(1/19/08) burning the woman/monster; ritz-carlton service; coppola's generous man; sawyerpunk

(Entered in paper journal at 9:40 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue.)

Dream #1

I was in a place that looked like a living room but which must also have been something like a space station. I watched two people closed into a bedroom in a dark hallway. Of the two people in the first bedroom, one closed the other into a small closet. I couldn't see this; I just knew it. The one then tortured the other. I sat out in this living room area, which was also dim and was set so it was to the back of the (three) bedrooms and opposite the hallway.

I sat with a person I could not see and listened to the "other" person being tortured. The person sitting next to me said, "You better not think anything bad is happening in there."

I thought about it for a minute and convinced myself I hadn't heard anything. But then I heard the tortured person scream. I knew I needed to stop that person from being tortured.

The person who had been sitting by me was now somewhere else, possibly in the hallway. The person shouted, "You think it's going to be easy to think that person's being tortured? Now you'll have to deal with me! Or are you afraid?"

I snuck around the corner and into the hallway to find the person, who, I assumed, had transformed into a monster. I had some sort of weapon like a sword. But now it was like I was back in the dark room and heading toward the hallway.

Something happened in the hallway, an encounter with the person/monster, maybe even with the tortured person. Now I needed to go back to the hallway and fight the person/monster again.

I had a severed head, which I attached to a thick rope and lit on fire. I whirled this head around clockwise, on my right side, as I walked around the corner and back toward the hallway.

The person/monster was in the hallway, yelling about how afraid I was. I managed to use the severed head to catch the person/monster on fire. The person/monster and I stood face-to-face in a lit living room up near the corner of the bedroom in which, apparently, were the tortured person and torturer.

The person/monster still wasn't quite a person yet. But now "it" was a woman, like Rachel in Blade Runner. The person/monster wore a red, velvety night robe, which was lit with flames, as if a film of flammable material coated the robe, so that it was burning instead of the robe.

The woman said something like I hadn't gotten rid of her yet, nor would I want to get rid of her if I wanted everything to be alright with the people I was trying to save, as if by killing her I'd offend her so she would want to hurt the people even more than she did now.

The woman opened her robe. She was naked underneath. Her body was white, delicate, elegant, completely unburnt. I was angry. I swung the flaming at at the woman again, trying to catch her body on fire. I might have succeeded.

Dream #2

I was in a hotel room, possibly at a Ritz-Carlton. It was my boss BS' room, but there were a few people in the room, as if there were some work-related task going on.

BS told me he needed me to stay at the hotel. I said okay. I looked out a door. As I backed out the door and sat the door close in front of me, I noticed how that room had been wide and tall, ornate, like a French seventeenth-century (?) room. The "bed" I would sleep on was just a mattress, maybe eight feet by eight feet by six inches, set into a niche in the floor. The bed was the last thing I saw as the door closed.

I was now in a room all by myself. The other room seemed to have been lit by natural light, as if by a large window. This room had no windows and was lit by a light like a soft museum light. The room was smaller, but still spacious, with soft green walls. It was like an entry room, like a little foyer. The front door was to my left as I faced the door to the larger room.

I was on the phone with room service. I may have been trying to get a meal. But room service didn't want to help me. They thought I was just a nobody. I might have told them that if they didn't help me I was going to let BS know. Room service suddenly changed their attitude and were willing to help me. I told them to bring the meal at a certain time. I was still upset that room service wouldn't help me out of common courtesy.

I walked out the front door. The day was snowy. It was like we were in the mountains or the wilderness somewhere. I was now driving. I was by myself out on a road like a road on the outskirts of a suburban area. It was late afternoon, with a heron-grey sky and paper-yellow band of horizon. I thought I would need to turn left, onto and across a wide, slightly snowy field, to get to someplace where I should have been or was scheduled to be.

I turned left and drove up onto the sidewalk and partly onto the field. But then I thought, What am I doing? I don't need to go this way. I might no longer have been sure of where I was going after all. I might have turned back out onto the road so that I was driving back to where I had been driving from.

Dream #3

I sat onto the hood of a car, on the passenger side. I lay back against the windshield. The street the car was on was like a suburban street, but it was busy, and down at the end of it was a street as bright and busy as Times Square. I could even see a movie theater, old style, right at the intersection. Cars and people passed in front of the theater. The day was warm and sunny.

My brother walked up to me, on my right side, from behind. He aid he was getting ready to go to my dad's house pretty soon. I think I was kind of planning to go along. But then I decided not to. I wanted my brother to have all my dad's attention. I wanted my brother to feel like he was liked the best. My brother may have told me about going to see a movie with my dad. I told him I hoped they would have fun.

I thought about a new movie by Francis Ford Coppola. It began in black and white, like a silent film, but all the people in it were modern. A lot of people piled onto a silver train. They were all packed in so much together that people were being pushed partway out windows.

I liked watching as the train pulled away. It was just one long shot. It was interesting to see the different people through the windows (very small windows, like on airplanes) and how all the different people were observing and reacting to their surroundings as the train pulled away.

Now the train had arrived at something like a rest stop. A waiter came along the outside of the train and passed beer and soda in to people as they would pass money out to him.

I now saw inside. The view was now more like real life than like a silent movie. A man in his twenties or thirties, very put-together and handsome, was pulling some soda in through the window. He sat on a tall stool in a bar-like area.

A family -- an oldish, fattish, baldish man and some young children, maybe blonde girls -- had missed their chance to pass their money out the window for some soda. The young man said, "Oh, it's no problem. You can have some of mine."

The older man said, "Are you sure? We really couldn't."

The younger man said, "Please. I have too much for just myself." He poured soda from a big pitcher into smaller glasses.

Dream #4

I walked into a big room like a high school gymnasium. Daylight came in through the windows. There were about fifty people around an elevated stage on which a rock band was playing. The crowd and the rock band may have been mostly or all women. At first I thought the singer was a man. The song had been about trying to get a girl. But now I saw the singer was a girl.

Now it seemed like there were a whole lot of people in the band. The band members had a grungy, but well-made-up look, very clean, but somehow tough and plain. Their clothes were mostly black and very dark, dull green. Even their instruments seemed to have a clunky but fashionable look, like they were made out of a lot of black-coated cords. I liked it.

The crowd intimidated me. I thought they'd think I was here just because I thought I could hit on girls -- the crowd was, except for me, all girls. I was afraid they'd try to discourage me from what they'd thought I was here for by showing me that they were all gay. But I didn't want to hit on the girls. I was here for the music, which I was really enjoying.

I walked away, back away and to the left of the crowd, to a little side room with a folding chair, a guitar, and an amp. I picked up the guitar and noticed it was actually a bass. The strings were coated in black plastic, like electrical wires or amp cords. But they were all thinner than the fattest bass string. The guitar body was also small for a bass -- maybe guitar-sized instead of bass-sized. The body of the guitar was shaped almost like a Les Paul guitar. It was gold-glittery with a white pick-guard.

I thought this guitar was incredibly cleverly made. It must have been owned by someone who was here right now. It simply proved, I thought, what a talented bunch of people were here right now.

I held the guitar as if I were playing it a little. Some girls toward the back of the crowd looked at me, visibly annoyed. They thought I was only playing the guitar to impress them, so I could hit on them once I got their attention.

To defend myself I cried out, "It's the guitar! Isn't it cool? It's a seven-string bass! Isn't that witty?"

But the girls just kept looking at me like I was an idiot.

I thought I would try to find a friend and talk to him about the guitar. I thought that would prove that I wasn't trying to share my excitement with the girls simply to get their attention and then hit on them. I yelled out for a high school friend of mine. "JW! JW! He has to be here. Nobody else could own a bass this witty."

I stood out on an empty, industrial street corner at the top of a hill. It was a hot day. A man, probably JW, sat on a plastic and metal chair, playing the bass, which sounded a lot like a guitar the way Woody Guthrie might play it.

JW was looking at me suspiciously. He knew I'd been playing his guitar. He thought I'd been trying to steal it. To prove I hadn't been trying to steal the guitar I began singing lyrics along with JW's Woody Guthrie-esque playing. The song was a "funny" blend of old-style, back-hills music and modern topics and objects.

As I sang I walked in the gutter, which was littered with all kinds of garbage, mostly wet and slimy. I started singing about Tom Sawyer. I noticed I was barefoot. I walked carefully around wet, slimy piles of grainy material like litter-box filling. I got back up onto the sidewalk. I was worried that something disgusting had seeped into my skin from the dampness of the street near the piles of cat-litter.

Now JW and I were both singing the song about Tom Sawyer. it seemed as we sang the song that I had an image of the cover of the Norton edition of Roughing It before my eyes.

(12/21/08) L's sick mother; the land of mutated children

(Entered in paper journal at 12:08 PM at girlfriend H's apartment.)

Dream #1

I was inside an apartment. It was smallish, with grey carpet and pale lighting. It might have been early morning or late afternoon. I might have been all alone in the apartment.

My friend R's wife L walked in. Apparently the apartment belonged to R and L. I might have been in there, trying to get something while neither of them were there. But now L saw me. She went in and sat on her bed, which was (apparently) in the living room. The bed was all messy.

I asked L how she was doing. She seemed very mellow, almost depressed. She said she was fine. I asked her how her mom and dad were doing. She said, "Oh, my mom..."

I saw a picture in my head of a cartoon dad and mom at the very top of a greyish-green screen.

The mom popped out of the picture. I understood that this meant that L's mom was having health problems, or maybe that she had cancer.

I had to leave. L didn't want me to go, but, as bad as I felt for L's mom, I didn't want to have or start anymore contact with L or R.

I walked out the door. I wore both my shoes, but my right foot was also wrapped in a brown, plastic bag. I walked down a long, grey-painted, wooden stairway to a small parking lot/road that was bordered by a slightly wooded area. I knew R would be coming around soon. I wanted to be gone before he got here so I wouldn't have to see him. I may have walked another road.

Dream #2

I got onto a small airplane. The seats of the plane were arranged like a bus. The pilots got in. They sat in a seating area like bus drivers might sit in.

The plane began speeding up. The light outside was greyish like on a cloudy day. We coated past a landscape of full, green trees.

As the plane began taking off, I looked to my right, i.e. toward the front of the plane. The light outside was deep blue, like late afternoon, almost night. I saw through the pilots' windows. I thought, I've never been in a plane where you could actually see through the pilots' windows like this!

We passed through two sets of trees, which were arranged on either side of us like gates. We would scrape against the trees as we passed them. The trees may have been half-barren, not full. The horizon was a band of pale purple.

It was now daytime. The pilot was talking to some passengers in the front row as if he were a bus driver. I looked around. We were flying barely above street level, above a highway, following the highway's source. Then the plane was actually driving along on the highway. Finally, the plane had transformed into a regular bus, driving along the highway.

I thought, Well, maybe this is just for the first leg of our trip. I remembered having taken a bus once from Newark Airport to Allentown, Pennsylvania. I thought, Well, once we get to our next place we can take an actual airplane.

I was now skateboarding down the highway. The highway had a weird appearance, like it was smaller or cleaner than usual. The day was warm and bright. There was also a feeling along the highway like it was passing under bridges or just within range of barriers or enclosures, though there were grass slopes on either side of the road all the time. There were no cars. Instead there were kids, maybe teenagers, playing all through the street.

I tried to keep off to the left shoulder of the road. The shoulder was lined with tan bricks. My skateboard kept moving without any effort from me: I was going down a slope the whole way.

I was trying to avoid the kids because I didn't want to interrupt their fun, but also because I didn't want them to think I was a kid, too, and have them start bothering me. But eventually some kids did start to notice me. I skated over to the right shoulder of the road in hopes of avoiding them. But they followed me.

I got off my skateboard. I walked up onto the grass slope. Here, too, were kids in small groups, like picnic groups, playing here and there under the wide shade of the sparse trees.

I reached the top of the slope. The space was empty of trees, completely open to the clear, blue sky. All around me I saw rolling hills of grass, with small groups of kids playing everywhere.

I was being followed again by a group of kids who walked with a zombie-like slowness and will-lessness. I tried to avoid the kids. I walked to my right, toward a rocky cliff. Three zombie children cornered me at the cliff. They all looked like average, slightly troublemaking, white teenage boys. One wore a brown t-shirt.

I knew if I jumped off the cliff I'd die. I hadn't been afraid of the kids before: I just didn't want to be bothered by them. So I figured there was no use being afraid now. I might as well just see what they were planning to do.

But the kids didn't reach me. They may have stopped. The head of one of the zombie kids suddenly re-shaped. It puffed out into a grotesque circle, like out of a Garbage Pail Kids card. The kid seemed to be doing this in order to make me afraid. But I still wasn't afraid. Another kid expanded his head so that it grew a leg and an arm, both of which had a gross, rubbery appearance. I was trying to figure out what kind of disease these children had that was making their bodies do this.

I was now in a house or an apartment. This place may have been underground. The place was only half-lit, as if a few random lights in unseen rooms were throwing into the main room the only light the room had. The place was sparsely furnished but seemed cluttered nonetheless. There was a lot of activity, maybe from a lot of children running around. The place seemed more like a mental hospital than an apartment or house or even a school building.

At first I was floating, as if I were coming down a stairway and into the main room. I tried not to attract anybody's attention. I thought if anybody saw me and tried to connect with me, they'd give me whatever disease they had.

I floated through the main room (over an air-hockey table?) and into a very small, lit hallway. A couple kids ran out of a doorway to my left. As they ran past me they mutated themselves. One added limbs to his head the way the other had done. Another added bubbling lumps, two or three times the size of his actual head, to the back of his skull. A little girl came out and mutated her head so that it looked like a short body attached to a tall body at the neck, with the tall body in a pink dress and the short body in a blue dress.

Finally a woman came out of the room. She looked like Daryl Hannah's Pris character in the movie Blade Runner. She was very sexy and sleek. She wore a black and white striped tights costume and had spiky, pale blonde, almost white, hair. She herself was a mutation. But she was known as the "mother" of all these children. She had hypnotized them to be mischievous. But she was like a role model to them, so even if they weren't hypnotized, they probably would still be mischievous, if that was how she told them to be.

The woman touched me. I knew that since she touched me, I, too, would probably also start acting mischievously.