(11/27/05) a stabbing at becket gate; butch and bull

(Entered in paper journal at 10:29 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a house, then I was outside it was if I were inside it. It was dark. I stood over a brown vinyl cushion that had four or five pairs of screws screwed into it. The heads of the screws stuck about half an inch out from the cushion. The screws were black like iron, but soft and warm-looking, like plastic. The pairs were arranged in parallel lines, with a bit of curvature in the lines.

I was supposed to lay my back on these screws to help my spine. But because the lines were messed up, because they had the curvature, I thought my friend R, who probably owned this house, would think I was careless and a slob.

Now I lay on a bed outside, in a steamy, swampy area with only tiny lumps of land popping out of the water. The bed was like a hospital bed.

To my left was a house, kind of like a trading post or hotel. The place had a name like Becket Gate or Becket Garden, advertised on a gaudy sign over the building's modern, big-windowed lodge-style structure. The sign was as big as the house. It was made of enormous wooden figures of animals, all smashed together like the people on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I remember seeing a cricket-like creature, a crane that looked more like a white duck with a stubby beak (even for a duck!), and some animal like a primordial squid. This squid was grey, cone-like, with gel-like skin and a black, dirty back end out of which came long threads like hairs or jellyfish stingers.

I was afraid that the figures of these animals, especially the weird "squid," would call the actual animals. I thought, I wouldn't worry about the crane, because I'm familiar with them. But all the other animals are too frightening. Who knows what they'd do?

I now saw some gigantic "cranes" floating out from behind the building. I thought, They don't look like cranes. They look like some other kind of animal. Why don't they look like cranes? Are they going to start looking like cranes?

I was now inside the house, which was dark, filled with cobalt blue darkness, and huge. I was filing through some cabinets, looking for something. I was sure someone here was angry at me and wanted to attack me.

Now I heard somebody from a room repeating a noise, like, "chuh, chuh, chuh," something really plain and silly, but so angry and insistent it sounded as menacing as a rattlesnake rattle. I walked toward the sound, knowing the onwly thing I could do was face it.

I walked down a wide, huge hallway and past a bathroom. Somebody who sounded like my brother said, "Helloooo, I'm here!" as I walked past. I kept walking.

I think I thought that the voice I heard came from a hurt person, not an angry one. But now that person jumped out of the bathroom and onto my back, "hitting" me in on the fleshy part right behind my collarbone on my right side.

I thought something like, This is (Mary Constance Gardner?), the possessed woman. I also realized it was R, and that I wasn't being hit behind my collarbone, but stabbed. R was stabbing my heart from above.

I thought, No. This is just a possession. You can't be afraid of the parts that seem violent. But I got too afraid. In spite of the fact that nothing really hurt, I still couldn't stand the thought of being stabbed in the heart by some jerk who'd jumped on top of me. Mostly, I was afraid.

Dream 2

I was in a hallway, getting ready to speak with someone at work, JG. But some really butch lesbian stood in the hallway. JG got all bullish, seriously grunting and stomping and eventually butting her head and then body into this woman. JG had done this. But it was the other woman's intention, so that she could show me how much of a bull she was, how she could be forceful with girls, while I couldn't.

I just walked away uninterested, even though I knew that my doing something like that, and having an uninterested attitude like I did, would cost me my job.

(2/12/06) my sister is going to stab me in the back of the skull

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

Dream 1

It was night. I was in an apartment building, at least ten floors up, I'd guess, with my sister (?) and "her husband." They were doing something suspicious. At first I couldn't tell what it was. Then I figured out that they were shooting heroin.

For some reason I had gotten the idea that my sister and "her husband" were having a hard time taking care of their kids. Now I only wanted to expose them so their kids could find safety.

My mom came to pick me up. My sister and I were out in the parking lot. At first I wasn't going to say anything. We were getting into my mom's vehicle (which looked more like my sister's SUV in waking life, except a little smaller). My sister got into the backseat. Something about her seemed a little bit like my friend R.

Now I felt like I absolutely had to tell my mom about my sister's and brother-in-law's heroin use. But as I was telling my mom I could feel that "R/my sister" was going to stab me in the back of the skull.

(10/28/07) sprung springs; death of a jumpsuit kitty

(Entered in paper journal at 9:25 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I woke up in the dark. I rolled over in my bed. I knocked against metal wire which stuck out of my mattress. I got panicked and lifted up my head to look at the wire. the wire was like repeated s-shapes, thin, sticking out of the bed in two spans at 45-degree angles from the mattress.

I thought springs must have broken in my mattress. I was afraid that without my having been aware of it, another spring had pierced through my midsection or skull and that I would die as soon as I discovered it.

Dream #2

I woke up in the dark. I lay on the top bunk of a bunk bed. To my left, on the wall along the bed's left side, was a window. Trees in close, tangled growth were lit (by a building wall-light?) so I could see them pretty well. There was a lot of tangled vegetation but not a lot of foliage. One leaf I saw was big and rough-green with crinkly, brown edges. It had the shapes of a maple leaf and a tuliptree leaf mixed together, but it was probably about twelve inches long.

I called the leaf a sycamore maple leaf. But when I looked at the tree trunk nearest me, it was much smoother than that of a sycamore maple would be. I thought, Well, is it a silver maple? But there were cherry-like striations on the bark. I thought, Is it a birch tree?

I then figured that the leaf I saw clearly was from one of the tree trunks behind this front one. I looked higher up the trunk to see if I could spot any leafs. In tangled, brownish vegetation I saw yellow and brown leafs shaped like elm leafs and lit from above by a wall-light so their colors glowed softly.

I felt an animal stirring around my head. At first I thought it was a rat. I panicked and almost rolled out of bed. I thought, You can't flinch like that! You'll fall out of bed and hurt yourself!

I looked at the animal. It was a cat that lived in this house. I loved it and was happy to see it. It was daylight now. I sat up on the bed, playing a little with the cat.

There were a couple cat care magazines on the bed (which was full of different sheets and blankets). The magazines were different issues of the same magazine, but at some point the magazine had changed its title. The issue with the changed title was the first issue I had seen with the changed title. I can't remember the original title. The changed title was Fandango's Pop.

There was now also a little, grey kitten, almost just born, in a little, blue jumpsuit or covered in a blue blanket. Both cats were just lying near me.

I flipped an outside advertisement flap on the new magazine to see the actual front cover. There was some photo of a fluffy, white cat. I closed the magazine and pulled it up to shift it a little out of my way. Somehow I managed to knock the little kitten off the edge of the bed.

I tried to catch the kitten, but I couldn't. I stuck my left leg out, in front of the bunk bed's ladder, possibly to catch the kitten on my foot. But it just rolled down my leg and off my foot. The little kitten thunked down on the ground. It writhed a little. I thought it had hit the floor pretty hard for a newborn cat and that it was probably injured or dead.

I scrambled down the steps. I knelt over the kitten. It still writhed. It had fur like a full-grown cat (grey and dusty white with black, watery stripes), but the kitten was only about three inches long. The kitten's eyes were shut tight, like the kitten was in extreme pain. I picked up the kitten. It looked like a newly hatched bird. It had greyish-peach skin and blue, round eyes. It still writhed in its pale blue jumpsuit or blanket. I was sure it was in its death throes.

I lifted it up to the other cat, which may have had orange fur. I hoped the other cat would be able to care for the kitten or let me know by some instinctual reaction that the kitten was okay. The orange cat began writhing like the little kitten. But then it began pushing the kitten away, getting more and more annoyed with the kitten.

I now realized that my thinking had been wrong. Since the orange cat wasn't the grey kitten's mother, it couldn't take care of the kitten like a mother would. And it couldn't be worried about the kitten's pain if it couldn't take care of the kitten.

I thought, Well, if the kitten is still moving, it might be alright. I picked the kitten back up. I thought I would need to find the kitten's mom.

The room I was in was messy, full of junk and unopened moving boxes that were strung over with clothing and fabric. I walked into the hallway, which looked the same. The whole house, apparently, was full of boxes and junk. And it was glowing with golden sunlight.

I looked down at the kitten. Its grey head was now red, as if the kitten had sustained a head injury after all and was now hemorrhaging. The kitten shook its head back and forth, looking at me urgently. The kitten's face was almost human, like the face of a classic grey alien with blue eyes and a cat nose.

To see that the kitten understood what was happening to it was too much for me. I began to call out. But I was so uncertain of whether I should call out for my own mother or for the kitten's mother that my cries were just like groans of voice before the word is formed. I kept making this sound and getting more and more panicked.

I walked into the bathroom, which was also full of junk and boxes. I must have thought that either the mother cat or my own mother was in the bathtub. I thought that if I laid the kitten in the tub I would either know for sure that the kitten was going to die, and that it was my fault, or that the kitten would be taken care of.

(11/12/07) museum flood; brother stabbed; superfriends jealousy; housecleaning lover

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in some place like a monastery. My brother had come into the room I was in. He had come from outdoors. I walked outdoors. I wore a robe like a monk's robe. I walked out into a large, covered walkway of sandstone. The walls (especially at the corners, which were like towers or guard-stations) were thick, with wide "windows" showing a desert-like area of tan hills beyond. I was barefoot and the stone chilled my feet. The light was blue like late afternoon or early morning.

I turned left at a corner. I was afraid of a mountain lion attacking. Something strange was happening on the walls -- it was like Roman figures began to appear in relief.

At another corner I made a left turn. I walked into an inside room. It was a "museum exhibit." But the walls and floor were strangely shaped, as if we were inside a cave. The place was red-brown, like sandstone and clay. On the lumps, mounds, and columns on the floor were art works like frescoes and mosaics, all in a Roman style.

I became afraid, as if a spirit were materializing in this room. I started running. I ran through glass doors and into another "exhibit" room. This room was modern but dark. All the art pieces, which hung from ceilings, stood on weird stands coming out of the floor, or stood at weird angles to each other,were closely but elegantly lit by one light. There was a jeweled feeling to it all.

I was even more afraid of the spirit materializing, so I ran out of this room, too, through another series of doors. This area, I knew, was the front area, the visitors' center (as if this were a national park). Other workers would eventually show up, and then I wouldn't feel alone and afraid.

The room was large, with twenty-foot-high, white walls, red-tile floors, and two aisles of long document-display cases on either side of the front door. Before the front door, to my right, was a long, black mat that led to the front desk, which was to my left.

Two people walked in. The one in front was a Hispanic woman, maybe twenty-five years old, with a green shirt, black pants, and long, black hair. The other person was a tall, white man, rather nondescript. I figured the two people were together. I thought, These people must have some questions for me. Let me answer them. But when I faced the woman to ask how I could help, she turned into my grandmother P. The man vanished.

My grandma was a little rude and impatient. She asked, "Where do I have to stand from here to see the Hudson?"

I said, "This is the East Side. You can't see the Hudson from here."

I showed my grandma a map of where we were. Seeing the map, and how the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers was near here, I said, "Well, I guess technically you can see the Hudson."

My grandma said, "That's what I meant -- where the Hudson drops into the East River. Which way do I have to stand outside to see it?"

I said, "You'll see a big ship outside. Go stand by that. Turn left."

(At this point in my journal, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed writing from the Starbucks on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue at 6 AM.)

My grandma went outside. After a second I followed here. It was dark outside. The whole area outside was like a dock. It floated up and down with the waves. A large, white ship, like a cruise ship, stood in the distance.

I looked to my left. The woman (?) stood near the edge of "the dock." The full moon stood about twenty-five degrees in the horizon. I thought I should warn the woman about the waves. They sometimes submerged the dock entirely. Something bad might happen to a person who went too far underwater with "the dock."

The dock started going underwater. At first I ran toward the dock to warn the woman. But then I had to swim. I grabbed the woman. The woman was like an empty shell.

I swam back to (what was now) "the house." The house looked like a small, suburban house. I pulled myself and the woman up a staircase like a staircase out of a swimming pool.

My brother opened the door. There was a good light inside. I could only see my brother's silhouette against the light. I wondered whether the house would even survive. As the waves rose, they seemed to be pulling everything under.

Dream #2

It was late night. I was possibly coming out of a restaurant. I got a call from my brother. He told me he was finishing up at some arcade. He wanted me to pick him up. He implied that he wanted me to give him cab fare to get home.

I told my brother (assuming that he lived around Houston Street in Manhattan), "I can meet with you and give you a subway ride when we get down into the station together. But I'm not taking a cab home and I'm not giving you cab fare. So do you want me to meet you?"

There was no answer. I said, "Yes or no?" Still no answer. I thought, Oh, you jerk. Don't try to intimidate me. I hung up the phone.

I was now close to the arcade. The street was dark and close, but there were stores with bright, fluorescent light and sharp, white walls. I walked into one of the stores when I saw a troublemaker kid who might have known my brother. He stood at a shoddy, white desk, speaking with a security guard. The kid was short, fattish, possibly Mexican. He wore a pale blue (Denver Nuggets?) jersey with a white t-shirt underneath.

From the kid's rude comments to the security guard I could tell that my brother had been stabbed and was hurt pretty bad. The kid was either trying to get help form my brother or was bragging about how his (the kid's) friends had hurt my brother.

I ran to some other place, then through a long, white-walled (walls thin like scaffolding) tunnel to a bright, white-walled room like a waiting room for a cheap office. The whole place felt grimy and messy. There was another security guard's desk.

My brother lay on the ground. He held a pair of child scissors (green handles) in his left hand. He had been stabbed in his right breast with the scissors. Then he'd had the scissors put in his own hands, to look like he had stabbed himself. Two shortish, fattish, Mexican boys knelt over my brother's legs. The boys were either my brother's friends or the people who had stabbed him.

The hole in my brother's chest wasn't very bloody or very big. I thought, At least he wasn't stabbed in the heart. But, still, he lay as if he were dead. I thought, This was going to happen sooner or later. Why did he always put himself into situations where this would happen?

I knelt by my brother's head and called either the police or my mother. As soon as I had finished dialing, my brother opened his eyes. He tried to sit up. I held him back down. I said, "You'll hurt yourself even more if you try to move."

At this point I might have seen this room completely dark, except with a fire-ring built where my brother had been. An older Mexican/Indian boy sat, with his younger brother to his left, before the fire. Both boys were wrapped in robes or blankets, almost like women.

Dream #3

I stood on the roof of a tall building. The sky was dark blue, like at very early morning. Most of the buildings around me were on fire. Some buildings were falling. I flew over the city, seeing its grid of charred ruins.

Now, on the ground, I saw things as if I were in an old SuperFriends cartoon. Five characters stood at the foot of an escalator: a Superboy/Robin character, a Superman/Lex Luthor-Robot (???) character, a long-haired Superman character, and a Superdog character.

Something thoughtless the Superboy character had done had caused all the destruction. The Superboy character felt very bad. But he now said, "Well, what will our mission be next week?" (As if even the heroes understood that these episodes occurred weekly.)

I thought, Next week? How stupid do they think kids are? The whole city's destroyed. What are they going to save next week? Or is the city going to be magically rebuilt?

One of the Supermen said, "I hope you learned your lesson."

The Superboy said, "I have. If I had't let my jealousy of your relationship" (with Wonder Woman?) "get out of hand, none of this would have happened."

The whole team now did their characteristic exit, up the escalator, which moved them through the air, along the upper levels of corridors of (now intact) skyscrapers, and then through some weird "interdimensional portal." The credits were rolling during this exit scene.

Dream #4

I was in "my bedroom" with a woman. I was naked except for a pair of panties. The woman pulled out a vacuum from a closet and started cleaning my bedroom. She cleaned of a heater by the window. It had roach droppings all over it.

The woman pulled open the curtains. It was dark outside. There was a huge, wide building across the street. We must have been up on the fifteenth floor of this building. I hid behind the bed so nobody in the building across the street would see me, a boy, dressed only in panties.

I asked the woman if she would close the curtains. She said, "Not while I'm cleaning house." I was a little annoyed about that. Nevertheless, I felt thankful that the woman was cleaning the house, and that she was not afraid or ashamed to touch the parts I had let get too dirty.