(3/9/05) pathetic in cafe; two negligees; vindicators 3 and 4; shaved mustache

(Entered in paper journal at 5:25 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I must have been looking around before for some person, possibly a male. Now I walked into a restaurant that was full and bustling and had an air to it like a cafe in Jules and Jim but with the colors of a cafe in Un Coeur en Hiver. There was just a tight space of aisle. I walked toward the back of the cafe. Everybody turned and stared at me. I feel like everybody was saying things like, "How pathetic! He's looking for XXXXX at this point in time! And in those clothes!"

Dream 2

I was possibly a famous writer. I had been involved recently with an exchange of letters setting up encounters with a few of my admirers/peers during a writing conference of some sort.

Now I was walking around a huge complex, outside, up and down stairs and along balconies and lawns and courtyards, in nice, gentle sunlight. I saw one woman walking down a set of stairs from a glass-fronted area that looked like the main conference area. She looked at me, wondered if I was who I was, then continued on when I didn't speak some code I was supposed to speak to a woman of her description. I didn't want to avoid her -- it was just that I suddenly wondered if speaking with her wouldn't lead to trouble.

I was now walking along a concrete balcony behind a second woman. She had long, straight, blonde hair, pale tan skin, a ribbed, black tank t-shirt, and a long, folding-type skirt that was pale purple and white like a tie-dye, stippled like granite with flecks of black. She had a tight waist and a round bottom.

I didn't even know if she was one of the people I had arranged to meet with. (These meetings, by the way, were only supposed to be for discussions on writing.) I just wanted to talk with her so I could get her in bed. But as I advanced I grew more and more cautious. Then the girl's bottom just kept getting flabbier until I finally just turned away.

Now I was in some apartment/office, changing into lingerie: a sheer, purple camisole. I must have been about to put on panties. But I didn't. I saw a girl I knew by description. She wore the same camisole, as a skirt-dress, with no panties. She was tan, bronze-blonde, with a twiggy, muscular figure and a nice, round bottom.

As soon as I saw her I left the apartment, with some lingerie in my hand, and walked up to her. I said, "Are you who I think you are?"

She looked at me and said, "You're holding two negligees, just like you said."

She was now shocked by sexual attraction. She ran off. She said, "Please wait here. I have to change. I'll be right back."

I myself thought I should go change.

Dream 3

A woman came into some apartment/office where I sat at a computer. She gave me three disks. I had asked her for them, but now I couldn't remember what they were -- programs to install or files to download.

I looked at the disks. The first said "VINDICATOR #1;" the second, "VINDICATOR #2;" the third had "VINDICATOR #3" over "VINDICATOR #4."

I had "mentally" asked the woman what the disks' contents were. But she hadn't answered me yet -- it was actually like her functionality or presence had evaporated. And I just sat there thinking, What a fool she must think I am.

Dream 4.

I looked in the mirror. I had shaved my mustache. I kept noticing pimples along where my mustache had been until I had counted out eight cysts and large blemishes. I told myself, This is what you get for shaving your face. Now you'll just have to be patient until the hair grows back.

(4/5/05) beethoven coffee

(Entered in paper journal at 5:40 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a room with a right angle of chairs and a coffee table filled, on top and in little shelves which were on bottom, with magazines. A female friend had told me or was telling me that it was okay for me to get dressed up as a woman for the present gathering of folks. I was now dressed in a white dress with floral prints.

I grabbed some magazine, apparently a women's fashion special, and I sat down to flip through some pages. As I looked through the magazine I could hear a man or woman talking to me just behind my left or right shoulder. Whatever was said made me nervous about what the presently arriving folks would think of my attire. But I kept remembering the female friend telling me it was okay.

Whenever I looked down at my body I saw how feminine it was. But that didn't even register. I worried that since I couldn't shave (in waking life I couldn't shave my face on a regular basis because I had really bad acne, which shaving only made worse) my face was still hairy and that I looked like a gross pervert.

I had flipped through the magazine and found only a couple fashion articles, which were of only minor interest. I think I had been looking for a glamorous woman whom I could visualize, with a glimmer of hope that I could change myself through that visualization.

But, flipping through the pages again as I walked the magazine back to the coffee table, I saw that the articles were both about trendy, little casual jean and corduroy and hoodie outfits young girls could wear to impress young boys and still feel tomboyish for themselves.

Some people had arrived, but I didn't pay them much notice. I was flipping through the rest of the magazine, which was now a lot like a men's magazine, with a bunch of inflated-intellectual-ego stories.

One the articles was an article co-written by some staff writer and Beethoven. I wondered how this could be. Either one part was just a passage from Beethoven and the rest was the staff writer, or else the article was set up using quotes and passages of Beethoven's interspersed with the staff writer's writings. The article was only one page long. There was a watercolor portrait of Beethoven with a huge head.

It seemed like the first part of the article used the "interspersed" method and the second part was Beethoven quotes. The quotes were set up as jokes. The only one I "read" was one that ended, "It's a term for making sure you're 'zipped up' when you're standing in front of that cute cashier at the grocery store." I tried to figure out how Beethoven knew about grocery stores.

Now I was in what looked like a haunting version of a hospital cafeteria cashier line. But the place was apparently a coffee shop. A young woman rang up a small, deli-style and capless coffee, a Styrofoam box of food, and something else, all on a brown tray, for an old, rich woman. The young woman acted nice though all the while the old woman was rude.

When the young woman passed the tray to the old woman, who had in a rush passed just out of reach along the silver tray-counter, and said, "Have a nice day," the old woman awkwardly fumbled at the coffee and spilled a bit of it.

I was now in the old woman's body. I could tell there was a huge, gelling lump of sugar at the bottom of the cup. I saw everything as if I were watching an overexposed image. "I" now apologized to the girl for "my" rudeness. My hand and a little bit of my tray were sloppy with lukewarm coffee.
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"I" was now "myself." To the girl, as if I had watched the previous transaction, I said something like, "Wow, she was sure grumpy. She needs something to calm her nerves. Maybe coffee's not the right thing for her."

Now my sight was "jump-cut" to me carrying my own cup of coffee away. A narrating voice said, "Yes, coffee is harmful -- to your body especially, causing many nervous difficulties, including paranoia, insomnia, and Islam."

(9/21/05) celtic ritual and buddhism in the cafe

(Entered in paper journal at 8:29 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

In a cafe, a beautiful, black woman sat down sideways in a comfortable chair near me. She had a tall stack of books sat on table. One book was about Celtic ritual; another, about Buddhism.

(2/17/09) troublemakers at slumber party cafe; astral hallway encounter

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at Starbucks at Twenty-ninth Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I came into a cafe which may have been on a narrow corner. The place was more like a bar, but it also had grey-white carpet. The walls and bar may have been black wood. My family all lay on the floor, under blankets.

A pretty, blonde girl stood behind the bar. She said, "Looks like your family was going to meet you here, but they decided to sleep here after all."

I may have looked around to see the place full of people sleeping. I thought, It must just be a popular thing for people to sleep here like this.

I may have started walking up a staircase that had a view (to my left) of the "cafe" below. I may have been talking with my mom, possibly about what  nice place this was.

Somehow, possibly by a radio, we heard that some killers on the loose. My mom said, "We need to protect everybody."

I walked back down the steps and to the front door. I said, "Well, the first thing we need to do is lock the front door." I may have locked the door and then walked back up the steps. Other people may have been waking up.

Now three or so people, like the adults in a troublesome, low-income family, walked through the front door. I knew they were no good. I thought they might have been in my brother-in-law's family.

I didn't know how these new people had gotten in. I had locked the door so nobody could get in. The kids were politely saying hi to the new people. I wondered if the kids had let the new people in.

The people had mock-innocent looks on their faces, like they were looking for precisely the right place to cause trouble. They were about to head through a door to the kitchen.

I hurried down the stairs and stopped the people right in front of the door. My mom may have come out of the kitchen.

I asked the people who they were. They looked up and away, walking somewhere else. I stopped them again. This time they may just have been two men, maybe Italian, wearing bright green and purple suits (like the red suit Screamin' Jay Hawkins wore in the movie Mystery Train).

I grabbed one of the men by the lapels and let him go. He stopped. I said, "Tell me who you are! I know you think I'm nobody, that I'm just some kid that you don't need to worry about. But I'm somebody! I am -- or, I was..." My speech drifted off as my mind began to wander a bit. "... a researcher, a stock researcher... on Wall Street."

The man I'd grabbed nodded and said, "Oh, is that so?" like he liked me and didn't want me to feel bad, even though he knew that what I had been didn't matter anymore.

I physically wandered off now, still kind of talking to the people, like they were troublemaker friends of mine, whom I liked and looked up to but really didn't want around me anymore.

Dream #2

I was in a living room. I lay on the floor in golden sunlight. The room was like in a double-wide trailer. I lay on my stomach with my head pointed toward a small TV that stood on an unstable tray, like the trays people would eat their TV dinners from while sitting at a chair in front of a TV.

I lifted out of my body and was floating at a strange angle so that I couldn't really see anything around me. It took me a few seconds to realize I was out of my body. I thought, If I'm out of my body, I shouldn't just hang here in one place like this. I should try to go somewhere.

I tried to move, but as I did, I was pulled more and more back into my physical body. I told myself to relax and try to move.

My vision went dark and I felt a lot of rushing all over my body. I was in a lying position, on my back, so I thought I was back in my body. But I thought, If I were in my body, I would be lying on my stomach (at this point in my life, I generally fell asleep lying on my stomach). I also thought, Even if I'm in my body, I'm still feeling strange sensations. So I might as well relax and pay attention to them.

I was now floating, in a lying position, on my back, feet first, down a dark hallway. I flew just a few inches above the ground. The hallway had dark walls. There were a lot of doorways, and warm shafts of light glowed from each one.

I stopped flying at a doorway. A woman who may have looked like my mom sat on the floor in the doorway. The woman sat cross-legged and may have had a child in her lap. The child may have been nine or ten years old. The woman may have been wearing blue and red robes, like the robes a woman would wear in a Renaissance painting.

(5/30/09) theater of sex torture

(Entered in paper journal at 7:09 AM on Q-train into Manhattan from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a place like an apartment room that was being used for a performance (and also something like a coffee shop?). The area was dark except for a stage-like area near the center and front of the room. The audience sat in pit-like formations of couches throughout the room.

The performance may have been about how men torture the women they are in relationships with. There were a lot of couples who would get up and perform their torture scenes, which were something like S&M sex scenes.

I walked to the back of the room and sat on a couch in one of the pit-like arrangements that was empty. I stretched my right arm up and over a small, ledge-like structure, like the small, tile-covered ledge of a fountain (in a mall, or in some Spanish plaza?).

I looked on at the performance. A woman covered completely over with a white cloth had a large fence post tied to her back, bound to her with rope so that her arms were also tied to her sides, all covered by the white sheet. The rest of the fence may have stood behind the woman.

Now I saw my old friend Y walk down to my left. She walked into a bathroom like an apartment's bathroom, except a bit larger, and closed the door. She may have started throwing up. She said she had been tortured by her ex-husband (and my old friend) R for a long time now, and that she couldn't handle it anymore. I knew Y was going to leave R.

I didn't want anything to do with the situation, as I felt it was bad on both sides. I especially didn't want to see R ever again. So knowing that R and Y were here, I stood and started to walk out.

The place was now more like a living room and cafe mixed, with no performance taking place. It was still dim.

I was almost to the door. But R called out and said, "You afraid of staying here and facing things with me? I knew it." I got angry and walked back toward R.

The place was now like a large living room and kitchen in a studio-like apartment. There were a couple dim lights on, one in the kitchen. R sat on the floor and against a cupboard in the kitchen. I charged at him. I grabbed and twisted his head until his neck was bent in an "A" shape. R's head was still right side up. But it was pressed so that the top was pressed against the top of his right shoulder, and the side was pressed against the side of his right arm.

I held R by his head and his left side. I smashed the two sides, like I was trying to press them together. I could hear R's neck vertebrae popping. I felt bad for hurting R so bad. But I was angry. I felt I needed to prove to R that he shouldn't mess with me.

I started interrogating R about what he thought of me and why he thought he could get away with torturing Y. My plan was to kill R after the questioning. R answered the questions whiningly and had a pained look on his face.

(10/19/09) dream of exile; borrowing from sydney pollack

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A scene that was supposed to be from the anime Last Exile. Dio was being pursued by his sister. Dio was riding a vanship. Luciola was his navigator. Luciola stood upon the back of the vanship, before a large gun which stood there. He loaded up the gun with purple, circular stickers which had been on a rolled, wax sheet. The stickers had been arranged in a grid-like pattern. I wondered if Dio would actually allow his sister to be killed, and what his personality might be like after that.

Dream #2

I stood before the bar at a bar or cafe. The bar was so tall that I had to stand on tall chairs just to get my chin over the bar. The light in the cafe (?) was yellow, the walls also yellow. There were a lot of people around me.

Somebody asked me something like, if I'd needed money, why didn't I just ask for it?

I looked to my right. Sydney Pollack was standing on the floor, looking into a bagel case, which may have been lit with fluorescent lights. I spoke about how I needed ten thousand dollars. When I said that, Sydney Pollack turned his face just slightly toward me.

I now stood on the floor, to Pollack's right. I may have been talking in his direction, though not directly to him, about why I needed the money.