side, maybe twelve squares across the top of a page, showed the woman's progression into insanity. In all the photos, the woman wore blue jeans and a magenta, v-neck shirt. She often wore sunglasses.

In an early photo in this series, the woman stood by the bed of a pickup truck. The woman's hair was short and feathered. The woman had a kind of homely, lower class look. She always looked intimidating, but I think I was in love with her. I might have known her personally. As the photos progressed, the woman got skinnier, less intimidating, but more haunting. In one, where she smoked a cigarette, she looked to be about fifty years old.

Now I read or "got" the story. The woman, at the time of the last photo, was attacked by a group of young men and women, each of whom had a deadly weapon. The woman had been holding the receiver of an old, rotary-style, wide-base phone.

The woman used the receiver to relieve every person of their weapon. Then she killed every person with the receiver.

The law ruled that the killings were done maliciously and not out of self-defense. So the woman was sentenced to death.

(1/8/06) puppet hater

(Entered in paper journal at 10:44 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Denver.)

Dream 1

I sat in a skeleton of a room with my friend R. We sat on a bench against an almost papery wall. I had puppets on my hands. I could occasionally reach my arms way up in the air. It was like the puppets would attach to my hands as I stretched my arms. The puppets were like furry creatures in an anime called Angel of Darkness.

R sat to my right. I was almost delirious. I yelled at him, apologetically but upset, that he needed to stop needling and making me feel awful with two sayings (generalized, that he could mold to fit particular moments) he always foisted on me whenever I got happy or excited.

(1/26/06) chicken-leg wicker spaceships; murr-duhh

(Entered in dream journal at 6:01 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was outside with my family. We all launched off occasionally in spaceships. Something had happened in one of  my launches -- I had been afraid of the speed or height of my trip. I was now afraid to get on the spaceship again. So I let my sister go out on the trip instead of me. But I think I knew that sooner or later I'd have to go out on the trip. I think the accident may have been that my spaceship (or somebody's spaceship) had disintegrated.

There was some kind of different spaceship, though. It looked like a wicker basket. It was like you wrapped your body in yellow/pea-green cloths and got into the wicker basket (which was much smaller than an adult human body) and put a wicker lid on top of the basket. This ship may have been much, much safer. But I was still afraid.

People may, meanwhile, have been taking spaceships nearby (probably the "regular" kind -- which were still like small capsules, except a little bigger and made of "spaceship material"). I'm pretty sure nobody in my family was flying, though.

I "saw" the ship. You had to fly with your legs sticking out through holes in the front of the ship. The legs I saw were "chicken legs." I thought, The legs would get burnt off that way. But then I realized the legs, my legs, were "chicken legs" and could not get burnt off because they were so solid.

Then I saw a skinny, tall, black man in reflective sunglasses that reflected the desert floor and sky. The man grinned gloatingly at me. He had been on a ship and gotten burnt to death, probably. It was like now he wanted other people to die, like he actually tried to make them die. But for some reason I think I knew that because he had died I was safe.

Now I knew I would almost certainly be safe if I rode a spaceship. But I still couldn't move. Worst of all, I'm pretty sure I was still thinking of letting my sister instead of me take what I was still afraid was an unsafe ride.

Dream 2

I was in a big bus like a tour bus for a rock band. I was trying to get some place like a job. A few people were in the bus with me -- possibly my family. I sat at a couch in the back. The windows on the bus were huge and tinted, bluish.

Two black kids, one with a red cap and sunglasses, walked around the back end of the bus somehow.

I hoped they couldn't see me behind the tinted glass of the bus windows. But the kid in the cap and sunglasses saw me. He stopped (on the left side of the bus?) can't be sure), turned slowly, glared in, and said, audibly as if he were right in the bus, "Murr-duhh." He smiled smugly with teeth that may have been capped in gold or silver.

(2/18/06) fighting a skinhead with a big house

(Entered in paper journal at 8:49 AM at Muddy Waters coffee shop on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in something like a roadside gift shop. The shop was full of people rushing back and forth. I don't know what I was doing there. Eventually I felt so bullied by everybody that I backed to the left side, near a garbage can and possibly a sales counter. But everybody kept brushing up against me even then, so I walked across the small floor to a painted wooden bench.

A boy (black or Hispanic?) sat by me. I was against the armrest to my left. I had something like a newspaper or a big book in my hands. At first I thought the kid was going to taunt me like everybody else. But he turned out just to be interested in me. I wanted to embrace the boy and read to him from my "book." But I was afraid that if I did this his parents, or any adults nearby, would try to accuse me of having bad intentions.

I was about to embrace him, anyway. But a big, shaved-headed, white man, the boy's father or guardian, sat down between us. The man wore a tan trench coat. He managed to sit so that he smashed my feet, which were now up on the bench. I may have been wearing yellow or pink canvas shoes. The man had pale blue eyes.

The man sat with his back to me so that he faced his child. He would then look over his left shoulder and smirk at me. I knew he just wanted to give me a "half-look" to give me a queasy sense of uncertainty and annoy me.

I just tried to ignore the man. I went back to reading my "book." The man, now seeing that he couldn't annoy me by splitting up me and the boy, smashing my feet, sitting with his back to me, and constantly giving me a queasy "half-look," now kept swinging his arms backwards so he would hit my "book" (which now seems to have been the comics section from a Sunday paper).

I may have taken the comics section and rolled it up and used it to hit the man, or I may have just hit the man with my hands. I swatted him on both his ears.

The man was big. And he looked like a skinhead. I was afraid of him. But I wanted to fight. But the man didn't even look at me.

I yelled at the man, "You know what you're doing! You're responsible for your actions! I'm not trying to bother you! Don't bother me!"

I lost focus, though somehow my tirade continued. The scene slowly changed to a slightly barren wilderness before a white-grey cliff. The man had a small structure that looked like a children's mock-up of an alpine-style, two-story house. I, too, had changed into an old, white man with a balding forehead and crown and long, scraggly, salt-and-pepper hair and beard. I probably wore a too-tight white t-shirt and jeans. I had complained at the man.

Now I was walking back to my home, which was something like a short, thick-trunked, gnarled cherry tree with a full canopy of tiny, synaptic branches the leaf buds of which were like rose thorns (actual thorns, not spiky leaf buds like the buds of beech leafs). I didn't live in the tree -- i.e. I didn't live in a hole in the trunk, in the canopy, etc. Instead, I just stood by the trunk, and that was how I lived at the tree. And I never actually "saw" "myself" (the old man). I just "saw" the tree and "felt" "myself/the old man" walk to the tree. I even "felt" something like a silhouette against the tree.

My statement angered the big white man. He was coming to fight me. I knew I'd have to fight. But I didn't know how I could. The man had a "big house." All I had was this tree. I already felt defeated and pathetic.

(5/2/06) you got something to say?; the big joke

(Entered in paper journal at 5:51 PM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood by "my door" in "my bedroom." I looked through the peephole. A roommate, a black man with long dreads and a mean look,  walked toward my door. At first he seemed unaware of me. Then he looked straight at me. I thought, Fine. If he knows I'm looking at him, let him know. I'm tired of ihm thinking he's got everybody scared.

The man walked straight toward me as if there were no door. Then there wa no door. He had been changing into a woman as he approached me, even though "she" was still a "man." "She" looked at me with an ugly face. "She" was somewhat dark, round, with thin, eyes, a white tank top, and a palish blue, denim skirt.

"She" asked me, "Why are you staring at me? You got something to say?"

I told "her," "Yes. You always make all this noise when everybody else is going to bed. It's rude and mean and you need to stop."

We now stood before a doorway outside like at a suburban house with a front yard. She told me, "I've been proud of you for making it this long through all the noise. It's a type of lesson for you. are you complaining about your lessons?"

I didn't feel defensive or threatened. But I did try to justify myself.

Somehow both the woman and I got sidetracked and had a conversation about something outside.

Dream 2

I was on my bed. I heard my landlord in the hallway outside. The landlord was getting ready to leave.

I sat up, jumped off the foot of my bed, and opened my door. My room and the hallway both had an opulent wood and gold glow in the morning sunlight. The hallway was enormous, with plush, green carpet and thick wood walls. The ceilings were high. A stairway went down to another visible level and then back up, like this.

My landlord was on the lower level, but I could see him. A few people, all black, hung around the hall, telling the landlord there were no problems and he could go home.

I yelled at the landlord, "P! P! I have a complaint! Everything's not okay!"

Everybody looked at me, angry. I ran down the steps. It occurred to me this guy's name was PR XXXXX. I couldn't remember his last name. It struck me I might not be able to contact him if I didn't have his last name.

I yelled at him, "The man in this room" (I pointed to a room on the lower level) "makes noise all night long. I'm tired of nobody doing anything about it."

I knew that I was putting myself in danger for what I was doing. But I had to do it.

The landlord said, "He's just a poor Hispanic." (Or Mexican?) "You can't just get mad at him after one incident."

I took the landlord's statement to heart. But I couldn't figure out why I did so. First of all, the man was big and black. He wasn't a poor Hispanic. He wasn't a poor anything. And he had done mean things to me ever since I'd gotten here.

It was night. I was in bed. Suddenly my door was bashed in. Two short Mexican men burst in. I jumped to the foot of my bed, which was now tall.

The second Mexican man pulled a shaving razor

on me, yelling, "You got my friend in trouble! He's just a Mexican" (?) "who can barely speak English!"

The men weren't trying to get sympathy. This was all just another part of their big joke. But when the second man shoved his razor at me I grabbed the man's wrist and then the razor. I pulled the razor out of the man's hand. But when I tried to slash the man I was somehow ineffectual.

(6/3/06) the female gauze

(Entered in paper journal at 10:42 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

There were two men and a woman. They were at the woman's house. One man was my boss BS. The other man was a black man, possibly Michael Jordan. The two men had bullied the woman. But somehow the woman had gained power over the men.

The men were now very small, wrapped in gauze bandages. They fit in the woman's hands. She stood at the top of stairs and threw the gauze so the end of each strip stayed in her hands and the gauze unwrapped from the men as they tumbled down the steps. The men may have stopped, not completely unwrapped, before a Christmas tree in the living room.

(9/18/06) recruiting floyd bowie; can't reach my grandmother; the vanishing stealth bomber

(Entered in paper journal at 7:35 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was on a subway train at night. I might ahve gone some stops too far. I was with my Americorps coworkers VT and SM. The train went underground through enormous, fluorescent-lit tunnels and then up above ground through an area like a mountain town. During that time it was like there was lightning and snow.

It was Christmas Eve. I was trying to find someone from our crew who wouldn't mind working. If I could find one person, everyone else would fall into place. VT suggested "Floyd Bowie." The next train stop got off near Floyd's house. But VT warned me that perhaps the parents wouldn't want Floyd to work.

I apparently got off the train to go to Floyd's But I didn't really physically get off the train. I just kind of floated down around through the small, snow-covered city that was nestled between some mountains in purple night light.

I stood at the base of the bridge on which the train ran -- a beautiful, long, stone bridge (thought also not unlike the bridge dividing Park Avenue in East Harlem). Down a slope under one of the arches and on the other side of the bridge was a tree bathed in orange streetlamp light.

A black man stood against the tree as if embracing it, urinating. I thought, Don't let these guys see you. This neighborhood's tough at night. They'll all gang up on you.

It was like I was floating around again. I ended up on the corner of a small hill where "Floyd Bowie's" family's house was. The house was a tall, cubic structure, with white walls on the left, right (and back?), and a glass front wall (and glass ceiling?). A second story like a balcony stood high over the first story living room, which was ample and spacious but with plenty of furniture.  The entire house glowed a uranium green, as if lit from the inside.

I was captivated by the beauty of the house. But I didn't want to get too close. I was afraid the parents would think I was exploiting Floyd and pressuring him to work on this day. I thought I would just call and let Floyd's family know I was in the neighborhood. I could see if I could stop by (even though it was probably 2 or 3 AM).

As I was calling I was walking by the bridge again. Under the arches and down the hills, in orange streetlight, were tough kids. Finally they saw me and slinked along after me. I wasn't getting Floyd's phone number right, and I wasn't leaving the right message. I had to call again and again to try and get things right.

I ran into a corner -- a wall jutting from the bridge. I had missed the stairs leading up to the train. I turned around.

An Asian boy stopped me. Some of his friends stood in the distance. He was tallish and fattish. He wore glasses, darkish blue hospital scrub pants with clownish designs, and a plain blue hospital shirt. The left shoulder of the shirt was held together by a safety pin.

The boy did something to bully me. I "fought" him weird, so I ended frozen with my feet kicking his left shoulder (?). I pulled the safety pin off the guy's shirt. The guy was just laughing at me. He grabbed my legs or arms and taunted me. He told me I couldn't get out of his grip, that I wasn't tough enough.

I was going to shove the safety pin into the guy's neck. I got close. The kid took a silver lighter out of his pocket. He said, "You did just what I wanted you to do."

The guy put the lighter over my head. I stood back (apparently back in control of my legs). The guy put his lighter away. I was about to go at the guy again. But he said, "Ah, ah, ah... You might want to do this." He tapped his head.

I tapped my head. I had a flame coming out of the crown of my head. I patted it out. I was furious. I knew all the kids were going to attack me now.

Dream 2

It was like I was under a table in a house with no front wall or a huge, open front door showing the wide view of a small, mountain view on a sunny, crisp day.

I was on my cell phone, trying to make a call. I had heard my (grandmother P?) was in bad shape, maybe even dead. I had somehow missed a call from her, out of carelessness and not wanting to talk to her. Now each time my call failed to connect seemed to prove more and more what an awful person I was.

I could almost hear my (grandma?) scolding me for being such an awful person, to let her die like that. It was almost like she died partly to teach me a lesson.

Dream 3

I stood with a friend (can't remember who) on open ground on a clear day. (Now it seems obvious to me we were on an asphalt strip next to an airplane hangar. But this was not obvious in the dream -- I simply felt like I was somewhere near a forest.)

I looked up. I saw a "Stealth Bomber." I pointed it out to my friend. The bomber flew over us once and then slowly a second time, fling upside down and low so we could see the two pilots waving at us.

I shouted to my friend, "Did you see that? They waved!"

We looked away. But I couldn't believe it. Why would anybody wave at me? It must have been my friend they were waving at.

I looked back up. The jet seemed to be frozen in place. I saw the pilot in back "waving." Then I realized he wasn't waving. He was signaling. He was trying to get me out of the area where the jet was trying to land!

Now I meandered all over the place like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get out of the way, looking up at the jet the whole time. The jet lost its body, as if it had never existed. When the "jet landed it was just a cockpit on wheels. But it still looked cool. I knew it was still an important vehicle. It had landed so slowly, gently, and quietly, though, that I wondered why the back pilot had made such a big deal about me getting out of the way.

(9/23/06) contact graveyard; task for boss; smashed up blinds; killers in my car; tarot girls

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I made a drop-down menu of names on a weird contact list computer program. One of my boss BS's contacts didn't want to be on the list anymore. But I had to create the drop-down list and put her on it to take her off. The background behind the menu looked like a graveyard drawn in oil pastels. I was confused whether the contact wanted to be on or off the list.

Dream 2

I had to perform a task for my boss EB.

Dream 3

I had just moved into a good-sized, nice apartment in a suburban-feeling area. The apartment was on the ground floor. I sat on the back porch, reading something. I figured I would come inside for some reason. I would read in the living room.

I closed all the blinds, not wanting to be seen by anybody in the complex (kind of townhome style, with a winding road through it and lawns before the apartments). I knew if the people saw me, they'd cause trouble.

But somehow some kids got close to my windows. They smashed up my blinds -- or they actually didn't, but their presence did. I started talking with the kids. Apparently they were nice. They faded out.

I was by a side window, boarding it up and putting a blanket over it to keep people from seeing me. I was talking (in my head) to someone, a friend. I thought perhaps I should unlock my window so I could see my friend. But I became absorbed by the sliding configuration of the white boards I had used to block my window.

Dream 4

I walked down a suburban street, in the road, on the right hand side. I was walking past nice houses, but they were also like the backs of apartments or business buildings, with short staircases leading up to heavy, dull-painted doors.

Two Mexican kids (one of whom I never saw and who eventually faded out of existence (?)) were following me, annoying me. I tried to pretend they didn't bother me. They would run up to the doors, pound on them, and scream. The one kid I saw would beat on the door with a red balloon. Then he would charge at me, bouncing the red balloon in my face and growling.

I turned the block to see an incongruous, stately building made of stone, in a very classic style, i.e.

except somehow very smooth and seamless. It didn't fit in with this semi-upper-class, suburban neighborhood.

The kid with the red balloon was nicer to me, hugging me and talking.

In the distance I saw a hill with a lot of buildings. I thought to a block there with some nice restaurant. But I couldn't figure how I would get there.

I was in a big house. There were windows all around, showing a mountainous scene under a greyish sky with maybe a little snow. Some other houses were here and there.

There was a road. Two teenage Mexican guys were taunting me and trying to break into my house. But I did something that got them to leave.

I knew the cops were now following the Mexican guys. I knew the Mexican guys were mad at my mom and were going to kill her. They had gone to her house before coming to mine. But she had sent the police to follow them. The police, coincidentally, caught up with them after they had come to attack me.

I was in front of my mom's house as the guys pulled up -- both in the backseat. They had come to do a drive-by shooting on my mom's house. But I ran to the car (a dull gold, 1980s-style car) before they could do anything.

I challenged the guys to a fight. They wouldn't get out of the car, so I jumped in through the back passenger side window. The guy on the left pulled out a beautifully polished, silver "switchblade" that reminded me of a curling iron or a comb (though now it obviously seems like a shaving razor with no blade, only a hinged, silver casing).

I put my neck right where the black should have been, wondering why it wasn't sharp. I wanted to take a cut to prove I wasn't afraid and then fight back.

My mom was driving the car. I sat on the driver's side, beside the two guys. We drove through a nice, mountainous area. We were all laughing.

I told the guys, "I like you both. But sometimes you, you in particular," (to the one to my right) "can be assholes." The one to my right was sweating. We all laughed. I was a woman for a second, making flirtatious glances to my right and left.

My mom sat in the front passenger seat. A blank "chauffeur" drove. The two people beside me were a man and a woman, both naked. They said, "Well, we'd better be going now. We'll see you later." They pulled up a blanket over themselves to go do sleep.

But the woman, who sat next to me, first making sure the jealous man was asleep, turned to me and hugged me warmly, saying, "I'm glad you visited. It's always nice when you make us laugh and make us feel special."

Dream 5

Two women sat at a table, battling with something like tarot cards. One woman put down a card of a brown, orange, and gold landscape and said to the other woman, "Do you have anything to match that?"

(10/10/06) museum & backpack; dropping my dream journal

(Entered in paper journal at 12:20 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was waiting for some kind of solar planetarium show to begin. I stood in a big lobby -- glass walls, grey day -- chocolate/maroon bricks. I saw there was a lot of time before the show. I would eat at a McDonald's and then walk through the museum.

I walked into a room that somehow resembled a huge sauna. In one corner, very far left (i.e. 10 PM on the direction clock) I saw a bearded fellow who was "Stephen King." I looked again at my cell phone watch. I had less time than I had thought. I would only eat/walk through the museum and would save walking/eating for after the show.

The lobby had been crowded before. Now it was somewhat empty. I walked up the staircase and into other parts of the building, then across a bridge to the other building. I barely saw most of it. It was darker inside -- something like a space exploration section of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Before I headed in I realized I had left my backpack with security in the first building. A security woman by the door told me not to worry -- that bags were transferred to this building once visitors switched over to it.

Dream 2

I came to a wide complex of staircases before a building. It turned into something like the seating area in an auditorium.

A lot of black people milled around, looking mischievous. I waited until some of them sat down. One guy in particular sat in a couch-like structure and sucked on a 32-ounce cola. By him was a downward staircase.

I tried to stay unseen or unnoticed. I got to the staircase and fumbled my dream journal. It fell down the steps -- where I was going anyway. So I didn't do anything odd to pick it up. but on the lower floor I kicked it along, and it accidentally fell down the next staircase as a group of mean black kids was watching. (It was much darker in this level -- a lot of cold steel.) I was going down, anyway. So I didn't worry.

Down on the lowest level, which was very dark, there were interesting undulations in the floor. At the bottom of the staircase a woman was crowding the way. I gently brushed past her but felt guilty for doing so. I saw my dream journal and tried to kick it to a point where the woman would not see me lifting it up.

(7/5/08) the sandwich bully

(Entered in paper journal at 8:01 AM at Naidre's cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking through a building with my family. The building may have been like a building on a college campus. Some of my family members, probably my aunt B, uncle MB, and possibly my mother, my brother, and my cousin AR, were all behind me as we walked through a crowd of people.

We turned a corner and came up to a woman at a table. The table was stacked with cardboard boxes full of sandwiches. The woman was handing out the sandwiches for free as part of some promotional event.

My family started to shuffle past, but I stood to look at the sandwiches. Some sandwiches seemed full, with nice lettuce and tomatoes. Others looked like nothing but bread. All the sandwiches were wrapped in nice, thick, clear, plastic wrappers. I grabbed a sandwich for myself. But when I got back to my family, I handed the sandwich to one of my family members, possibly my brother.

The space we stood in was like an alcove of a gift shop or a bookshop, and was full of natural light. The crowd of people was still pretty busy.

I went back to the table to get a sandwich for myself. But as I did, my cousin AR (in a white dress, and looking maybe like she did when she was twelve years old) stood in front of me (carrying a stroller?) and told me, half-jokingly, "You didn't get a sandwich for aunt B. She's going to be mad."

At first I felt inconvenienced. I thought everybody should be getting their own sandwiches for themselves, not having me get them. Then I felt ashamed. My cousin would think I was so inconsiderate if she knew what I was thinking!

I quickly became jokey and said, " Oh!!! She's going to be mad!!! Of course I was geting her a sandwich right now." I walked behind and past my cousin, massaging her back with my knuckles quickly and vigorously as I passed. I grabbed a nice sandwich. I may have passed it to my aunt B, who may have been standing with a stroller and wearing an orange shirt.

Finally I went to grab my own sandwich. I got to the woman again. She now stood behind a cash register. She would ring open the register with each free sandwich she gave out, laying a one-dollar (or ten-dollar?) bill into the till and then pulling it back out, as if registering a sale. This worried me. I couldn't tell if now I had to pay for a sandwich, and I felt like dealing with money at this point would just clutter me up.

The woman was young, pale skinned, blonde, with pale blue eyes and a soft, roundish face. I asked for one last free sandwich. The woman pulled one out of a box for me, but then stopped. She said, "You've already taken too many free sandwiches for yourself already. The limit is three per person."

I said, "But I haven't been taking them for myself. I've been giving them to my family."

She said, "You can't prove that, and I'm not giving you any more!"

I was discouraged. I kind of slumped away.

I was about to walk through another doorway, possibly to catch up with my family, when a woman standing by a stroller yelled, "You can't do that to him! He did give the sandwiches to his family!"

The woman defending me was in the middle of saying something else when the woman behind the register cut in and yelled at me, "Fine! Here! Take your sandwich! God! But you better remember this in the future, cause I'm gonna remember you!" It was plain to me now that the woman behind the register had withheld the last sandwich simply because she was trying to bully me, and now she was pissed off that someone had called her on it.

She leaned over the cash register and held the sandwich at arm's length. I was ten feet away from her (and possibly standing behind a maroon-colored stroller), but I still leaned forward and stretched my arm out as if I could grab the sandwich from her.

I now held the sandwich. It was one of the ones with nothing in it.