(Entered in paper journal at 10:11 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)
Dream 1
I was walking with my friend R and some other man down a vacant city street on a sunny day. We walked up to an orange Ford Maverick with its back end halfway up on the sidewalk and all its doors open.
I was very surprised and happy to see a Ford Maverick. I yelled to R, "This is the same kind of car that I -- that I --" I think I was trying to say, "the same kind of car that I got into a car crash in." But I couldn't figure out how a person would say that.
R and possibly the other person didn't wait for me to finish. He/they said, "All the doors are open. Let's steal it!" I knew they wanted to do something bad with it and probably do something bad to me afterwards. I didn't get into the car. The car drove off, though at least R was in the backseat and probably nobody was in the driver's seat.
The car drove across the street (day turned instantly to night), not down the street. Before the car got all the way across the street it was smashed on both sides by three cars.
I looked inside the car. One man had gotten out. R was still inside, hunched forward over the back of the driver's seat. It looked like he was knocked out or asleep. But I was pretty sure he was dead. I knew he couldn't hurt me now. But I was also afraid of seeing the dead body of someone I knew so well. And I also was afraid that he really wasn't dead.
Dream 2
I was in a shower in someone else's house -- a good friend's house. The shower opened by the curtain directly to the hallway and across from the kitchen.
Two friends of my good friend walked into the house. They may have been staying there for a while.
I slid the shower curtain open to see who was there. I partially closed it when I saw they were right there by the fridge. But I kept it a little open to say hi to them, even though I didn't necessarily know them.
One person was a man like B, one of the workers at Inwood Park I'd met while with Americorps: a little trendy-looking, tall, straight-laced, but scruffy. The other person was a transgender person like Ignacio in the Almodovar film Bad Education mixed with the transgender person I worked with sometimes at Riverside Park.
I kept trying to get a direct look at the transgender person, but I couldn't. She even seemed to shrink, become fat and dumpy, and finally to become a woman and not a transgender person at all.
I was then in a bedroom. My brother sat on a bed. He had a screenplay he was showing me. He asked a couple questions about it. I was trying to encourage him and let him know that he had a good chance of being successful.
But now another guy came into the room and said something really mean and intimidating to both me and my brother. I was suddenly afraid to tell my brother he could actually be successful.
Showing posts with label brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brother. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Sunday, February 12, 2017
(9/1/06) my brother's and my music; a DVD case; wearing girl clothes and jumping up steps
(Entered in paper journal at 9:33 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream 1
I sat in the backseat of a white car, on the driver's side. I was with my brother. We both may have been wearing white. I had put in some music. My brother, in the front passenger seat, hung back to face me between the two front seats.
My brother spoke about the music I chose in a somewhat derogatory way. I got angry and rushed to change the CD to whatever music my brother wanted. As I was speaking my brother was plugging headphones into a white tape recorder. He started listening to his own music -- some kind of rap. He sat forward in his seat.
I think I had been yelling at my brother. He was now crying that I had gotten so mad at him for just making a statement -- that I had thought he was trying to make me stop listening to my music. I tried to comfort my brother in apology. I ran my fingers through his hair on the back of his head.
Dream 2
I was in a white room, before a white CD player. Someone was showing me a CD or DVD about a Rolling Stones concert. There was a case for a recordable DVD. The case had red or green pen-writing on it.
Dream 3
I was in a huge, beautiful, wood-walled room a few floors up in a building. I was wearing women's clothing -- a white tank-top, blue jeans, and pink underwear. I realized all the people around me (in a class? coworkers? -- definitely standing around a leader before a TV or blackboard/whiteboard) would soon realize I was in girl clothes.
I thought I should change. But instead I went downstairs to find a (videotape?) we had forgotten for our meeting. Heading back up the beautiful, dark wood staircase, which went in a square, I found I could jump up entire flights. Some people may have come in at some point to taunt me.
Dream 1
I sat in the backseat of a white car, on the driver's side. I was with my brother. We both may have been wearing white. I had put in some music. My brother, in the front passenger seat, hung back to face me between the two front seats.
My brother spoke about the music I chose in a somewhat derogatory way. I got angry and rushed to change the CD to whatever music my brother wanted. As I was speaking my brother was plugging headphones into a white tape recorder. He started listening to his own music -- some kind of rap. He sat forward in his seat.
I think I had been yelling at my brother. He was now crying that I had gotten so mad at him for just making a statement -- that I had thought he was trying to make me stop listening to my music. I tried to comfort my brother in apology. I ran my fingers through his hair on the back of his head.
Dream 2
I was in a white room, before a white CD player. Someone was showing me a CD or DVD about a Rolling Stones concert. There was a case for a recordable DVD. The case had red or green pen-writing on it.
Dream 3
I was in a huge, beautiful, wood-walled room a few floors up in a building. I was wearing women's clothing -- a white tank-top, blue jeans, and pink underwear. I realized all the people around me (in a class? coworkers? -- definitely standing around a leader before a TV or blackboard/whiteboard) would soon realize I was in girl clothes.
I thought I should change. But instead I went downstairs to find a (videotape?) we had forgotten for our meeting. Heading back up the beautiful, dark wood staircase, which went in a square, I found I could jump up entire flights. Some people may have come in at some point to taunt me.
Monday, February 6, 2017
(9/28/06) space age jet plane restaurant; the lotus bend; postcard from brother
(Entered in paper journal at 4:50 AM on 4-train from Utica Avenue in Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream 1
I walked through a wide street of tallish buildings in the sunshine and a pale blue sky. I saw a jet plane fly by over the buildings. The jet was white, triangular but somehow sleek, with red edges. Where the air intakes should have been were huge windows.
I was walking with someone. I asked, "How do they always appear so classy in those things?"
Inside what was apparently this passenger plane groups of people sat at nice tables like at a restaurant. There was one attendant per table. All attendants wore black. The attendants would bring food from what looked like a concierge desk. The "restaurant" (from the inside) had an atmosphere like you might expect at the Seattle space needle. I feel like I was expecting a view of a space shuttle through the windows.
Dream 2
It was night. I ran along a street and then turned right, into a field like a vacant lot. I was testing the ease with which this area could be traveled through in order to obtain something valuable to the stock of a company I was researching.
As I ran through the lot of wild grass tufts and gravely soil and I approached a river, the land became soggier and soggier. Finally I headed down to the river at a bend that was stuffed with waterlilies and lotuses. The night was very purple here. I walked across the river, which was not deeper than the height of my shoes.
It was day. I brought someone from the sales team at my work with me. We ran off the street into the open field. Cars could be seen occasionally on a distant road like a rural highway as we ran. We got closer to the river right away. We stopped by some craggy trees and made adjustments to our gear.
We continued running. The ground got soggier and soggier. Finally it started developing puddles. By the time we got to the "lotus bend" the river and the ground were equally deluged.
I told the guy from sales, "Don't worry. Last night I stepped into the river and it was extremely easy to walk through."
I took a step into the river and the water, dirty, waved up below me. I was being carried in rolling waves. So was the person with me. Occasionally a "lotus" would drift past us.
After the waves had carried us back to the trees where we had stopped to change gear they disappeared altogether, leaving us on dry land. My feet were bare. One of my big toes had a big, circular wound on it.
I thought, How could I have gone in such dirty water with that wound on my foot? The salesperson (MJ?) and I were talking about something, but I could only think about the wound on my foot.
My legs were soaked. I looked at my feet again. I was wearing white tennis shoes which were covered in muck. I saw something in a couple of holes in the shoes that made me think the flesh on my feet was rotting away, turning green.
I panicked. MJ (?) asked if everything was alright. I crouched to check out my feet. I wiped all the muck off my shoes. I realized the grossness in the holes in my shoes was just the way the dirty water and muck had stained my socks.
I told MJ, "Everything's okay. I'll be fine."
Dream 3
Something to do with solar power. I stood at a "hotel" desk in a warehouse-like building that was immaculate and filled with gentle waves of yellow, red, and purple light. It was almost like Grand Central Station.
Someone was in line ahead of me. The person behind the desk, an Asian man, spoke to us about something regarding solar power. I handed him a card like a postcard. The man analyzed it, handed it back, and made a judgment on me, like "You have too much OTC to make the night journey."
I read the back of the postcard. It was from my brother. There was only a little writing, in a sloppy hand. As I read it, I thought of how badly I've always treated my brother.
Dream 1
I walked through a wide street of tallish buildings in the sunshine and a pale blue sky. I saw a jet plane fly by over the buildings. The jet was white, triangular but somehow sleek, with red edges. Where the air intakes should have been were huge windows.
I was walking with someone. I asked, "How do they always appear so classy in those things?"
Inside what was apparently this passenger plane groups of people sat at nice tables like at a restaurant. There was one attendant per table. All attendants wore black. The attendants would bring food from what looked like a concierge desk. The "restaurant" (from the inside) had an atmosphere like you might expect at the Seattle space needle. I feel like I was expecting a view of a space shuttle through the windows.
Dream 2
It was night. I ran along a street and then turned right, into a field like a vacant lot. I was testing the ease with which this area could be traveled through in order to obtain something valuable to the stock of a company I was researching.
As I ran through the lot of wild grass tufts and gravely soil and I approached a river, the land became soggier and soggier. Finally I headed down to the river at a bend that was stuffed with waterlilies and lotuses. The night was very purple here. I walked across the river, which was not deeper than the height of my shoes.
It was day. I brought someone from the sales team at my work with me. We ran off the street into the open field. Cars could be seen occasionally on a distant road like a rural highway as we ran. We got closer to the river right away. We stopped by some craggy trees and made adjustments to our gear.
We continued running. The ground got soggier and soggier. Finally it started developing puddles. By the time we got to the "lotus bend" the river and the ground were equally deluged.
I told the guy from sales, "Don't worry. Last night I stepped into the river and it was extremely easy to walk through."
I took a step into the river and the water, dirty, waved up below me. I was being carried in rolling waves. So was the person with me. Occasionally a "lotus" would drift past us.
After the waves had carried us back to the trees where we had stopped to change gear they disappeared altogether, leaving us on dry land. My feet were bare. One of my big toes had a big, circular wound on it.
I thought, How could I have gone in such dirty water with that wound on my foot? The salesperson (MJ?) and I were talking about something, but I could only think about the wound on my foot.
My legs were soaked. I looked at my feet again. I was wearing white tennis shoes which were covered in muck. I saw something in a couple of holes in the shoes that made me think the flesh on my feet was rotting away, turning green.
I panicked. MJ (?) asked if everything was alright. I crouched to check out my feet. I wiped all the muck off my shoes. I realized the grossness in the holes in my shoes was just the way the dirty water and muck had stained my socks.
I told MJ, "Everything's okay. I'll be fine."
Dream 3
Something to do with solar power. I stood at a "hotel" desk in a warehouse-like building that was immaculate and filled with gentle waves of yellow, red, and purple light. It was almost like Grand Central Station.
Someone was in line ahead of me. The person behind the desk, an Asian man, spoke to us about something regarding solar power. I handed him a card like a postcard. The man analyzed it, handed it back, and made a judgment on me, like "You have too much OTC to make the night journey."
I read the back of the postcard. It was from my brother. There was only a little writing, in a sloppy hand. As I read it, I thought of how badly I've always treated my brother.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
(10/3/06) the living lives of christ; hurting my brother
(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 PM, but no info on where.)
Dream 1
I was in a basement of an art museum. It was a very great museum, and this was a very great room in particular. The building was beautiful, austere, but very angular with a Tudor-style, plaster and wood touch to it. But it was also a little shabby. This room was particularly shabby.
All the paintings, or almost all (though I called it all), had to do with the life of Christ. At first they may have been from all different time periods. But then they were all from around the time of Giotto. but when I looked at them I wasn't exactly convinced they came from that time.
Some were good -- very striking. But they weren't the right style. Others were mediocre, worthless toss-offs which I thought had to have been made recently by second-rate artists. Some looked very old, like cave drawings (authentic), but on canvas, one with a hand print somehow making out Christ's face.
One painting in particular spooked me. It was on the floor, propped against a wall. (And now it seems there were some paintings hung on the walls -- but no paintings in frames.) This particular painting was like Caravaggio's painting of Bacchus, except in a somehow Odilon Redon style, with wild asters everywhere. There might have been another painting only of wild asters.
Somehow I felt there was something alive in the paintings. The "Bacchus" drove that feeling home. I suddenly felt alone among ghosts.
Two women walked into the room. I felt thankful. I didn't know where i was going. I would follow them. I tried not to let on I was following them. I could tell they were lovers and they didn't need some guy spoiling their fun together. The women were kind of dumpy. They wore sweatsuits. They were not fat, but not skinny. They were plain.
The women walked into a room that led to an underground ferry. We got on. It was very dark. There were few people on board. The seats were wide and wooden.
There was plenty of space. But I stayed by the two women. It obviously looked like I was following them. I don't think they minded. I didn't mind it, either, as long as they didn't let on they knew that I was doing it because I was afraid of being alone. The three of us seemed to be reading books, though the girls would also talk back and forth with each other.
Dream 2
I sat in a dim kitchen at a table with my brother. I told my mom how I didn't like being around the family and how I felt so awful around them. It made me never want to see any of them again.
I said, "But I especially never want to see him" (my brother) "anymore!" I said it almost cheerfully, breezily. But then I felt bad when I realized what a hurtful thing I had said.
Dream 1
I was in a basement of an art museum. It was a very great museum, and this was a very great room in particular. The building was beautiful, austere, but very angular with a Tudor-style, plaster and wood touch to it. But it was also a little shabby. This room was particularly shabby.
All the paintings, or almost all (though I called it all), had to do with the life of Christ. At first they may have been from all different time periods. But then they were all from around the time of Giotto. but when I looked at them I wasn't exactly convinced they came from that time.
Some were good -- very striking. But they weren't the right style. Others were mediocre, worthless toss-offs which I thought had to have been made recently by second-rate artists. Some looked very old, like cave drawings (authentic), but on canvas, one with a hand print somehow making out Christ's face.
One painting in particular spooked me. It was on the floor, propped against a wall. (And now it seems there were some paintings hung on the walls -- but no paintings in frames.) This particular painting was like Caravaggio's painting of Bacchus, except in a somehow Odilon Redon style, with wild asters everywhere. There might have been another painting only of wild asters.
Somehow I felt there was something alive in the paintings. The "Bacchus" drove that feeling home. I suddenly felt alone among ghosts.
Two women walked into the room. I felt thankful. I didn't know where i was going. I would follow them. I tried not to let on I was following them. I could tell they were lovers and they didn't need some guy spoiling their fun together. The women were kind of dumpy. They wore sweatsuits. They were not fat, but not skinny. They were plain.
The women walked into a room that led to an underground ferry. We got on. It was very dark. There were few people on board. The seats were wide and wooden.
There was plenty of space. But I stayed by the two women. It obviously looked like I was following them. I don't think they minded. I didn't mind it, either, as long as they didn't let on they knew that I was doing it because I was afraid of being alone. The three of us seemed to be reading books, though the girls would also talk back and forth with each other.
Dream 2
I sat in a dim kitchen at a table with my brother. I told my mom how I didn't like being around the family and how I felt so awful around them. It made me never want to see any of them again.
I said, "But I especially never want to see him" (my brother) "anymore!" I said it almost cheerfully, breezily. But then I felt bad when I realized what a hurtful thing I had said.
(10/22/06) ruler of the land of chaos; my father's necklace; dimension detectives
(Entered in paper journal at 9:01 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream 1
A scene of insects that were smashed. Smashed, they rolled into balls (three) that emitted some kind of acidic gas into ground or carpet, leaving lumpy mounds.
Soon this view shifted into an abstract landscape like a desert made of abstract cutouts. A narrator said the land had become the land of chaos. The ruler of the land of chaos, a weird being like a cutout version of an Atari character, colored red, walked through the landscape (of blue and purple cutouts?) to a character rising from the mounds made by the insect balls. The two of them shook hands.
For some reason I was disappointed that this was what had come of my clear view of the insects, which themselves had been part of some very meaningful activity. The ruler walked into a drawing room or library -- real, not cutout -- and himself became real. I may have become him. I was happy that I at least saw things as real again. But I was still looking for some conclusion or meaning for the poor insects.
The room was beautiful, of dark and heavy wood, but cluttered full of books. As if trying to calm down my worries, "I"/"The ruler of the land of chaos" ran to each man in the room (maybe three men other than "I"/"him"/"us"). The ruler of the land of chaos would hold up his right hand like a wall and run it at the other man as the man held up the thumb of his right hand. The ruler of the land of chaos would make a plane sound ("buzzz!") and crash the hand -- a wall -- into the thumb (a plane).
This only made me angrier -- not only were we now not talking about the insects, but we were making a wall crash into a plane, which was impossible.
Dream 2
I stood beside my mom and sister in a doorway (like the house I lived in during kindergarten) on a sunny day before my dad and brother. It was my dad's birthday. My brother was proud of the present he had given my dad.
I told my brother hello, but before finishing I was distracted by a beautiful necklace my dad was wearing, and I commented on it, something like, "Did that necklace cost $40 to $50?"
My brother walked past me and into the house, upset. I thought I should go after him, and I would, but first I needed to see my father's beautiful necklace.
My dad unclasped the necklace and spoke about it shyly in an almost feminine way. The necklace had beautiful, yellow beads which shone in the sun. They were thick, almost plasticky, warm, and of many different types of circular or elliptical shapes.
My dad tried sheepishly, femininely, to explain how he had gotten the necklace. To explain, he took a bracelet off his right wrist. It was orange with more teardrop-shaped, thinnish beads.
I thought, almost sickened, This is absurd! I didn't ask to see his bracelet. I asked to see his necklace.
I either went to look for my brother or I could sense him behind me, by a desk. He was crying because I had made him feel bad.
Dream 3
I was in a room (bathroom?) full of TVs. A man in a suit stood with his back to me. I could see a little of his eyes by the reflection of a TV screen that was like a rear-view mirror. The man's eyes had the cold, blue ruthlessness of an executive.
The man directed my attention to one of the TVs. At first the show was hard for me to understand. There were two detectives, men, who were also women, but only when something happened to them. This thing drew magic in from another dimension and put it on them. But then it was more like they were always men but in another realm they were always women. A magic mirror would take them into their female existences by accident.
But then it was more like the male detectives had accidentally discovered this magic mirror and gone inside. The female detectives' world was an anime world. The women's dimension/world was very much like the mechanized world of Caves of Steel by Asimov.
There were two women there who were their counterparts. Each had to help the other's female counterpart and each could not look at his own counterpart, or at least could not let his female counterpart know who he was.
The fates of the female counterparts were somewhat determined by the fates of the detectives. But the female counterparts were in their own danger, which the detectives needed to rescue them from. At the same time, the detectives needed to avoid becoming women, although occasionally they did.
Now it was like the beginning of the first episode of the series. The two detectives were big, fat men. They stood outside some stucco apartment like in California or Florida. One was dressed up in a pale pink sweater and a hot pink skirt. He wore a blonde wig. He looked like Chris Farley. he was going out on a date with a criminal he was trying to catch, a rat-like Latino man.
The second detective asked, "Does he really like girls that look like you? I mean, would he even sit down with you, let alone stay long enough to get caught? He might even just see that you're a man and a detective and kill you on the spot."
The dressed up detective said something like, "Well, let's go back inside. You can help me look so pretty he'll never know the difference."
I knew that what happened next was that the detective went on his date with the criminal and almost succeeded at catching the criminal. But the criminal escaped and jumped through a bathroom mirror into the other dimension. When the detective jumped after the criminal, he found himself in the body of his female counterpart. Eventually the second detective came after him. I don't think he ended up in his female counterpart's body.
It took a while for the counterparts to sort out what happened, and it eventually happened only with the aid of a half-real/half-cartoon character in a black robe and hood (like Star Wars' Emperor, but with no face, just mist). This character had the ability to give the detectives a little more awareness to see themselves in their female counterparts. But he also had the ability to give the detectives physical substance as cartoon bodies in the cartoon world.
When the second detective came into the cartoon world he was almost a specter. Then he was fuzziness that nobody paid attention to or of whom people were very afraid. He was like walking TV static. Then slowly gaining awareness, he was jumbled and melty, and the cartoon people thought he was deformed. When the magic person found the detectives, the second detective had already managed to become somewhat solid, though still a little ugly, and he had been able to find the first detective in the female counterpart and to figure out a way to make the first detecitve aware of himself.
The magic person may have been the one to extract the first detective from his female counterpart. He gave the detectives their complete solidity and awareness in this world. But then he would also give the detectives missions in this world. Sometimes the missions were good, sometimes not good, sometimes just plain silly. The detectives wouldn't do them.
The magic person would react to this refusal by throwing the men into situations where they would be made to see their female counterparts in such a way that the female counterparts almost understood who they were. Whenever the magic person would give the detectives the silly or bad-spirited missions or throw them into awkward situations, the detectives would wonder whether the magic person weren't really a bad spirit instead of a helper.
Eventually the women came through the mirror (this was few episodes in). The detectives, who may now have been attractive, young men, now had to teach the women, in the same way the men had to be taught in the other world, to become aware and to have physical substance. This, another "trick" of the magic person, was a humorous complication.
All this time, the detectives were still working or solving their mysteries. The women may have become part of the team. They could all travel back and forth with ease eventually. The mirror which had started as a bathroom mirror in a divey restaurant, became a mirror like a door into a weird cornered foyer into an empty, sunny house.
As cartoons, the women looked like anime versions of Alice in Wonderland, except with hair just above the shoulders and pink dresses with less of an outward bell shape to the skirt. But they were invisible in the real world once they got their full solidity.
This is similar to the detectives. As they gained their full solidity in the cartoon world they stopped being visible. When they were fat in the physical world they were identical. But when they became young and attractive in the real world they stopped being visible. It wasn't like they were all really invisible. I just couldn't see them anymore. And, although I could remember all the episodes up to this point, I couldn't remember any of the episodes after this point.
Dream 1
A scene of insects that were smashed. Smashed, they rolled into balls (three) that emitted some kind of acidic gas into ground or carpet, leaving lumpy mounds.
Soon this view shifted into an abstract landscape like a desert made of abstract cutouts. A narrator said the land had become the land of chaos. The ruler of the land of chaos, a weird being like a cutout version of an Atari character, colored red, walked through the landscape (of blue and purple cutouts?) to a character rising from the mounds made by the insect balls. The two of them shook hands.
For some reason I was disappointed that this was what had come of my clear view of the insects, which themselves had been part of some very meaningful activity. The ruler walked into a drawing room or library -- real, not cutout -- and himself became real. I may have become him. I was happy that I at least saw things as real again. But I was still looking for some conclusion or meaning for the poor insects.
The room was beautiful, of dark and heavy wood, but cluttered full of books. As if trying to calm down my worries, "I"/"The ruler of the land of chaos" ran to each man in the room (maybe three men other than "I"/"him"/"us"). The ruler of the land of chaos would hold up his right hand like a wall and run it at the other man as the man held up the thumb of his right hand. The ruler of the land of chaos would make a plane sound ("buzzz!") and crash the hand -- a wall -- into the thumb (a plane).
This only made me angrier -- not only were we now not talking about the insects, but we were making a wall crash into a plane, which was impossible.
Dream 2
I stood beside my mom and sister in a doorway (like the house I lived in during kindergarten) on a sunny day before my dad and brother. It was my dad's birthday. My brother was proud of the present he had given my dad.
I told my brother hello, but before finishing I was distracted by a beautiful necklace my dad was wearing, and I commented on it, something like, "Did that necklace cost $40 to $50?"
My brother walked past me and into the house, upset. I thought I should go after him, and I would, but first I needed to see my father's beautiful necklace.
My dad unclasped the necklace and spoke about it shyly in an almost feminine way. The necklace had beautiful, yellow beads which shone in the sun. They were thick, almost plasticky, warm, and of many different types of circular or elliptical shapes.
My dad tried sheepishly, femininely, to explain how he had gotten the necklace. To explain, he took a bracelet off his right wrist. It was orange with more teardrop-shaped, thinnish beads.
I thought, almost sickened, This is absurd! I didn't ask to see his bracelet. I asked to see his necklace.
I either went to look for my brother or I could sense him behind me, by a desk. He was crying because I had made him feel bad.
Dream 3
I was in a room (bathroom?) full of TVs. A man in a suit stood with his back to me. I could see a little of his eyes by the reflection of a TV screen that was like a rear-view mirror. The man's eyes had the cold, blue ruthlessness of an executive.
The man directed my attention to one of the TVs. At first the show was hard for me to understand. There were two detectives, men, who were also women, but only when something happened to them. This thing drew magic in from another dimension and put it on them. But then it was more like they were always men but in another realm they were always women. A magic mirror would take them into their female existences by accident.
But then it was more like the male detectives had accidentally discovered this magic mirror and gone inside. The female detectives' world was an anime world. The women's dimension/world was very much like the mechanized world of Caves of Steel by Asimov.
There were two women there who were their counterparts. Each had to help the other's female counterpart and each could not look at his own counterpart, or at least could not let his female counterpart know who he was.
The fates of the female counterparts were somewhat determined by the fates of the detectives. But the female counterparts were in their own danger, which the detectives needed to rescue them from. At the same time, the detectives needed to avoid becoming women, although occasionally they did.
Now it was like the beginning of the first episode of the series. The two detectives were big, fat men. They stood outside some stucco apartment like in California or Florida. One was dressed up in a pale pink sweater and a hot pink skirt. He wore a blonde wig. He looked like Chris Farley. he was going out on a date with a criminal he was trying to catch, a rat-like Latino man.
The second detective asked, "Does he really like girls that look like you? I mean, would he even sit down with you, let alone stay long enough to get caught? He might even just see that you're a man and a detective and kill you on the spot."
The dressed up detective said something like, "Well, let's go back inside. You can help me look so pretty he'll never know the difference."
I knew that what happened next was that the detective went on his date with the criminal and almost succeeded at catching the criminal. But the criminal escaped and jumped through a bathroom mirror into the other dimension. When the detective jumped after the criminal, he found himself in the body of his female counterpart. Eventually the second detective came after him. I don't think he ended up in his female counterpart's body.
It took a while for the counterparts to sort out what happened, and it eventually happened only with the aid of a half-real/half-cartoon character in a black robe and hood (like Star Wars' Emperor, but with no face, just mist). This character had the ability to give the detectives a little more awareness to see themselves in their female counterparts. But he also had the ability to give the detectives physical substance as cartoon bodies in the cartoon world.
When the second detective came into the cartoon world he was almost a specter. Then he was fuzziness that nobody paid attention to or of whom people were very afraid. He was like walking TV static. Then slowly gaining awareness, he was jumbled and melty, and the cartoon people thought he was deformed. When the magic person found the detectives, the second detective had already managed to become somewhat solid, though still a little ugly, and he had been able to find the first detective in the female counterpart and to figure out a way to make the first detecitve aware of himself.
The magic person may have been the one to extract the first detective from his female counterpart. He gave the detectives their complete solidity and awareness in this world. But then he would also give the detectives missions in this world. Sometimes the missions were good, sometimes not good, sometimes just plain silly. The detectives wouldn't do them.
The magic person would react to this refusal by throwing the men into situations where they would be made to see their female counterparts in such a way that the female counterparts almost understood who they were. Whenever the magic person would give the detectives the silly or bad-spirited missions or throw them into awkward situations, the detectives would wonder whether the magic person weren't really a bad spirit instead of a helper.
Eventually the women came through the mirror (this was few episodes in). The detectives, who may now have been attractive, young men, now had to teach the women, in the same way the men had to be taught in the other world, to become aware and to have physical substance. This, another "trick" of the magic person, was a humorous complication.
All this time, the detectives were still working or solving their mysteries. The women may have become part of the team. They could all travel back and forth with ease eventually. The mirror which had started as a bathroom mirror in a divey restaurant, became a mirror like a door into a weird cornered foyer into an empty, sunny house.
As cartoons, the women looked like anime versions of Alice in Wonderland, except with hair just above the shoulders and pink dresses with less of an outward bell shape to the skirt. But they were invisible in the real world once they got their full solidity.
This is similar to the detectives. As they gained their full solidity in the cartoon world they stopped being visible. When they were fat in the physical world they were identical. But when they became young and attractive in the real world they stopped being visible. It wasn't like they were all really invisible. I just couldn't see them anymore. And, although I could remember all the episodes up to this point, I couldn't remember any of the episodes after this point.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
(11/7/06) my brother's keeper
(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM at Starbucks on 56th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream 1
My family all sat in some dark room like a theater in front of the stage, not on it. We were praying. But my brother, who was murderous and hung on a cross, kept screaming. He was trying to pull himself off the cross, which was on the right side of the proscenium (?), behind us as we prayed. He was trying to free himself so he could kill us.
Dream 1
My family all sat in some dark room like a theater in front of the stage, not on it. We were praying. But my brother, who was murderous and hung on a cross, kept screaming. He was trying to pull himself off the cross, which was on the right side of the proscenium (?), behind us as we prayed. He was trying to free himself so he could kill us.
I was outside, somewhere like a balcony, talking to an official. The official said certain pieces of mail my brother would receive would give him power to kill. These had been sent when my brother was sane. But now they had to be intercepted.
I was back inside the theater-like room. I held the pieces of mail in my hand. They were from the Air Force. It took some mental skill to force back the feeling that I should hand these pieces of mail to my brother. I walked past my brother. His hair was long and black and he wore a loincloth and a crown of thorns. The cross he hung on was dull, pine green trimmed in gold.
Somewhere nearby, on a small corner wall, perhaps, was a clearish, plastic cross with the top half of a wooden Jesus. Maybe even the top half of the cross was wooden. The bottom half looked like a mix between a dildo and a keychain and had a saying on it. The saying was very crude, making fun of Jesus.
My friend R and I had made this cross. I thought, It's because irreverence toward the spiritual that my brother has been cursed with murderous demons.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
(8/19/07) i can't live with you guys!; embarrassing pink t-shirt
Dream #1
I woke up in a house I was living in with my family. I realized this first night I had spent with them would be only one of many nights. I didn't know how I had let myself lapse into living with my family again.
In panic I got out of bed and ran into my mom's room. All the rooms in the house were messy and had a half-fashioned feel to them. My mom slept on a low bed, perhaps like one mattress on a floor. Someone else slept on a similar "bed" beside her. The "beds" were at an odd angle to one another.
I yelled at my mom, "This is it! I can't do it! I can't live with you guys! I'm moving out today!"
Dream #2
I was in a car with my mom and my brother. It was night. We were driving around in a white-lit parking lot, possibly just after or at the end of a rainfall. My mom was driving. I may have been sitting in the backseat. I may possibly even have been playing with toys. I was the size of a child. I may have been a child. But I thought and spoke like an adult.
We were trying, by driving, to get into a botanical garden. My brother was getting a little frustrated. He was saying snide things about my mom's sense of direction. I said something like, "Well, she knows what she's doing. We'll be okay." We parked in a pace. We got out and walked toward a big fence that looked like fencing and scaffolding outside a construction area.
In a big, open space of parking lot, a black girl who was maybe about twelve years old was breakdancing. She wore a white t-shirt and pink dancing pants like sweatpants. The girl finished with a long series of barrel-roll bounces off the ground. A mother and another woman, both fat, stood by a car, watching the girl.
We continued our walk toward the gate. My brother and I may both have been adult-sized again. My brother said, "I need to go back to the car. I forgot my XXXXX."
I held my hands close to sternum, like I was cold, or like I was talking cute. I said, "That's a good idea. I need to go, too. I need to take off this shirt." I was wearing a girls' pink t-shirt with tiny sleeves.
My brother said, "It's about time. I was wondering when you were going to take that off. You look embarrassing."
I told my mom (who hadn't been visible this entire time, and still wasn't visible) that my brother and I were going back to the car.
I woke up in a house I was living in with my family. I realized this first night I had spent with them would be only one of many nights. I didn't know how I had let myself lapse into living with my family again.
In panic I got out of bed and ran into my mom's room. All the rooms in the house were messy and had a half-fashioned feel to them. My mom slept on a low bed, perhaps like one mattress on a floor. Someone else slept on a similar "bed" beside her. The "beds" were at an odd angle to one another.
I yelled at my mom, "This is it! I can't do it! I can't live with you guys! I'm moving out today!"
Dream #2
I was in a car with my mom and my brother. It was night. We were driving around in a white-lit parking lot, possibly just after or at the end of a rainfall. My mom was driving. I may have been sitting in the backseat. I may possibly even have been playing with toys. I was the size of a child. I may have been a child. But I thought and spoke like an adult.
We were trying, by driving, to get into a botanical garden. My brother was getting a little frustrated. He was saying snide things about my mom's sense of direction. I said something like, "Well, she knows what she's doing. We'll be okay." We parked in a pace. We got out and walked toward a big fence that looked like fencing and scaffolding outside a construction area.
In a big, open space of parking lot, a black girl who was maybe about twelve years old was breakdancing. She wore a white t-shirt and pink dancing pants like sweatpants. The girl finished with a long series of barrel-roll bounces off the ground. A mother and another woman, both fat, stood by a car, watching the girl.
We continued our walk toward the gate. My brother and I may both have been adult-sized again. My brother said, "I need to go back to the car. I forgot my XXXXX."
I held my hands close to sternum, like I was cold, or like I was talking cute. I said, "That's a good idea. I need to go, too. I need to take off this shirt." I was wearing a girls' pink t-shirt with tiny sleeves.
My brother said, "It's about time. I was wondering when you were going to take that off. You look embarrassing."
I told my mom (who hadn't been visible this entire time, and still wasn't visible) that my brother and I were going back to the car.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
(9/11/07) my dad the murderer; gnear thalk; we really want to talk
(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
My dad may have been accused of a murder. He was now coming to take me, my brother, and my sister to dinner. I lived in my own house, so they would pick me up. I sat in a room of my house, which was empty except a little clutter, a box of which I sat on.
I spoke on the cell phone with my mom. I told my mom, "I can't sit in a restaurant with that guy! Everybody'll be staring at us and asking us questions the whole time!" I imagined big, fat faces crowding all around my dad, my brother, my sister, and I at the restaurant. The faces all looked like obese versions of a mid-twentieth-century, cruel stereotype of Chinese faces.
I pulled the phone away from my left ear. The display was so colorful and bright. The main colors were blue.
My mom (or sister?) asked through the phone, "Your phone hasn't worked in all this time. Why is it working now that you need to tell us you don't want to see your dad?"
I thought to myself, Wow. They're right. How did my phone start working again?
Dream #2
A woman had gone missing, and two men had found that she had killed herself. They found her in a vacant lot of pale tan soil on a clear, blue day. She was a black girl, tall, thin, with brown skin and shortish, spiky, dark-blonde hair. she had slit her throat and lay in a big pool of blood. She lay in a fetal position on her right side.
The men now stood before a camera (still in the lot, still on a blue day) talking about how it was to find the body. The men were both oldish, a little dumpy, white, with big, round eyes.
The scene of discovery happened again, like for the first time. This time the woman was completely decapitated, her head lying three or four feet from her body. The view panned back up to the two men, who said, "Imagine our shock. Even if she had survived, what kind of life would that have been? Her arms were chopped to the elbows, her legs were gone..."
I now crouched in a library, in between a shelf and a wall. The space was narrow, about three feet wide at most. I had a big book held directly in front of my face. I crouched, relaxed, with my knees against my chest. My sister sat to my left, leaning against my legs.
My oldest nephew came walking from right to left along the aisle and stomped on my sister's legs. It hurt my sister.
I felt helpless to retaliate on behalf of my sister. But I didn't want it to happen to her again. So I told her to sit a special way. She sat pretty much the same way as before, but now she was naked.
I heard a weird story narrated now, by my sister -- not voiced from her physical body, but from a narration in my head. My sister said, "I wouldn't let anybody kiss my boobs before him. But this was very important to him." I had a feeling that the "him" was me. I thought, How could that be? Why would I do something like that to my sister?
My view floated all around the library, slowly, as if some disembodied I were walking around the library.
I heard myself and a friend, like my old friend R, speaking in my head. We were trying to decipher a phrase: "gnear talk." It was in a series of new phrases young kids were using nowadays. I saw the list of new colloquialisms before my mind's eye for a moment.
I thought, Well, "thalk" is a hot walk -- so hot it thaws you. And "gnear" is what you say when a girl is so close you can feel her loveliness. It's as if you were saying, "Gee, she's near," or "g-near," to make "gnear" (except that the "g" was pronounced hard, not soft).
Dream #3
I had a dinner or a breakfast at a place that was supposed to be the apartment of my old friend R and his fiancee L. We sat at a huge table that was littered with items like vases. Everything seemed very disordered. I was surprised to have been here. I thought, These guys aren't mad at me anymore! I felt relieved.
L said, "Come back soon. We really want to talk with you again."
I couldn't tell whether that were true. I looked at R. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see me here. I could tell he was already trying to find a way to keep me from coming back.
Dream #1
My dad may have been accused of a murder. He was now coming to take me, my brother, and my sister to dinner. I lived in my own house, so they would pick me up. I sat in a room of my house, which was empty except a little clutter, a box of which I sat on.
I spoke on the cell phone with my mom. I told my mom, "I can't sit in a restaurant with that guy! Everybody'll be staring at us and asking us questions the whole time!" I imagined big, fat faces crowding all around my dad, my brother, my sister, and I at the restaurant. The faces all looked like obese versions of a mid-twentieth-century, cruel stereotype of Chinese faces.
I pulled the phone away from my left ear. The display was so colorful and bright. The main colors were blue.
My mom (or sister?) asked through the phone, "Your phone hasn't worked in all this time. Why is it working now that you need to tell us you don't want to see your dad?"
I thought to myself, Wow. They're right. How did my phone start working again?
Dream #2
A woman had gone missing, and two men had found that she had killed herself. They found her in a vacant lot of pale tan soil on a clear, blue day. She was a black girl, tall, thin, with brown skin and shortish, spiky, dark-blonde hair. she had slit her throat and lay in a big pool of blood. She lay in a fetal position on her right side.
The men now stood before a camera (still in the lot, still on a blue day) talking about how it was to find the body. The men were both oldish, a little dumpy, white, with big, round eyes.
The scene of discovery happened again, like for the first time. This time the woman was completely decapitated, her head lying three or four feet from her body. The view panned back up to the two men, who said, "Imagine our shock. Even if she had survived, what kind of life would that have been? Her arms were chopped to the elbows, her legs were gone..."
I now crouched in a library, in between a shelf and a wall. The space was narrow, about three feet wide at most. I had a big book held directly in front of my face. I crouched, relaxed, with my knees against my chest. My sister sat to my left, leaning against my legs.
My oldest nephew came walking from right to left along the aisle and stomped on my sister's legs. It hurt my sister.
I felt helpless to retaliate on behalf of my sister. But I didn't want it to happen to her again. So I told her to sit a special way. She sat pretty much the same way as before, but now she was naked.
I heard a weird story narrated now, by my sister -- not voiced from her physical body, but from a narration in my head. My sister said, "I wouldn't let anybody kiss my boobs before him. But this was very important to him." I had a feeling that the "him" was me. I thought, How could that be? Why would I do something like that to my sister?
My view floated all around the library, slowly, as if some disembodied I were walking around the library.
I heard myself and a friend, like my old friend R, speaking in my head. We were trying to decipher a phrase: "gnear talk." It was in a series of new phrases young kids were using nowadays. I saw the list of new colloquialisms before my mind's eye for a moment.
I thought, Well, "thalk" is a hot walk -- so hot it thaws you. And "gnear" is what you say when a girl is so close you can feel her loveliness. It's as if you were saying, "Gee, she's near," or "g-near," to make "gnear" (except that the "g" was pronounced hard, not soft).
Dream #3
I had a dinner or a breakfast at a place that was supposed to be the apartment of my old friend R and his fiancee L. We sat at a huge table that was littered with items like vases. Everything seemed very disordered. I was surprised to have been here. I thought, These guys aren't mad at me anymore! I felt relieved.
L said, "Come back soon. We really want to talk with you again."
I couldn't tell whether that were true. I looked at R. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see me here. I could tell he was already trying to find a way to keep me from coming back.
(9/15/07) diseased ruins and marshy river; yelling at brother; psychiatrist baggage
(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM at Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn Heights.)
Dream #1
It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.
On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.
I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.
I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.
I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.
I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.
Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.
To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.
Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.
In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.
I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.
I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.
A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.
I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.
Dream #2
I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.
My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.
My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)
I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.
Dream #3
My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.
A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.
We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.
Dream #1
It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.
On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.
I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.
I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.
I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.
I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.
Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.
To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.
Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.
In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.
I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.
I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.
A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.
I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.
Dream #2
I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.
My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.
My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)
I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.
Dream #3
My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.
A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.
We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.
Monday, February 11, 2013
(9/19/07) the community meeting place
(Entered in paper journal at 6:45 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was on a cell phone with my brother. I stood in a building like a community meeting place. I told my brother that when I first looked into the place, from outside the doorway, I thought the interior of the place would be intricate and of Asian design. My first view had been of an Asian screen or barrier which was black, possibly lacquer, not solid, but branching out and around in cloud patterns. The black might have been lined with or accented by gold.
But when I had gotten inside I saw that the screen simply enclosed an empty, open space. I told my brother, "It's kind of modern inside. The walls are white plaster. There's a small folding table at the front of the room. A couple people are sitting at it." The people were, I think, a Native American mother and her children.
The front of the room (the back of the building) was like a speaking area: some design (?) on the wall made this fact understood. Three was no platform or elevation of the floor: just this design on the wall.
I looked to my right and told my brother, "There's even a TV." It was like I was trying to convince my brother to come to this place, but he was afraid that the place wasn't modern enough, that it might be boring.
The TV was a little TV. It looked a few years old. But now I saw a big, plasma-screen TV. I told my brother, "Wait. There's two TVs!" But now I looked again and saw three TVs. I couldn't say anything. I was hoping the TVs wouldn't multiply anymore.
I faced toward the back of the room (front of the building). The people behind me were now my co-workers. They were talking and having a good time. Before me and maybe ten feet away was another folding table.
From about twenty feet away and to my right, my co-worker RJ walked in front of me and sat at the table. RJ spoke as she walked and sat, saying something about how she and I had been planning to take trips (probably separately) to some place like Connecticut. RJ asked me if I would like to start going to the gym with her. I sat near RJ's feet, in front of the table. I was putting shoes on RJ's feet.
It was a winter day outside. It was a vacation day for us, as if we were in college. I suggested we go in the morning, and then we could do something like eat breakfast. RJ said, as if I should have realized, that that idea wouldn't fit her schedule. She suggested we do something in the afternoon instead.
Dream #1
I was on a cell phone with my brother. I stood in a building like a community meeting place. I told my brother that when I first looked into the place, from outside the doorway, I thought the interior of the place would be intricate and of Asian design. My first view had been of an Asian screen or barrier which was black, possibly lacquer, not solid, but branching out and around in cloud patterns. The black might have been lined with or accented by gold.
But when I had gotten inside I saw that the screen simply enclosed an empty, open space. I told my brother, "It's kind of modern inside. The walls are white plaster. There's a small folding table at the front of the room. A couple people are sitting at it." The people were, I think, a Native American mother and her children.
The front of the room (the back of the building) was like a speaking area: some design (?) on the wall made this fact understood. Three was no platform or elevation of the floor: just this design on the wall.
I looked to my right and told my brother, "There's even a TV." It was like I was trying to convince my brother to come to this place, but he was afraid that the place wasn't modern enough, that it might be boring.
The TV was a little TV. It looked a few years old. But now I saw a big, plasma-screen TV. I told my brother, "Wait. There's two TVs!" But now I looked again and saw three TVs. I couldn't say anything. I was hoping the TVs wouldn't multiply anymore.
I faced toward the back of the room (front of the building). The people behind me were now my co-workers. They were talking and having a good time. Before me and maybe ten feet away was another folding table.
From about twenty feet away and to my right, my co-worker RJ walked in front of me and sat at the table. RJ spoke as she walked and sat, saying something about how she and I had been planning to take trips (probably separately) to some place like Connecticut. RJ asked me if I would like to start going to the gym with her. I sat near RJ's feet, in front of the table. I was putting shoes on RJ's feet.
It was a winter day outside. It was a vacation day for us, as if we were in college. I suggested we go in the morning, and then we could do something like eat breakfast. RJ said, as if I should have realized, that that idea wouldn't fit her schedule. She suggested we do something in the afternoon instead.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
(10/11/07) waterbed succubus
(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I and my brother were walking out of a white-walled room and into a small hallway, then around a corner and into another room. We were possibly re-enacting a scene where an old man grabbed two little boys' genitals.
But when we got into the second room, my brother had become a woman, probably around my age, but more mature than I. My brother and I may possibly have been naked (and young?) before. Now I and the woman my brother had become were naked. The room was small, rather empty, but somehow cluttered. It was like a pile of something lay or stood under the blanket on the bed.
The woman lured me onto the bed. Suddenly the bed was like a clear bag -- actually like a clear version of a waterbed mattress. Somehow the woman had pulled us inside this bag. There was water, maybe even plant life, in the bag. The woman had pulled me in here to suffocate me.
A couple of times I could see as if I stood outside the bag. I saw the woman inside the bag, beating against it, herself suffocating. The bag was damp on the inside with evaporated and re-condensed water. The woman lay in maybe two or three inches of water. The water looked pure, distilled.
I was back in the bag now. It was now like a white blanket over the two of us. The woman was young, had a smooth face, tan skin, red hair, and thin, blue eyes. I lay as she sat over me. I may have been an out-of-shape man, in a sense too weak to defend himself against a healthy woman.
The woman had set up the bag so that I would suffocate. The whole bag was losing oxygen, but the bottom part lost it more quickly than the top part. The woman could sit over me and watch me suffocate. When she saw I was suffocated she could get out of the bag before she suffocated. She had tricked, not forced, me into this situation.
As I lay dying the woman spoke softly to me. But her comments were somewhat cruel. The woman said that she and a lot of people were jealous of me, and that was why she was doing this to me. She may have started singing a pretty, gentle song to the same effect.
As the woman continued singing I found myself flying through an enormous structure like a dim warehouse constructed of brick and black iron. I flew through "tunnels" consisting of tent-like, greyish, translucent, thin fabric for walls and ceiling and varicolored, mostly purple, pink, orange, and blue, quilts for floors. I hovered only about six inches above the floors. The tunnels may only have been about two feet tall.
As I flew along I saw lifted up flaps along the ceilings of the tunnel. They were exposed to windows which showed high, deep, blue sky. I flew along through sloped tunnels now. The sloped tunnels led up to the ceiling. I thought, If the woman doesn't see me and doesn't suspect, I could fly through one of the flaps and out one of the windows (or out through the ceiling?).
I feel like at one point I flow along over wall-less quilt-floors. I could see down to the floor of the warehouse. I could see all the multicolored" floors filling the warehouse.
(One little thing I think is kind of -- though not extremely -- interesting reflecting on this dream is that, in waking life, about three or so years later, i.e. in about 2010, The American Folk Art Museum, which was at that time located next to the Museum of Modern Art, and was, by then, one of my favorite museums in New York City, went a little quilt crazy, showing an exhibition by Paula Nadelstern, then showing a two-floor exhibition of the history of American quilts, and finally putting on a gigantic show of red and white quilts at the Armory on 66th Street and Park Avenue.)
Dream #1
I and my brother were walking out of a white-walled room and into a small hallway, then around a corner and into another room. We were possibly re-enacting a scene where an old man grabbed two little boys' genitals.
But when we got into the second room, my brother had become a woman, probably around my age, but more mature than I. My brother and I may possibly have been naked (and young?) before. Now I and the woman my brother had become were naked. The room was small, rather empty, but somehow cluttered. It was like a pile of something lay or stood under the blanket on the bed.
The woman lured me onto the bed. Suddenly the bed was like a clear bag -- actually like a clear version of a waterbed mattress. Somehow the woman had pulled us inside this bag. There was water, maybe even plant life, in the bag. The woman had pulled me in here to suffocate me.
A couple of times I could see as if I stood outside the bag. I saw the woman inside the bag, beating against it, herself suffocating. The bag was damp on the inside with evaporated and re-condensed water. The woman lay in maybe two or three inches of water. The water looked pure, distilled.
I was back in the bag now. It was now like a white blanket over the two of us. The woman was young, had a smooth face, tan skin, red hair, and thin, blue eyes. I lay as she sat over me. I may have been an out-of-shape man, in a sense too weak to defend himself against a healthy woman.
The woman had set up the bag so that I would suffocate. The whole bag was losing oxygen, but the bottom part lost it more quickly than the top part. The woman could sit over me and watch me suffocate. When she saw I was suffocated she could get out of the bag before she suffocated. She had tricked, not forced, me into this situation.
As I lay dying the woman spoke softly to me. But her comments were somewhat cruel. The woman said that she and a lot of people were jealous of me, and that was why she was doing this to me. She may have started singing a pretty, gentle song to the same effect.
As the woman continued singing I found myself flying through an enormous structure like a dim warehouse constructed of brick and black iron. I flew through "tunnels" consisting of tent-like, greyish, translucent, thin fabric for walls and ceiling and varicolored, mostly purple, pink, orange, and blue, quilts for floors. I hovered only about six inches above the floors. The tunnels may only have been about two feet tall.
As I flew along I saw lifted up flaps along the ceilings of the tunnel. They were exposed to windows which showed high, deep, blue sky. I flew along through sloped tunnels now. The sloped tunnels led up to the ceiling. I thought, If the woman doesn't see me and doesn't suspect, I could fly through one of the flaps and out one of the windows (or out through the ceiling?).
I feel like at one point I flow along over wall-less quilt-floors. I could see down to the floor of the warehouse. I could see all the multicolored" floors filling the warehouse.
(One little thing I think is kind of -- though not extremely -- interesting reflecting on this dream is that, in waking life, about three or so years later, i.e. in about 2010, The American Folk Art Museum, which was at that time located next to the Museum of Modern Art, and was, by then, one of my favorite museums in New York City, went a little quilt crazy, showing an exhibition by Paula Nadelstern, then showing a two-floor exhibition of the history of American quilts, and finally putting on a gigantic show of red and white quilts at the Armory on 66th Street and Park Avenue.)
(10/16/07) where the new building was; emergency party; like a worm made out of brains
(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I watched, from the back passenger seat, a car pass a field with trees like cherry trees. Somehow I thought this was where my company's new building would be (in waking life, my company was in the final planning stages for moving into a new building -- we would be fully moved in, if I remember correctly, by about July of 2008 -- only to be moved into another building in January of 2009!)
I thought, This would be a nice area to take runs. There was a path running through the field. We passed along a creek or river at the bottom of a slope of rocks. The creek itself was rocky. An empty boat, with two paddles, clanked along some of the rocks.
I thought, But this is New York City. The roads are bad on (my boss) BS' knees. We really couldn't come up with a running route that would be good for BS. I also thought of asking my co-worker CJ if he wanted to run.
We passed another river, which ran at the bottom of a waterfall. The waterfall gushed over huge, round, coppery rocks and flooded the river.
We passed a building that was built in three sections. I saw it from the back. The two back sections were roundish with green, metallic framing for the windows. The front section rose slightly above the back sections and was octagonal, probably of pink stone, with a shallow, a-frame roof. It was in a field of dry, yellow-tan and orange-tan grass.
Now it was like I sat backwards, looking out the back window, in the backseat and on the driver's side. My mom was driving the car. My brother and sister were also in the car. We drove on a straight road, through slightly rolling stretches of flat plains -- yellowy-tan grass with some hints of green and orange and some glimpses of rich (?), brown soil beneath. There were occasional, thin clumps of trees, the green of their leafs as pale as floating clouds.
Then I saw a white tree. It was de-limbed, so all it was was a white trunk with four limb-stumps coming off of it. It looked like a wild, raging horse to me.
I thought my mom would be impressed by how much I liked looking out the window. I asked my mom some question relating to telling her about the things my siblings and I had done. My mom surprised me by answering something like, "I don't care. Don't tell me anything." I tried to change that statement into something more positive in my mind.
We passed a stand of thin aspen trees that edged before some tall, redbrick buildings like apartment complexes.
Dream #2
I sat in my desk at work. There was an alarm. A man's voice came on over the alarm's intercom speaker. The man announced a party (?) in XXXXX's office.
When the alarm had first come on, I had been afraid, wondering if the announcement would be for an actual emergency. I had worried whether I would do everything alright and help everybody effectively through the emergency. Now I was a little disappointed. It was just a birthday party?
For some reason I wasn't wearing shoes. But my shoes were sitting right next to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to the cubicle in front of the office where the party was. The party was, somehow, both in the office and down the hall.
The party was for one of my co-workers, AR, who was, like myself, an Administrative Assistant. Someone told AR, "You could be head of GM (i.e. Global Markets) one day! You throw parties so well!"
I was disappointed. Hadn't my old co-worker and mentor ES, now herself an Analyst like my (and, before, her) boss BS, said to me once, "You could be CEO of this company one day"? (I'm pretty sure that in waking life ES never told me that, although she has always complimented me on my "abilities" -- whatever those abilities are/were!)
I now reflected, Maybe you just said all that stuff to kind of puff up your assistants, make them feel more important than you really think they are, just so you can keep them working. How else, I thought in my jealousy, could someone make such a kind statement about AR, who, I peevishly thought, scarcely worked as hard as I worked?
I didn't even want to go into the room now. I was too ashamed. I took my time putting on my shoes.
AR called, "Preemie, get in here!"
I said, "I'm coming."
She said, "I've been making decisions to be nice. But pretty soon I'm going to have to stop making decisions!"
I thought, Nobody's going to talk to me that way!
But now both AR and ES were out in the cubicle with me. They were both saying nice things to me.
Dream #3
I sat watching a movie. I walked out and then back in. I walked up to my seat as the movie was ending. There were shots of blue sky and power lines, vistas of plains, and other shots I loved. The narrative of the film ended, a song began playing, and the credits began to roll.
But as the song started, a voice (of some Hispanic boy?) called out, "Hey, uh... The film is pretty much ended, everybody. We would appreciate it if you got up and left."
I was in a front row. I had my stuff sitting against the railing in front of me. I stood to pick it up. I had forgotten that I had brought a coat. I had actually brought a lot more than I had remembered.
I walked out into the hallway, which was like the hallway in a city building, just off from the reception lobby. I stood in a weird junction of hallways and right by a garbage can. I stood talking with two black girls.
The girls mentioned a young man, one of their co-workers (they all worked at this movie-house), who did a lot of other stuff. I wasn't sure what the "other stuff" was. I asked, "Does he work somewhere else, too?"
The girls got upset, like I had insinuated that all the boy could do was work in places like this. One of them said, "No. He goes to school. He's studying to be a scientist."
We talked a little more. Then I had to leave. One of the girls walked with me out into the dark, blue-grey evening. The girl smiled and said, "I've always wanted to see the car you drive."
We stood in a mostly empty shopping mall parking lot. The movie-house was now more like a restaurant. I saw my car in the distance. It was an old, beat-up car, like one I drove in my last year of high school -- except that the paint job on the car was now all new and shiny.
I thought, I can't let the girl see that thing. Besides, this girl wasn't the girl I wanted. Both girls were pretty. But the girl I liked, the other girl I'd been talking with in the movie-house hallway, had rounder eyes, not thin eyes like this girl.
The girl with me stopped to talk with a mother and her kids, who stood by a van. I thought, While the girl's not paying attention I can drive away. That way she won't see my awful car.
I turned to tell the girl goodbye. But I saw her from behind and was too surprised to say anything. The girl was now short, ugly, and poor-looking (???!!! -- I'm sometimes shocked by the things I've said!). She wore a blue t-shirt and tight blue jeans which showed off her big bottom. Her big bottom really turned me off.
A black man who was about my height and a little bigger than I, smart-looking, with thin-rimmed eyeglasses, walked past me. I must have thought this was the friend the two women had been talking about in the movie-house hallway.
I thought, Now's my chance to prove I don't think the girls' friend is capable only of working in a movie theater. I apparently thought I could do this simply by making small talk with the man in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said, "Hey, man, we'll see you later."
The man walked past me without even regarding me. I thought, Okay -- you show kindness and it isn't returned!
I walked toward my car. My mom walked beside me and to my left. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The phone (a regular, old-style flip-phone -- as I remember it from waking life, a black Nokia) was cracked. I thought, Maybe it's just cracked on the surface. But I opened it to see that the crack ran across all its surfaces. I looked at the sides. They were messed up, too.
I almost started crying. I thought, What did I do to make this happen? Can't I take care of anything I own?
It was now more like daytime. The car was by the entrance to the mall. My mom and I were at the end of the parking aisle, maybe twenty feet from the car. We passed a needle-leafed tree in a planting island.
I had been speaking with my mom and barely attending the stout tree. But, reflecting on the tree after we'd passed it, it struck me that the tree had weird, tiered, pink and white flowers on it. I told my mom, "Let's go back. That tree looks weird."
We went back. I looked at the branches. There were strange, but somehow sensible, tan-brown, brittle, cone-shaped things standing atop the thin branches. I thought, Maybe I just mistook these things for flowers.
But then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the pink and white flower. I hadn't seen the flower because it was on the periphery of the tree, not in the center, where I had focused my gaze.
The trunk of the tree seemed to end about two feet up from the ground. From the top of the trunk came an agave-like plant with spiny, yellow, purple, and green leafs. I said, "That's what I thought I saw! Isn't it odd?"
I reached out to touch the plant, to make sure I was seeing leafs and not more cones. The plant felt odd. And when I pulled my hand back, I noticed the top leafs moving, as if of their own volition. I thought, That can't be real. I have to be seeing things.
My mom and I were walking away. But the plant really bugged me. I had to look at it again. I told my mom, "Something else didn't make sense." I didn't want to tell my mom what didn't make sense -- namely, that the plant seemed to be moving on its own.
We went back to the tree. Now I saw that the plant grew out of a hollow in the top of the tree trunk -- although it was a part of the tree. I saw steady, directed movement from within the trunk. I knew the movement wasn't volitional, but that it was growth -- life.
I saw a spiky (like a sea-cucumber), worm-like appendage emerge from beneath the leafs. I shouted to my mom, "See?! I wasn't imagining! This thing is growing quicker than normal!"
The thing emerged, as huge as a boa constrictor, and wove its way through the thin branches of the tree. It was like a worm made out of brains, with a head like a gigantic breast. It hung over a branch above us. I knew if it touched us it would incorporate us.
I told my mom, "Run to the car!" We ran and got in.
The thing was growing. It had taken over the tree and spread toward us through the parking lot. I didn't know if we could get started and drive away quickly enough.
I saw a car coming from an underground parking garage to the left of the tree. Now the parking garage was like a car wash. It sprayed water all over the car. Jets of water flew outside the garage. They hit the plant-thing. As soon as they did, the thing dissolved into yellowy, thickish, soapy-looking water.
I hoped that more cars would come through the garage to get washed. The thing was dissolved now, but I felt like it would regain its consistency. I thought that more water needed to hit the thing before it would lose its ability to re-stabilize.
Dream #1
I watched, from the back passenger seat, a car pass a field with trees like cherry trees. Somehow I thought this was where my company's new building would be (in waking life, my company was in the final planning stages for moving into a new building -- we would be fully moved in, if I remember correctly, by about July of 2008 -- only to be moved into another building in January of 2009!)
I thought, This would be a nice area to take runs. There was a path running through the field. We passed along a creek or river at the bottom of a slope of rocks. The creek itself was rocky. An empty boat, with two paddles, clanked along some of the rocks.
I thought, But this is New York City. The roads are bad on (my boss) BS' knees. We really couldn't come up with a running route that would be good for BS. I also thought of asking my co-worker CJ if he wanted to run.
We passed another river, which ran at the bottom of a waterfall. The waterfall gushed over huge, round, coppery rocks and flooded the river.
We passed a building that was built in three sections. I saw it from the back. The two back sections were roundish with green, metallic framing for the windows. The front section rose slightly above the back sections and was octagonal, probably of pink stone, with a shallow, a-frame roof. It was in a field of dry, yellow-tan and orange-tan grass.
Now it was like I sat backwards, looking out the back window, in the backseat and on the driver's side. My mom was driving the car. My brother and sister were also in the car. We drove on a straight road, through slightly rolling stretches of flat plains -- yellowy-tan grass with some hints of green and orange and some glimpses of rich (?), brown soil beneath. There were occasional, thin clumps of trees, the green of their leafs as pale as floating clouds.
Then I saw a white tree. It was de-limbed, so all it was was a white trunk with four limb-stumps coming off of it. It looked like a wild, raging horse to me.
I thought my mom would be impressed by how much I liked looking out the window. I asked my mom some question relating to telling her about the things my siblings and I had done. My mom surprised me by answering something like, "I don't care. Don't tell me anything." I tried to change that statement into something more positive in my mind.
We passed a stand of thin aspen trees that edged before some tall, redbrick buildings like apartment complexes.
Dream #2
I sat in my desk at work. There was an alarm. A man's voice came on over the alarm's intercom speaker. The man announced a party (?) in XXXXX's office.
When the alarm had first come on, I had been afraid, wondering if the announcement would be for an actual emergency. I had worried whether I would do everything alright and help everybody effectively through the emergency. Now I was a little disappointed. It was just a birthday party?
For some reason I wasn't wearing shoes. But my shoes were sitting right next to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to the cubicle in front of the office where the party was. The party was, somehow, both in the office and down the hall.
The party was for one of my co-workers, AR, who was, like myself, an Administrative Assistant. Someone told AR, "You could be head of GM (i.e. Global Markets) one day! You throw parties so well!"
I was disappointed. Hadn't my old co-worker and mentor ES, now herself an Analyst like my (and, before, her) boss BS, said to me once, "You could be CEO of this company one day"? (I'm pretty sure that in waking life ES never told me that, although she has always complimented me on my "abilities" -- whatever those abilities are/were!)
I now reflected, Maybe you just said all that stuff to kind of puff up your assistants, make them feel more important than you really think they are, just so you can keep them working. How else, I thought in my jealousy, could someone make such a kind statement about AR, who, I peevishly thought, scarcely worked as hard as I worked?
I didn't even want to go into the room now. I was too ashamed. I took my time putting on my shoes.
AR called, "Preemie, get in here!"
I said, "I'm coming."
She said, "I've been making decisions to be nice. But pretty soon I'm going to have to stop making decisions!"
I thought, Nobody's going to talk to me that way!
But now both AR and ES were out in the cubicle with me. They were both saying nice things to me.
Dream #3
I sat watching a movie. I walked out and then back in. I walked up to my seat as the movie was ending. There were shots of blue sky and power lines, vistas of plains, and other shots I loved. The narrative of the film ended, a song began playing, and the credits began to roll.
But as the song started, a voice (of some Hispanic boy?) called out, "Hey, uh... The film is pretty much ended, everybody. We would appreciate it if you got up and left."
I was in a front row. I had my stuff sitting against the railing in front of me. I stood to pick it up. I had forgotten that I had brought a coat. I had actually brought a lot more than I had remembered.
I walked out into the hallway, which was like the hallway in a city building, just off from the reception lobby. I stood in a weird junction of hallways and right by a garbage can. I stood talking with two black girls.
The girls mentioned a young man, one of their co-workers (they all worked at this movie-house), who did a lot of other stuff. I wasn't sure what the "other stuff" was. I asked, "Does he work somewhere else, too?"
The girls got upset, like I had insinuated that all the boy could do was work in places like this. One of them said, "No. He goes to school. He's studying to be a scientist."
We talked a little more. Then I had to leave. One of the girls walked with me out into the dark, blue-grey evening. The girl smiled and said, "I've always wanted to see the car you drive."
We stood in a mostly empty shopping mall parking lot. The movie-house was now more like a restaurant. I saw my car in the distance. It was an old, beat-up car, like one I drove in my last year of high school -- except that the paint job on the car was now all new and shiny.
I thought, I can't let the girl see that thing. Besides, this girl wasn't the girl I wanted. Both girls were pretty. But the girl I liked, the other girl I'd been talking with in the movie-house hallway, had rounder eyes, not thin eyes like this girl.
The girl with me stopped to talk with a mother and her kids, who stood by a van. I thought, While the girl's not paying attention I can drive away. That way she won't see my awful car.
I turned to tell the girl goodbye. But I saw her from behind and was too surprised to say anything. The girl was now short, ugly, and poor-looking (???!!! -- I'm sometimes shocked by the things I've said!). She wore a blue t-shirt and tight blue jeans which showed off her big bottom. Her big bottom really turned me off.
A black man who was about my height and a little bigger than I, smart-looking, with thin-rimmed eyeglasses, walked past me. I must have thought this was the friend the two women had been talking about in the movie-house hallway.
I thought, Now's my chance to prove I don't think the girls' friend is capable only of working in a movie theater. I apparently thought I could do this simply by making small talk with the man in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said, "Hey, man, we'll see you later."
The man walked past me without even regarding me. I thought, Okay -- you show kindness and it isn't returned!
I walked toward my car. My mom walked beside me and to my left. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The phone (a regular, old-style flip-phone -- as I remember it from waking life, a black Nokia) was cracked. I thought, Maybe it's just cracked on the surface. But I opened it to see that the crack ran across all its surfaces. I looked at the sides. They were messed up, too.
I almost started crying. I thought, What did I do to make this happen? Can't I take care of anything I own?
It was now more like daytime. The car was by the entrance to the mall. My mom and I were at the end of the parking aisle, maybe twenty feet from the car. We passed a needle-leafed tree in a planting island.
I had been speaking with my mom and barely attending the stout tree. But, reflecting on the tree after we'd passed it, it struck me that the tree had weird, tiered, pink and white flowers on it. I told my mom, "Let's go back. That tree looks weird."
We went back. I looked at the branches. There were strange, but somehow sensible, tan-brown, brittle, cone-shaped things standing atop the thin branches. I thought, Maybe I just mistook these things for flowers.
But then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the pink and white flower. I hadn't seen the flower because it was on the periphery of the tree, not in the center, where I had focused my gaze.
The trunk of the tree seemed to end about two feet up from the ground. From the top of the trunk came an agave-like plant with spiny, yellow, purple, and green leafs. I said, "That's what I thought I saw! Isn't it odd?"
I reached out to touch the plant, to make sure I was seeing leafs and not more cones. The plant felt odd. And when I pulled my hand back, I noticed the top leafs moving, as if of their own volition. I thought, That can't be real. I have to be seeing things.
My mom and I were walking away. But the plant really bugged me. I had to look at it again. I told my mom, "Something else didn't make sense." I didn't want to tell my mom what didn't make sense -- namely, that the plant seemed to be moving on its own.
We went back to the tree. Now I saw that the plant grew out of a hollow in the top of the tree trunk -- although it was a part of the tree. I saw steady, directed movement from within the trunk. I knew the movement wasn't volitional, but that it was growth -- life.
I saw a spiky (like a sea-cucumber), worm-like appendage emerge from beneath the leafs. I shouted to my mom, "See?! I wasn't imagining! This thing is growing quicker than normal!"
The thing emerged, as huge as a boa constrictor, and wove its way through the thin branches of the tree. It was like a worm made out of brains, with a head like a gigantic breast. It hung over a branch above us. I knew if it touched us it would incorporate us.
I told my mom, "Run to the car!" We ran and got in.
The thing was growing. It had taken over the tree and spread toward us through the parking lot. I didn't know if we could get started and drive away quickly enough.
I saw a car coming from an underground parking garage to the left of the tree. Now the parking garage was like a car wash. It sprayed water all over the car. Jets of water flew outside the garage. They hit the plant-thing. As soon as they did, the thing dissolved into yellowy, thickish, soapy-looking water.
I hoped that more cars would come through the garage to get washed. The thing was dissolved now, but I felt like it would regain its consistency. I thought that more water needed to hit the thing before it would lose its ability to re-stabilize.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
(11/8/07) lesbian kissing joke; bowling green jacket; the shortest bio; brother's suffocation
(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
A movie preview. Two women kissing in dim light, outdoors, possibly in a courtyard or near a pool. One woman was blonde; the other, brunette. The blonde woman eventually started up a relationship with some big man, whom I dont think I ever saw directly.
The kissing scene started over, except now this was where the man first met the blonde woman. The blonde woman was kissing the brunette and then waved over the brunette's shoulder (still holding the brunette's hands -- they seemed to be kneeling and holding hands while kissing.)
In another scene the blonde woman was in a swimming pool with the brunette, convincing the brunette that the relationship with the man would soon be revealed as a joke.
I sat (on a trunk or a box?) in a bedroom filled with grey natural light. Against the wall facing me was a desk. On the right wall, the near the wall facing me, was a doorway to a big movie theater full of people.
I could hear the music for the preview for the movie Walk Hard. I thought a point would be coming up soon where everybody would laugh. But only a few people laughed. I thought, Oh -- well, the big laugh must be coming soon.
Dream #2
I walked out of some place like a subway stop and into a grey, cold day. There were people rushing all over. The area was all torn up, like the construction area around Bowling Green.
I was cold. I pulled a black jacket out of the back pocket of my book bag. It suddenly occurred to me that I had had my jacket in there for a long time. I was afraid to put on the jacket -- I didn't want my boss BS to think I was a wimp for wearing a jacket so early in the cold season.
I walked along torn up sidewalk and a wall (to my right) of scaffolding. People even seemed to be walking in the street. Two people walked past me -- first, a woman on crutches missing her left leg; second, a man on crutches, possibly using both of his legs to walk.
Dream #3
I sat at a pale, wood table. I sat across from my boss BS. He sat a little to my left. I was resting my head on the surface of the table. The wood was thick but not very dense. It was polished, but there seemed to be little, grey nicks all over the surface.
I was explaining to BS that I had actually lived alright while I was in the Americorps volunteer programs I had been in, regardless of having made around six dollars an hour at the most recent position and -- (I tried to mention the position I'd had in New Mexico, but I got sidetracked somehow).
BS decided that he and I should have a contest of who could write the shortest bio.
Dream #4
I was in an empty room with my psychiatrist A. The room was white with pale wood floors. A sat against a wall. I sat just right and forward of the center of the room. We both probably sat in folding chairs. A may also have been my mother. We were discussing some day-to-day activities.
My brother lay before A now and pulled a big, clear, plastic bag over himself. He stuck it up like a tent. Even though he said very little, he made it clear he would try to suffocate himself. He was seriously trying to get our attention. I could feel my brother dying at points, but I simply hoped he would be alright. A/my mom seemed also to be doing a good job of ignoring my brother.
We stood up and walked out the door, now plainly talking about day-to-day activities, as if to show my brother we weren't worried about him at all. We walked down the hall. A/my mom lay on a couch. I headed toward the front door.
I saw my brother had now laid himself on a basket full of used, white towels. The basket was small, so my brother, fitting in the basket, must have been small as well. My brother held the plastic bag over himself again, as if he were going to suffocate himself.
Dream #1
A movie preview. Two women kissing in dim light, outdoors, possibly in a courtyard or near a pool. One woman was blonde; the other, brunette. The blonde woman eventually started up a relationship with some big man, whom I dont think I ever saw directly.
The kissing scene started over, except now this was where the man first met the blonde woman. The blonde woman was kissing the brunette and then waved over the brunette's shoulder (still holding the brunette's hands -- they seemed to be kneeling and holding hands while kissing.)
In another scene the blonde woman was in a swimming pool with the brunette, convincing the brunette that the relationship with the man would soon be revealed as a joke.
I sat (on a trunk or a box?) in a bedroom filled with grey natural light. Against the wall facing me was a desk. On the right wall, the near the wall facing me, was a doorway to a big movie theater full of people.
I could hear the music for the preview for the movie Walk Hard. I thought a point would be coming up soon where everybody would laugh. But only a few people laughed. I thought, Oh -- well, the big laugh must be coming soon.
Dream #2
I walked out of some place like a subway stop and into a grey, cold day. There were people rushing all over. The area was all torn up, like the construction area around Bowling Green.
I was cold. I pulled a black jacket out of the back pocket of my book bag. It suddenly occurred to me that I had had my jacket in there for a long time. I was afraid to put on the jacket -- I didn't want my boss BS to think I was a wimp for wearing a jacket so early in the cold season.
I walked along torn up sidewalk and a wall (to my right) of scaffolding. People even seemed to be walking in the street. Two people walked past me -- first, a woman on crutches missing her left leg; second, a man on crutches, possibly using both of his legs to walk.
Dream #3
I sat at a pale, wood table. I sat across from my boss BS. He sat a little to my left. I was resting my head on the surface of the table. The wood was thick but not very dense. It was polished, but there seemed to be little, grey nicks all over the surface.
I was explaining to BS that I had actually lived alright while I was in the Americorps volunteer programs I had been in, regardless of having made around six dollars an hour at the most recent position and -- (I tried to mention the position I'd had in New Mexico, but I got sidetracked somehow).
BS decided that he and I should have a contest of who could write the shortest bio.
Dream #4
I was in an empty room with my psychiatrist A. The room was white with pale wood floors. A sat against a wall. I sat just right and forward of the center of the room. We both probably sat in folding chairs. A may also have been my mother. We were discussing some day-to-day activities.
My brother lay before A now and pulled a big, clear, plastic bag over himself. He stuck it up like a tent. Even though he said very little, he made it clear he would try to suffocate himself. He was seriously trying to get our attention. I could feel my brother dying at points, but I simply hoped he would be alright. A/my mom seemed also to be doing a good job of ignoring my brother.
We stood up and walked out the door, now plainly talking about day-to-day activities, as if to show my brother we weren't worried about him at all. We walked down the hall. A/my mom lay on a couch. I headed toward the front door.
I saw my brother had now laid himself on a basket full of used, white towels. The basket was small, so my brother, fitting in the basket, must have been small as well. My brother held the plastic bag over himself again, as if he were going to suffocate himself.
(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.
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.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
(11/25/07) the one-bedroom two-bedroom; my mom's law
(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
It was bright day. I stood on the roof of a tall, white apartment building. The roof was a little tiered and covered with gravel or small stones. I walked down a little tiered area to meet my real estate agent, CH. CH was going to show me a new apartment.
As I approached CH, my psychiatrist A came from my right. A called, "I need to go to the bathroom! I need to go pee!" To my right was now another apartment, the door opening directly to a toilet. I thought, Well, if A isn't using the one I'm looking at, I may as well go in.
The apartment I was going to be moving into was a two-room, I had been told. I was going to find a roommate. I wondered if A was supposed to be my roommate. The place was more expensive, but I almost thought I could still afford to live here by myself.
The first room I walked into was a bathroom. The second was a kitchen. The third was a bedroom. The fourth and fifth were another bathroom and kitchen. All five rooms were in a straight line with each other. I wondered where the second bedroom was.
I walked back into the bedroom. When I got there, something made me think I had walked through the second bedroom without having paid attention. I turned around and walked back. But all there were were the second kitchen and second bathroom again.
At the end of the second kitchen (the last room) was another door. It was a thin, fake wood door. There were little stickers on it, showing words in different "cool-girl" styles and colors. One word may have been the name "Tony" in a thick, pink cursive. The door had a tiny slide-lock on it. The door was unlocked.
I opened the door. It looked like another apartment, probably with a family of a mother and children living there. The place was littered slightly with papers and things.
I closed the door. I wanted to believe that this place was also mine, but I knew it wasn't. These were my neighbors. I thought I had escaped having neighbors like these people, who would probably make me miserable with all their noise. And I still had only one bedroom!
I couldn't insulate myself from the noise of these neighbors. It struck me as odd that the door was unlocked from my side. That meant the people in the next apartment had probably been running around in this apartment. Since the new place was practically mine, I locked the door.
I walked to the front door. As I got to the front door I was once again certain that I had seen a second bedroom, or perhaps a living room, without having paid attention to it.
Dream #2
I lay in a living room with my mom and my brother. My mom sat on a couch and my brother lay somewhere beyond my bed. To my right was a buffet, on top of which was a TV, probably turned on. The room was dim.
My brother asked my mom, "Don't we have to get to XXXXX?" (This place was something like a city council meeting.)
My mom said, "Oh, no. I don't feel like going."
My brother said, "But they're going to propose your law today!"
We now stood out on a familiar road near the house where my family lived during my last years of high school. To our right, along the road, was a blocks-long bake sale.
My brother said, "You made all that fuss to get them to put the law in. Now you don't want to go support it up to the next level?"
I stood looking at a bunch of weirdly frosted cupcakes -- they all had white frosting on the centers, but other frosting (like chocolate) on the outsides. They looked like they would be disappointing.
I got mad at my mom. She had made the law? And now she was too lazy to care if it failed? I told my mom, "You are an idiot! I've been able to hold it in for a long time. But this is so stupid, what you're doing now."
I stood in a courtyard. The ground was redbrick. The walls and columns were redbrick. The place had a spacious but intimate feel. I was apologizing to a woman my age, as i what I had said to my mom had been said to this woman instead. I wasn't physically speaking. It was like I was walking around by myself in the courtyard, remembering the apology while also letting bad thoughts about my mother work through my head.
I now embraced a woman who looked like MH, a colleague from New York Cares. I held MH close and realized how good it felt. Now it was like I had said all the bad things about a nearby friend of MH. MH's friend was very severe. MH and I were standing, arms around each other, saying apologies as MH's friend approached us from a distance, as if we were preparing what we should say to MH.
Dream #1
It was bright day. I stood on the roof of a tall, white apartment building. The roof was a little tiered and covered with gravel or small stones. I walked down a little tiered area to meet my real estate agent, CH. CH was going to show me a new apartment.
As I approached CH, my psychiatrist A came from my right. A called, "I need to go to the bathroom! I need to go pee!" To my right was now another apartment, the door opening directly to a toilet. I thought, Well, if A isn't using the one I'm looking at, I may as well go in.
The apartment I was going to be moving into was a two-room, I had been told. I was going to find a roommate. I wondered if A was supposed to be my roommate. The place was more expensive, but I almost thought I could still afford to live here by myself.
The first room I walked into was a bathroom. The second was a kitchen. The third was a bedroom. The fourth and fifth were another bathroom and kitchen. All five rooms were in a straight line with each other. I wondered where the second bedroom was.
I walked back into the bedroom. When I got there, something made me think I had walked through the second bedroom without having paid attention. I turned around and walked back. But all there were were the second kitchen and second bathroom again.
At the end of the second kitchen (the last room) was another door. It was a thin, fake wood door. There were little stickers on it, showing words in different "cool-girl" styles and colors. One word may have been the name "Tony" in a thick, pink cursive. The door had a tiny slide-lock on it. The door was unlocked.
I opened the door. It looked like another apartment, probably with a family of a mother and children living there. The place was littered slightly with papers and things.
I closed the door. I wanted to believe that this place was also mine, but I knew it wasn't. These were my neighbors. I thought I had escaped having neighbors like these people, who would probably make me miserable with all their noise. And I still had only one bedroom!
I couldn't insulate myself from the noise of these neighbors. It struck me as odd that the door was unlocked from my side. That meant the people in the next apartment had probably been running around in this apartment. Since the new place was practically mine, I locked the door.
I walked to the front door. As I got to the front door I was once again certain that I had seen a second bedroom, or perhaps a living room, without having paid attention to it.
Dream #2
I lay in a living room with my mom and my brother. My mom sat on a couch and my brother lay somewhere beyond my bed. To my right was a buffet, on top of which was a TV, probably turned on. The room was dim.
My brother asked my mom, "Don't we have to get to XXXXX?" (This place was something like a city council meeting.)
My mom said, "Oh, no. I don't feel like going."
My brother said, "But they're going to propose your law today!"
We now stood out on a familiar road near the house where my family lived during my last years of high school. To our right, along the road, was a blocks-long bake sale.
My brother said, "You made all that fuss to get them to put the law in. Now you don't want to go support it up to the next level?"
I stood looking at a bunch of weirdly frosted cupcakes -- they all had white frosting on the centers, but other frosting (like chocolate) on the outsides. They looked like they would be disappointing.
I got mad at my mom. She had made the law? And now she was too lazy to care if it failed? I told my mom, "You are an idiot! I've been able to hold it in for a long time. But this is so stupid, what you're doing now."
I stood in a courtyard. The ground was redbrick. The walls and columns were redbrick. The place had a spacious but intimate feel. I was apologizing to a woman my age, as i what I had said to my mom had been said to this woman instead. I wasn't physically speaking. It was like I was walking around by myself in the courtyard, remembering the apology while also letting bad thoughts about my mother work through my head.
I now embraced a woman who looked like MH, a colleague from New York Cares. I held MH close and realized how good it felt. Now it was like I had said all the bad things about a nearby friend of MH. MH's friend was very severe. MH and I were standing, arms around each other, saying apologies as MH's friend approached us from a distance, as if we were preparing what we should say to MH.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
(1/5/08) sonic boom stadium; pregnant little girl
(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at home in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
It was daytime. I walked through a sports stadium the diameter of which was maybe four times greater than normal. The bleachers may even have rolled up and down like hills. The field was minuscule compared to the bleachers. I walked with a man who was somewhat unseen. He was probably taller than I, white, with tanned skin, long, brown-blonde hair, and a beard.
We had been walking toward the edge of the gigantic stadium. Now we stopped and turned back, toward its center. I looked along the edge, counterclockwise, and almost mentioned that sometimes over this area I had seen B-2 bombers. Bu then I thought not to mention it, hat that was a special occurrence I should keep to myself. Instead I mentioned that we might see jets in this area.
Suddenly two jets flew over us. They flew low before us, over us, and behind us. They each made a "sonic boom," which was a kind of mellow sound. The jets looked like F-86s with stubby, X-15-like wings. The bodies were silver. The wings were a shimmery blue and purple.
A group of jets passed over our heads again, this time from behind us. They made the sonic booms. Then it seemed like a lot of jets flew overhead. As the sonic booms continued, my vision went out. The sonic booms became like a constant, soundless, brittle spasm in my ears.
Dream #2
I was with my brother at a picnic table at the end of a gravel driveway for a big, wood house in the middle of a foresty area. My brother had possibly been coming here to see a doctor or to get some medicine. I had been waiting for him out at the table. I might have had a bunch of random stuff with me, some of it in plastic bags.
My brother had come back to tell me he couldn't find the doctor. I went to the house. There was a side entrance leading down to the basement. I walked down the cement-walled stairwell and into the threshold of the basement.
I stood staring into the room. It was filthy. I didn't even want to step inside. In the opposite corner of the room from me was a TV, which was on. I stared at it, as if hypnotized.
A young, black man walked down the stairs. I got a little out of his way and asked him how he was doing. He nodded his head, as if being polite, but he gave me a smirky kind of look, as if he wondered why I was here.
It was now like I had taken my brother here because he was looking at a place to live. It would be a shared room in this basement. I thought, There's no way he's living here. If he lives here it will just be trouble with this guy.
I had already resolved that my brother shouldn't live here. But the way the guy had looked at me, s if he already suspected me of something, made me call out, "I don't think I'll take the room here. This was just a visit. I think I'll look at other places."
I went back to the picnic table. I told my brother we were ready to go. I pulled out my phone to call my mom and let her know we were coming back. But my phone was somehow broken. The screen on its back was blue, as if some bluish liquid had made up the electric screen but was no completely de-activated. The blue liquid had sloshed down to the bottom half.
I had somehow dialed a random number from my phone book. A woman answered. I tried to explain that I had called her accidentally. I was just sending out some signal to determine whether I could reach anybody.
I was in a room like a waiting room in a doctor's office. I might have been leaving. I was speaking with a nurse.
A black man walked in. He looked familiar. I thought perhaps we had been part of some group hospital thing. But I also felt like he was here just to follow me, as part of a group of people who suspected me of something.
The nurse asked the man, "Do I know you from somewhere?" The man didn't say much. It was the man's turn to be treated now. But I couldn't let the man go without knowing for sure that he wasn't following me.
The man and the nurse were down in some nice basement with tall ceilings, talking and laughing. I asked the man, "Where are you from? You didn't start coming here until I did. Are you following me?"
The man looked at me blankly, as if he thought I was a piece of trash who had no right to ask him a question. He then stood close to me, as if to scare me with the threat of fighting. He started telling me about his line of work. He sounded something like a manager for music groups. I told him so. He was kind of surprised. He seemed less angry at me.
I was getting reading to leave this place. My mom had dropped me off here. She had gotten back a while ago to pick me back up. But my appointment had been delayed, and now I needed to take a shower to wash off something like radioactive material. I felt bad that I had made my mom wait so long. I wished I could hurry.
I was now flying all over the room wherever I was. It was like the last basement, except it faced at a different angle. It was also more like a ski lodge. It was night. My nephews sat on some ledge by the stairway, waiting for me.
I descended and picked up my youngest nephew. He said, "I saw a snowman! I saw a snowman!" I was surprised to hear my nephew speak at all, let alone speak so well: he was only six months old. I asked my nephew about the snowman. In my mind I saw a plastic snowman figure.
The scene shifted to the backseat of a vehicle like a van. My "nephew" was now a little girl like my cousin B had been. She wore a pink dress and a pink sweater. She was telling me how she wished she could have kids. She was straddling me as I lay back, my head against the back of the driver's seat.
The girl said, "The only thing I'm worried about is people finding out I'm pregnant. If I get sick, I'll give myself away." But now she was getting sick. She tried to hold it in, but she unintentionally leaned over my right shoulder and threw up.
My aunt M, who had been driving, got mad and yelled, "My ex-husband sucks! My ex-husband sucks! My husband sucks! My husband sucks!"
My aunt's three daughters were now all in the car. I understood that my aunt was angry at the little girl for having gotten pregnant. But, instead of getting mad and yelling at the girl, was yelling about how bad their dads were, to make the girls feel bad.
Dream #1
It was daytime. I walked through a sports stadium the diameter of which was maybe four times greater than normal. The bleachers may even have rolled up and down like hills. The field was minuscule compared to the bleachers. I walked with a man who was somewhat unseen. He was probably taller than I, white, with tanned skin, long, brown-blonde hair, and a beard.
We had been walking toward the edge of the gigantic stadium. Now we stopped and turned back, toward its center. I looked along the edge, counterclockwise, and almost mentioned that sometimes over this area I had seen B-2 bombers. Bu then I thought not to mention it, hat that was a special occurrence I should keep to myself. Instead I mentioned that we might see jets in this area.
Suddenly two jets flew over us. They flew low before us, over us, and behind us. They each made a "sonic boom," which was a kind of mellow sound. The jets looked like F-86s with stubby, X-15-like wings. The bodies were silver. The wings were a shimmery blue and purple.
A group of jets passed over our heads again, this time from behind us. They made the sonic booms. Then it seemed like a lot of jets flew overhead. As the sonic booms continued, my vision went out. The sonic booms became like a constant, soundless, brittle spasm in my ears.
Dream #2
I was with my brother at a picnic table at the end of a gravel driveway for a big, wood house in the middle of a foresty area. My brother had possibly been coming here to see a doctor or to get some medicine. I had been waiting for him out at the table. I might have had a bunch of random stuff with me, some of it in plastic bags.
My brother had come back to tell me he couldn't find the doctor. I went to the house. There was a side entrance leading down to the basement. I walked down the cement-walled stairwell and into the threshold of the basement.
I stood staring into the room. It was filthy. I didn't even want to step inside. In the opposite corner of the room from me was a TV, which was on. I stared at it, as if hypnotized.
A young, black man walked down the stairs. I got a little out of his way and asked him how he was doing. He nodded his head, as if being polite, but he gave me a smirky kind of look, as if he wondered why I was here.
It was now like I had taken my brother here because he was looking at a place to live. It would be a shared room in this basement. I thought, There's no way he's living here. If he lives here it will just be trouble with this guy.
I had already resolved that my brother shouldn't live here. But the way the guy had looked at me, s if he already suspected me of something, made me call out, "I don't think I'll take the room here. This was just a visit. I think I'll look at other places."
I went back to the picnic table. I told my brother we were ready to go. I pulled out my phone to call my mom and let her know we were coming back. But my phone was somehow broken. The screen on its back was blue, as if some bluish liquid had made up the electric screen but was no completely de-activated. The blue liquid had sloshed down to the bottom half.
I had somehow dialed a random number from my phone book. A woman answered. I tried to explain that I had called her accidentally. I was just sending out some signal to determine whether I could reach anybody.
I was in a room like a waiting room in a doctor's office. I might have been leaving. I was speaking with a nurse.
A black man walked in. He looked familiar. I thought perhaps we had been part of some group hospital thing. But I also felt like he was here just to follow me, as part of a group of people who suspected me of something.
The nurse asked the man, "Do I know you from somewhere?" The man didn't say much. It was the man's turn to be treated now. But I couldn't let the man go without knowing for sure that he wasn't following me.
The man and the nurse were down in some nice basement with tall ceilings, talking and laughing. I asked the man, "Where are you from? You didn't start coming here until I did. Are you following me?"
The man looked at me blankly, as if he thought I was a piece of trash who had no right to ask him a question. He then stood close to me, as if to scare me with the threat of fighting. He started telling me about his line of work. He sounded something like a manager for music groups. I told him so. He was kind of surprised. He seemed less angry at me.
I was getting reading to leave this place. My mom had dropped me off here. She had gotten back a while ago to pick me back up. But my appointment had been delayed, and now I needed to take a shower to wash off something like radioactive material. I felt bad that I had made my mom wait so long. I wished I could hurry.
I was now flying all over the room wherever I was. It was like the last basement, except it faced at a different angle. It was also more like a ski lodge. It was night. My nephews sat on some ledge by the stairway, waiting for me.
I descended and picked up my youngest nephew. He said, "I saw a snowman! I saw a snowman!" I was surprised to hear my nephew speak at all, let alone speak so well: he was only six months old. I asked my nephew about the snowman. In my mind I saw a plastic snowman figure.
The scene shifted to the backseat of a vehicle like a van. My "nephew" was now a little girl like my cousin B had been. She wore a pink dress and a pink sweater. She was telling me how she wished she could have kids. She was straddling me as I lay back, my head against the back of the driver's seat.
The girl said, "The only thing I'm worried about is people finding out I'm pregnant. If I get sick, I'll give myself away." But now she was getting sick. She tried to hold it in, but she unintentionally leaned over my right shoulder and threw up.
My aunt M, who had been driving, got mad and yelled, "My ex-husband sucks! My ex-husband sucks! My husband sucks! My husband sucks!"
My aunt's three daughters were now all in the car. I understood that my aunt was angry at the little girl for having gotten pregnant. But, instead of getting mad and yelling at the girl, was yelling about how bad their dads were, to make the girls feel bad.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
(1/10/08) gathering from the aisles; the donnell library closes
(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I stood in front of a church with my mom. The church must have been enormous, but it felt like a small-town, white-sided church. My mom and I were supposed to be heading somewhere. But my mom wanted to stop to do one last thing. She said she wanted to gather soda cans out of the garbage basket at church.
The door of the church was now open. There were people inside sitting at desks, like they were studying in a library. Three older women stood before the door. My mom was telling them loudly what she was going to do. Some people inside looked up from their "studies." I got ashamed and told my mom, "Control your voice!"
My mom now leaned to each woman one by one and whispered to them very exaggeratedly, either as if she were afraid of disappointing me or as if she were making fun of me. Eventually she lost control and started yelling again.
We were now in the sanctuary. There were all different configurations of aisles. The aisles were probably all filled with people. A service might have been taking place.
My mom and I and possibly my brother were going to garbage baskets near the ends of the aisles and collecting soda cans. My mom had a "map" like a board game, which was guiding us around. We had the "map" placed on a beam at the end of an aisle.
My mom also had latex "gloves" for picking up the cans. The "gloves" were just for individual fingers. The "gloves" all seemed to be in weird animal shapes. I searched through the piles and boxes of "gloves" stacked up on the beam. But I couldn't find an animal shape I liked. Eventually I found something. But they were gloves for all five fingers. I thought, If I wear these, my mom and brother will laugh at me.
We were now on a train. The light flowing in was very bright and gold. The seats were arranged along the sides and in the center of the train, so we sat perpendicular to the forward motion of the train. I sat in a seat along a wall. My mom sat in a center seat, across from me and to my right.
My mom looked very depressed. I could tell I had made her sad by being ashamed of her gathering cans from the trash baskets. My mom's hair was disheveled, like it had been in dread locks but was now not taken care of at all. My mom may have been wrapped up in blankets.
I felt awful for making my mom feel bad. She seemed to wake up a little. She looked over at me. I smiled as much and as gently as I could. My mom smiled back. I knew she now understood that I loved her.
My brother sat to my right. Beside him was a woman, maybe a Hispanic woman, with a baby. My brother took the baby by the hair and held it out at arm's length. My mom looked at me as if to say, "Stop him!" I thought, Well, if I'm going to be tough with my mom, I should be tough with my brother, too.
I think I managed to get the baby out of my brother's hands. I told my brother to stop acting this way. Somehow he continued acting violent. So I threw him off the train. The train was at a dead stop. My brother rolled down a short, dusty slope.
I watched my brother walk up a street to my left, where the path of the train would have been. He seemed to be wearing my clothes: my brown slacks and blue, grid-style dress shirt. It was like late afternoon. Now it was like night.
I was in a car outside a house (but as if my position/time had not changed). My mom had gone in. I followed after her, hoping she would take care of what she needed and not get distracted.
I walked to a half-open side-door by a covered driveway. Inside were a few fat, old women. The door opened to the kitchen.
One woman stood over a machine on the counter. She spoke like she thought an infomercial person would, about how healthy eating was hard for her. She said, "That was before I found the Brrr-ito!" The product the woman made reference to was the machine she was standing over. But I could barely see the machine through the half-opened door. From what I could see, the machine looked like a salad shooter filled entirely with fruit glop.
I was disgusted and embarrassed. I thought, How does she think this machine or that food is doing anything except clogging up her life even more?
Another woman now asked, "What do we need to make this?"
A regular-looking woman, about my age, was now before me, walking toward the door. She held a few fruit-like objects in her arms. The objects were colored like cantaloupe skin, and their shape was something like cantaloupe and starfruit mixed. The regular-looking woman said, "You need this: the aorta."
Somehow I got into the house. The goal had been to retrieve a little girl from the house and take her to live with us. I managed to do this.
I saw a black and white photo of the girl. She was maybe nine years old at the most, very thin, with long, stringy, blonde hair. The girl's eyes were different-colored, so that in the photo one eye looked black, and the other, grey. The girl was sitting at a table and putting a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.
I thought, How did I manage to get the girl past the women?
Dream #2
I was in a living room (which might also have been an office) with a bunch of people who were my co-workers. A woman who looked like Nancy Reagan asked me if I had watched the presidential presentations last night, to see how "that senile Nancy Reagan gave a whole speech about 'pops' concerts." I laughed to think of that, but I hoped nobody would think I was an idiot for not having watched the presentations on TV.
Everybody started talking about some corporation, like U.S. Gypsum, that sponsored a lot of the presentation and controlled a lot of it but was masking its presence by denoting a lot of its influence to "public groups" whose acronyms were much like their own. Everybody spoke about what a dirty trick that was. But I had always liked that company. I hoped nobody knew that about me.
Somebody then mentioned that on some email system every email was sent with a signature-footer that made it look like it came directly from the corporation that controlled the email system (like Microsoft for Hotmail). I could see an image of this in my head, at the bottom of a long email.
I was now sitting at a computer by the window. To my left was another computer. Someone, a woman, possibly my mom, sat at the left computer. We were both going onto the computer to test whether the signature-footer rumor were true.
But instead of testing the rumor, I went onto a website where some guy was talking about things you should and shouldn't do in certain social situations. The guy was dark, Asian, big, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap.
I was in a bathroom. A man and woman stood in the shower. The man was making love to the woman from behind. The "social situations" internet guy called from the other side of the shower curtain, "Stop! That's not something you do in the shower!" I had thought it was nice to see a man and woman in love. But now I was ashamed.
I stood before the sink and medicine cabinet. I was wondering what kind of toiletries it was correct to use, what kind the internet man would approve of.
I walked from outside (on a sunny day) into a library, possibly the "Donnell Library." I had stopped here for only a second, after having finished up some job like a volunteer event. The library was almost empty of books. The library was closing down permanently, and most of the books had been sold. There were small piles of books on occasional shelves. The library itself was very small, only one room, with a dark backroom. There were a few different types of bookshelves.
I knew the library workers were eager to wrap up and get out of here for the day and for good, even though it probably wasn't the end of the day quite yet. I knew exactly what I wanted, though, so I told myself I would be quick.
I was looking for a big magazine, like W magazine's size, that was a fashion, or fashionable, magazine from the 1970s. But now I couldn't find it. I knew all the copies had probably been sold already.
I was heading out the door. I thought I would try to be friendly with the librarian, to show her that I hadn't come in here for no purpose. I didn't want her to think I was just some jerk trying to waste her time. I told the woman, "Sheesh! This place really --"
"-- Cleared out pretty quick?" the librarian interrupted. "I know. Everybody's been saying that."
I walked over to the counter. In the dark backroom there was another librarian moving stuff around. I told the librarian, "It's hard to believe this place is closing. This place means a lot to me. I've come in here pretty much ever since I moved to New York. I wonder what the first book was that I checked out here."
I searched my mind for a second, trying to remember the first book I'd checked out from the Donnell Library. But the librarian stopped me. She said, "Don't go there. You might give me a heart attack." I knew she meant that if I got nostalgic she might start crying. But I thought "heart attack" was a weird expression to use in this instance.
Dream #1
I stood in front of a church with my mom. The church must have been enormous, but it felt like a small-town, white-sided church. My mom and I were supposed to be heading somewhere. But my mom wanted to stop to do one last thing. She said she wanted to gather soda cans out of the garbage basket at church.
The door of the church was now open. There were people inside sitting at desks, like they were studying in a library. Three older women stood before the door. My mom was telling them loudly what she was going to do. Some people inside looked up from their "studies." I got ashamed and told my mom, "Control your voice!"
My mom now leaned to each woman one by one and whispered to them very exaggeratedly, either as if she were afraid of disappointing me or as if she were making fun of me. Eventually she lost control and started yelling again.
We were now in the sanctuary. There were all different configurations of aisles. The aisles were probably all filled with people. A service might have been taking place.
My mom and I and possibly my brother were going to garbage baskets near the ends of the aisles and collecting soda cans. My mom had a "map" like a board game, which was guiding us around. We had the "map" placed on a beam at the end of an aisle.
My mom also had latex "gloves" for picking up the cans. The "gloves" were just for individual fingers. The "gloves" all seemed to be in weird animal shapes. I searched through the piles and boxes of "gloves" stacked up on the beam. But I couldn't find an animal shape I liked. Eventually I found something. But they were gloves for all five fingers. I thought, If I wear these, my mom and brother will laugh at me.
We were now on a train. The light flowing in was very bright and gold. The seats were arranged along the sides and in the center of the train, so we sat perpendicular to the forward motion of the train. I sat in a seat along a wall. My mom sat in a center seat, across from me and to my right.
My mom looked very depressed. I could tell I had made her sad by being ashamed of her gathering cans from the trash baskets. My mom's hair was disheveled, like it had been in dread locks but was now not taken care of at all. My mom may have been wrapped up in blankets.
I felt awful for making my mom feel bad. She seemed to wake up a little. She looked over at me. I smiled as much and as gently as I could. My mom smiled back. I knew she now understood that I loved her.
My brother sat to my right. Beside him was a woman, maybe a Hispanic woman, with a baby. My brother took the baby by the hair and held it out at arm's length. My mom looked at me as if to say, "Stop him!" I thought, Well, if I'm going to be tough with my mom, I should be tough with my brother, too.
I think I managed to get the baby out of my brother's hands. I told my brother to stop acting this way. Somehow he continued acting violent. So I threw him off the train. The train was at a dead stop. My brother rolled down a short, dusty slope.
I watched my brother walk up a street to my left, where the path of the train would have been. He seemed to be wearing my clothes: my brown slacks and blue, grid-style dress shirt. It was like late afternoon. Now it was like night.
I was in a car outside a house (but as if my position/time had not changed). My mom had gone in. I followed after her, hoping she would take care of what she needed and not get distracted.
I walked to a half-open side-door by a covered driveway. Inside were a few fat, old women. The door opened to the kitchen.
One woman stood over a machine on the counter. She spoke like she thought an infomercial person would, about how healthy eating was hard for her. She said, "That was before I found the Brrr-ito!" The product the woman made reference to was the machine she was standing over. But I could barely see the machine through the half-opened door. From what I could see, the machine looked like a salad shooter filled entirely with fruit glop.
I was disgusted and embarrassed. I thought, How does she think this machine or that food is doing anything except clogging up her life even more?
Another woman now asked, "What do we need to make this?"
A regular-looking woman, about my age, was now before me, walking toward the door. She held a few fruit-like objects in her arms. The objects were colored like cantaloupe skin, and their shape was something like cantaloupe and starfruit mixed. The regular-looking woman said, "You need this: the aorta."
Somehow I got into the house. The goal had been to retrieve a little girl from the house and take her to live with us. I managed to do this.
I saw a black and white photo of the girl. She was maybe nine years old at the most, very thin, with long, stringy, blonde hair. The girl's eyes were different-colored, so that in the photo one eye looked black, and the other, grey. The girl was sitting at a table and putting a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.
I thought, How did I manage to get the girl past the women?
Dream #2
I was in a living room (which might also have been an office) with a bunch of people who were my co-workers. A woman who looked like Nancy Reagan asked me if I had watched the presidential presentations last night, to see how "that senile Nancy Reagan gave a whole speech about 'pops' concerts." I laughed to think of that, but I hoped nobody would think I was an idiot for not having watched the presentations on TV.
Everybody started talking about some corporation, like U.S. Gypsum, that sponsored a lot of the presentation and controlled a lot of it but was masking its presence by denoting a lot of its influence to "public groups" whose acronyms were much like their own. Everybody spoke about what a dirty trick that was. But I had always liked that company. I hoped nobody knew that about me.
Somebody then mentioned that on some email system every email was sent with a signature-footer that made it look like it came directly from the corporation that controlled the email system (like Microsoft for Hotmail). I could see an image of this in my head, at the bottom of a long email.
I was now sitting at a computer by the window. To my left was another computer. Someone, a woman, possibly my mom, sat at the left computer. We were both going onto the computer to test whether the signature-footer rumor were true.
But instead of testing the rumor, I went onto a website where some guy was talking about things you should and shouldn't do in certain social situations. The guy was dark, Asian, big, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap.
I was in a bathroom. A man and woman stood in the shower. The man was making love to the woman from behind. The "social situations" internet guy called from the other side of the shower curtain, "Stop! That's not something you do in the shower!" I had thought it was nice to see a man and woman in love. But now I was ashamed.
I stood before the sink and medicine cabinet. I was wondering what kind of toiletries it was correct to use, what kind the internet man would approve of.
I walked from outside (on a sunny day) into a library, possibly the "Donnell Library." I had stopped here for only a second, after having finished up some job like a volunteer event. The library was almost empty of books. The library was closing down permanently, and most of the books had been sold. There were small piles of books on occasional shelves. The library itself was very small, only one room, with a dark backroom. There were a few different types of bookshelves.
I knew the library workers were eager to wrap up and get out of here for the day and for good, even though it probably wasn't the end of the day quite yet. I knew exactly what I wanted, though, so I told myself I would be quick.
I was looking for a big magazine, like W magazine's size, that was a fashion, or fashionable, magazine from the 1970s. But now I couldn't find it. I knew all the copies had probably been sold already.
I was heading out the door. I thought I would try to be friendly with the librarian, to show her that I hadn't come in here for no purpose. I didn't want her to think I was just some jerk trying to waste her time. I told the woman, "Sheesh! This place really --"
"-- Cleared out pretty quick?" the librarian interrupted. "I know. Everybody's been saying that."
I walked over to the counter. In the dark backroom there was another librarian moving stuff around. I told the librarian, "It's hard to believe this place is closing. This place means a lot to me. I've come in here pretty much ever since I moved to New York. I wonder what the first book was that I checked out here."
I searched my mind for a second, trying to remember the first book I'd checked out from the Donnell Library. But the librarian stopped me. She said, "Don't go there. You might give me a heart attack." I knew she meant that if I got nostalgic she might start crying. But I thought "heart attack" was a weird expression to use in this instance.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
(1/27/08) building theories of color and skating
(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM.)
Dream #1
I walked through a chain link gate opening into a conference event that was set up under tents in a large area like a parking lot. The conference was something like a homebuilding industry conference.
There were some middle-aged women under a small tent before the large tent. They had a bunch of flyers in bins and on the table. Some flyers were actually just huge name and address lists for homebuilders across the nation. I picked up one of the flyers.
I walked toward the entrance of the large tent, wondering whether I had enough money to go inside, or if I even wanted to spend the money to go inside. To my left was the tent I had just come from. To my right were a bunch of milk crates full of stuff as if at a garage sale. The aisle between these two areas was maybe only three or four feet wide.
I looked into the milk crates. The crates were full of used books. Three books in particular caught my eye. One was a flat-colored, thickish book with a depiction of something like church communion on it. The book might have had a title related to the Catholic church. Another book was a paperback. The cover had coloration like an overexposed photo of a sunset. It was titled something like A Word on Kerenyi.
The third book was a large picture book. It was apparently an essay on color by a modern philosopher or artist I liked a lot. The cover photo was very dark, with just glows of bright color, as if a photo of a window were being taken from inside a dark house.
I was very interested in this book. I picked it up and looked through it. The photos were all somehow very normal. One photo in particular might have been of a girl in a bikini on the beach. The photos all had a weird, but not extremely weird, coloration.
I couldn't see what these photos were teaching about color. But I felt that if I looked closely enough at the photos for a while I might understand. I decided I would buy the book instead of (?) going into the conference. The book cost $23.50. The conference cost $21.
I was inside a building, in an area like the third-floor ballroom-like area in the Brooklyn Museum of Art except smaller, more polished, and lit by candlelight. I was skateboarding through the room. I heard my brother telling me how another person (a long-haired, Hispanic man) had taught him how to skateboard better than I'd taught him.
It was now like I was skating like, or even in the identity of, the other person. I/he was skating smoother than I had ever skated. I was jealous of the other man for having been able to teach my brother so well.
Dream #1
I walked through a chain link gate opening into a conference event that was set up under tents in a large area like a parking lot. The conference was something like a homebuilding industry conference.
There were some middle-aged women under a small tent before the large tent. They had a bunch of flyers in bins and on the table. Some flyers were actually just huge name and address lists for homebuilders across the nation. I picked up one of the flyers.
I walked toward the entrance of the large tent, wondering whether I had enough money to go inside, or if I even wanted to spend the money to go inside. To my left was the tent I had just come from. To my right were a bunch of milk crates full of stuff as if at a garage sale. The aisle between these two areas was maybe only three or four feet wide.
I looked into the milk crates. The crates were full of used books. Three books in particular caught my eye. One was a flat-colored, thickish book with a depiction of something like church communion on it. The book might have had a title related to the Catholic church. Another book was a paperback. The cover had coloration like an overexposed photo of a sunset. It was titled something like A Word on Kerenyi.
The third book was a large picture book. It was apparently an essay on color by a modern philosopher or artist I liked a lot. The cover photo was very dark, with just glows of bright color, as if a photo of a window were being taken from inside a dark house.
I was very interested in this book. I picked it up and looked through it. The photos were all somehow very normal. One photo in particular might have been of a girl in a bikini on the beach. The photos all had a weird, but not extremely weird, coloration.
I couldn't see what these photos were teaching about color. But I felt that if I looked closely enough at the photos for a while I might understand. I decided I would buy the book instead of (?) going into the conference. The book cost $23.50. The conference cost $21.
I was inside a building, in an area like the third-floor ballroom-like area in the Brooklyn Museum of Art except smaller, more polished, and lit by candlelight. I was skateboarding through the room. I heard my brother telling me how another person (a long-haired, Hispanic man) had taught him how to skateboard better than I'd taught him.
It was now like I was skating like, or even in the identity of, the other person. I/he was skating smoother than I had ever skated. I was jealous of the other man for having been able to teach my brother so well.
(2/20/08) treasury and fed; nwne; the shawmut; waiting for mom; duane reade
(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a dark place, maybe inside a house and then out on a lawn at night. I heard about my old friend R killing someone. R was now threatening to kill me because I worked for the US Treasury.
I walked through some concrete area with dead or dormant weeds spiking up along the walls. I was thinking to myself how I might start working somewhere else, maybe the Federal Reserve. But I needed to give myself time to make the move.
Dream #2
I was in a house with my mother, my sister, and probably my brother. The weather was a little wintry, but tornadoes were causing destruction nearby. The tornadoes were in the northwest of the city. We were in the northeast. I saw in my mind a diagram of quadrants, with the northwest and northeast quadrants labeled.
I told my mom we should get out of here. I sat on the floor by my sister. My mom stood over us. My mom said, "There's nothing to worry about. The storms are in the northwest."
I said, "But they'll move!"
My mom said, "Alright, alright. Everybody into the car."
I was in the kitchen. I slung a small, plastic bag of something over my shoulder. Some animal like a rabbit pulled the whole thing into its mouth. I turned around and pulled the animal off the bag. The animal was now like a cocker spaniel. The dog scurried around violently. I knelt down. I may have been wearing shorts. I had bare legs. The dog was biting my legs.
All around us were empty boxes of food, like cereal boxes. I knew the dog was hungry. I tried to find it some food. Only one box still had food in it. The food was like Froot Loops, but it was like someone had already poured milk on them and the milk had dried, leaving the cereal all caked together. I knew that food probably wasn't good for anything to eat. But I was still trying to get it out of the box to feed the dog.
Dream #3
I was in a hotel room in Boston. I might just have come back in after having been out for a couple hours. The room was dimmish. I stood before the door. The cleaning lady knocked and then came inside. She said she was sorry if she was bothering me. I said it was no big deal.
I walked over and sat on the bed. The bed was undone, the blankets in a heap. I saw a used Band-Aid on my bed. i knew it wasn't my Band-Aid, and that I had laid in bed all night with my feet touching somebody's used Band-Aid.
I turned on the TV. I thought about my old co-worker and mentor ES or my boss BS having once said they weren't particular about the hotel they stayed in. They could even stay in the hotel I was in right now -- the Shawmut.
Dream #4
I was at "my dad's house," which was somewhere in the woods. We were getting ready to go, possibly to a movie in a nearby city. But we realized that my mom had taken all the keys for the cars. (This is odd -- we all had handfuls of sets of keys. It was more like the cars were all gone.)
I was angry that my mom could leave us stuck like this without leaving us any idea of when she would be back. My sister and I tried to call my mom on her cell phone, but my mom wasn't answering. Finally I said, "I can get out of here myself. I don't need a car. I can walk."
I imagined a few trails running through a mountain meadow. My only fear was that my mom would come after I'd started walking and make me look like a fool for having been impatient to leave.
Dream #5
(Vision?) I stood before a mirrored wall with a Duane Reade sign and doorway around it.
Dream #1
I was in a dark place, maybe inside a house and then out on a lawn at night. I heard about my old friend R killing someone. R was now threatening to kill me because I worked for the US Treasury.
I walked through some concrete area with dead or dormant weeds spiking up along the walls. I was thinking to myself how I might start working somewhere else, maybe the Federal Reserve. But I needed to give myself time to make the move.
Dream #2
I was in a house with my mother, my sister, and probably my brother. The weather was a little wintry, but tornadoes were causing destruction nearby. The tornadoes were in the northwest of the city. We were in the northeast. I saw in my mind a diagram of quadrants, with the northwest and northeast quadrants labeled.
I told my mom we should get out of here. I sat on the floor by my sister. My mom stood over us. My mom said, "There's nothing to worry about. The storms are in the northwest."
I said, "But they'll move!"
My mom said, "Alright, alright. Everybody into the car."
I was in the kitchen. I slung a small, plastic bag of something over my shoulder. Some animal like a rabbit pulled the whole thing into its mouth. I turned around and pulled the animal off the bag. The animal was now like a cocker spaniel. The dog scurried around violently. I knelt down. I may have been wearing shorts. I had bare legs. The dog was biting my legs.
All around us were empty boxes of food, like cereal boxes. I knew the dog was hungry. I tried to find it some food. Only one box still had food in it. The food was like Froot Loops, but it was like someone had already poured milk on them and the milk had dried, leaving the cereal all caked together. I knew that food probably wasn't good for anything to eat. But I was still trying to get it out of the box to feed the dog.
Dream #3
I was in a hotel room in Boston. I might just have come back in after having been out for a couple hours. The room was dimmish. I stood before the door. The cleaning lady knocked and then came inside. She said she was sorry if she was bothering me. I said it was no big deal.
I walked over and sat on the bed. The bed was undone, the blankets in a heap. I saw a used Band-Aid on my bed. i knew it wasn't my Band-Aid, and that I had laid in bed all night with my feet touching somebody's used Band-Aid.
I turned on the TV. I thought about my old co-worker and mentor ES or my boss BS having once said they weren't particular about the hotel they stayed in. They could even stay in the hotel I was in right now -- the Shawmut.
Dream #4
I was at "my dad's house," which was somewhere in the woods. We were getting ready to go, possibly to a movie in a nearby city. But we realized that my mom had taken all the keys for the cars. (This is odd -- we all had handfuls of sets of keys. It was more like the cars were all gone.)
I was angry that my mom could leave us stuck like this without leaving us any idea of when she would be back. My sister and I tried to call my mom on her cell phone, but my mom wasn't answering. Finally I said, "I can get out of here myself. I don't need a car. I can walk."
I imagined a few trails running through a mountain meadow. My only fear was that my mom would come after I'd started walking and make me look like a fool for having been impatient to leave.
Dream #5
(Vision?) I stood before a mirrored wall with a Duane Reade sign and doorway around it.
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