(2/13-14/05) the highest heaven society; they call that bird the backin

(Entered in paper journal at 11:30 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Can't remember how it began. Left from a church area. Drove back to it or came back to it. But now it was different somehow. And now it was at first all by itself with a small parking lot like at the edge of a small town

and then it was like one of the last filled spaces in a defunct strip mall in a suburb with a huge parking lot.

As I came up to this place I could hear someone denouncing it, saying something like (which then actually became), "In our church if people were to die like that we'd bury them. In your church you'd eat them." (This was to say, "You'd make them die like that and then you'd eat them.") I now saw a photocopied article from some journal like Newsweek entitled something like, "You Eat Them When They Die."

It had been a bright, blue day. Now it was night. My NYC Americorps crew chief SM walked away from the church and into the parking lot, saying something like, "You guys are sick. You act like it's Christianity. But it's just killing people."

There was a very calm voice from somewhere saying, "Well if you really believe that, come check. We're open and in service right now."

I looked into all the windows from my distance, maybe fifty feet away. I could see only dim glimmers of light like fluorescent light behind tinted windows and good blinds or even some kind of poster board or drywall. I stayed that far away, yet I was also right by the entrance door, which I also saw from my distance as boarded off.

I kept feeling a strange protrusion like the lip of a cubicle's trashcan pushing outward from the board of the door. I wondered how people got in and out and where the voice came from. It seemed to me this place was either closed down forever or top secret.

But now I was only right by the door, not fifty feet away. I now felt the protrusion to be something like a portable chest of papers, a cardboard-like box papered over with some nice, floral-like designs. I didn't see or feel the front fully. I just opened the top drawer and looked at the first photocopied article I found, which was a series of self-help "healthy living" style articles trying to promote the idea that this church was more about keeping healthy than anything else. I put it away.

I was now in a dark room. Beside me was a door. There was a fluorescent light next door,. The church service was taking place. This room, empty, dark, thin-carpeted, with one dresser and this strange square of file drawers, was the visitor's room. I could barely see anything, yet I saw everything clearly enough.

I pulled out an article I don't remember. It was strange enough and close enough to cannibalism to scare me.

I flipped the box around to see the titles on each file drawer. I don't think I was supposed to do this. I did it surreptitiously.

Next door the service was all a show, put on to make me feel like what I'd heard about this church being cannibalistic was false. There was always a low undercurrent of voices under a lead voice which smoothly yet angrily spoke against people like me who apparently didn't understand religion and yet were "loved" by the religious, anyway.

I pulled out another article from another drawer whose title frightened me but which I forgot as soon as I read it. The article was in defense of cannibalism as a way of staying healthy. It was written in some self-help style of the previous article, but now with an implication even that people who do not believe will be cruelly murdered as well as eaten.

I realized this was a second- or third-level-initiated reading and that I had looked into a drawer I wasn't supposed to look into. But I couldn't remember the drawer I had opened. I put the article in the "Real-Time Live AV Files" drawer, since that was the only title I remembered. But when I closed the drawer I remembered that the article had actually been from a drawer one or two drawers up.

But when I reopened the drawer the article was no longer there. There were tapes which I could tell had a fat, bald, southern-drawled man yelling that the outsiders no longer had a right to persecute the church. And there was a glossy nine-by-thirteen-inch-thick, glossy-covered book, its cover's top half black with yellow lettering and its bottom half a color photo. The title of the book was something like A Technical Manual for a Happy and Blessed Human Communion.

Once again, despite the happy photo of a WASPish family in the woods as if just walking back home from Sunday service, I felt some menacing conviction (and the voices and voice in the next room continued) that the text would constantly imply that those who read this book would be cruelly murdered as well as cannibalized.

I looked at the spine of the book, to the publisher's name, on the bottom of the spine -- The Highest Heaven Society. I was revolted.

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM on 2/14/05 at home in Harlem.)

Dream 2

I walked along an asphalt path with trees on my right at the top of a thickly treed, short slope down to a creek and on my left a street like in East Denver, probably a side street with a factory or warehouse on the other side. I was probably heading toward work or something like work. I had left my glasses where I had just come from (possibly work -- where I was heading, too).

Now a red-tailed hawk flew toward me. I knew it was a red-tailed hawk but I couldn't see it for certain. I spoke to it, telling it hello and that I was glad it had come to see me again. It landed on a tree branch, then flew across to another that was closer to me.

I wished it could get closer. It sensed that, too, as if it also were getting something out of my clear vision of it. It flew down and almost landed on the ground before deciding that wasn't even a possibility.

Both I and it looked for some branch that was low enough for it to land on and for me still to get close enough to see it clearly without my glasses. But in one second, or maybe a half a second, we discovered nothing, and I lifted out my left hand for the hawk to land on.

The hawk landed on my hand. It wasn't heavy. But as it landed, my vision shifted. I was "lying down" in a bed in the dark. But the bed was upright and in a thick of treetops at the ridge of the creek bank's slope. The hawk had crawled onto my head. I felt its fleshy stomach (?) moving around. I kept waiting for it to shit or piss on my head.

After this there may have been some scene where I was in or around some house with a group of folks, watching some movie.

But now it was daytime again. I stood on a path overlooking a steep slope, a box canyon, down maybe fifty feet to a dry bed on the left wall of which was a grey stone arch tunnel. There was a bridge across the gap and another asphalt path on the other side. Then there was a short strip of grass and a wide road that connected down a way to the side road, beside which was the asphalt path on which I had been before.

I felt I must get back there to take care of what hadn't been taken care of. But a slightly older man, a boss like one of the ecology people in the parks would be a "boss" for my Americorps crew (even though our crew chief would be our actual supervisor), kind of held me here in obligation. I wasn't incredibly worried.

Suddenly a bird flew down the canyon. It had a round, disc-like body, probably of broawn feathers, a long tail, and a long neck with a blue head.

It looked maybe three feet long, pretty big. It soared directly in front of me and the boss.

I saw the bird's head and asked the boss if the bird was a pheasant. He said no. He gave me some garbled science talk.

I continued to watch the bird, which grew huge. Its colors changed to white with red, granite-dot-like stipples on the back and red and white stripes for the tail, and a white neck with a green head. It was maybe ten feet long, with a twenty-food wingspan (whereas before its wingspan was maybe only slightly larger than its body). The bird slowly hovered backwards into the arch tunnel.

The boss was gabbing away this whole time. And finally he said, "They call that bird the Backin."

I was in a car with a bunch of friends, kids, probably. We were looking at Polaroids and/or doing something we weren't supposed to be doing.

(12/8/05) priest and wife of the zombie cult

(Entered in paper journal at 7:30 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

Two teenage boys were on a bus at night. One, the younger, was in the driver's seat. He said something to the older boy in the seat right behind him. The older boy said something like, "We should get going." The younger boy hunched over to his right, heaved a couple sobs, then straightened up and began driving the bus. The bus pulled down what looked like the main street of a small town. "I" saw it from about ten feet in the air.

"I" saw the boys one more time, like they were sitting in seats in the middle of the bus now. They imagined/saw themselves as older, though the people they saw were kids who didn't even look like them and were dressed in older people's clothes and wore fake beards.

One of the boys said something like, I guess it's a bit sooner than I'd like to go. But life is nothing more than a block of flats. I thought to myself, Block of flats? What's that supposed to mean? The phrase kept repeating in my head.

I was now looking at a cemetery on a hill down a side street from the main street. Down the center, there was green lawn. But on either side of the hill-dome were tall, shaggy thickets of phragmites. In the lawn were headstones of various heights.

I thought, Are these the flats the person (woman?) was talking about. But none of the headstones here are actually the flat ones. I took the meaning though, and for some reason knew I had to leave the town.

(Dream entry continued at 8 AM, at my job, apparently, according to the address I gave.)

The streets were full of zombies. Everybody, hopefully, on the bus was alive and were escaping the zombies. As long as you didn't touch the zombies you were fine. But if you touched them, they'd lure you in and attack you. I tried to stay out of their field of attention altogether.

I thought of a TV show where people were talking about some zombie movie where the zombies keep going to the malls. All these zombies were walking around like they were leading normal, dull lives. The only time they'd attack you is when you'd get into their attention. Some would veer toward me as I walked to the edge of town, like they wanted to be attracted into attacking. But they'd never get close.

As I got to the edge of town I thought to the boys again. I hoped neither of them would fall asleep on the bus because the zombies would also attack people who were asleep. In fact, I wondered if I wasn't actually in one of the boys' dreams as his physical body was being destroyed.

The edge of town faded into a vast lawn hillside. I moved smoothly, gliding down the hill (one or two trees, but otherwise just the vast ramp of lawn) as a zombie here or there would come up the slope, dressed up and with nice hair, as if heading to church.

But soon this view faded into a dim, scary, windowless corridor in an airport. I went down a gradual, white-tiled slope with strips of gritty traction. There were more zombies here. These ones were more drawn to me. The zombies mainly looked like 1970s-style businessmen and were in worse states of decay than any other zombies I'd seen yet. Some were hardly bodies These ones would rush at me to surprise me or pop out of doors and try to grab me and scare me.

With these ones I had to keep calm. If I let them scare me they would overcome me and eat my brains. In fact, with one of these guys, if I saw them starting to rush at me to scare me, I'd rush at them and touch them on the shoulder or arm to show myself I didn't have anything to be afraid of.

Slowly the airport changed into a hospital, so slowly I wondered if it hadn't always been a hospital. The zombies were less offensive again. But now they knew I was here, and while they went slowly about their business they stared at me.

I could see the hallway's end: a white wall. I kept waiting for a fade-out into some new place. A "nurse" zombie stood on the right side of the hallway, talking on a payphone. Either she or a male "doctor" zombie was hacksawing into a full-size tin of "ham," which was actually a human brain.

The "nurse" on the phone said things like, "Yes, we're trying to capture him right now, and we know he wants it. We're operating and we'll get it to him right away."

I now directly faced the wall. I felt zombies waiting to attack me, maybe even beginning  their attack. But the fade to a new location wouldn't come.

Finally the nurse said to me, "We need you to take this to him. Will you take it?" I said yes.

I had the tin in my arms. It was simultaneously a brain, a huge chunk of ham, and some little crumbles of greay meat like well-done chorizo. I was taking it to a "live" man, not a zombie, who was the priest of a cult that was turning people into zombies. I thought there was something I could do to "catch" this man or stop him from eating at least this one brain.

I was now a woman, something like the wife of this priest. I walked through a maze-like "hallway" of wood frames and sheer curtains in golden light. I walked into an all-wood sanctuary, up onto the octagonal platform, on which there was a rectangular, narrow, two-foot-high altar.

I lay a tin on the altar.It was something fake, not the actual tin I had been given. Somehow when the priest ate this he would be compelled to confess his guilt, of which I could not yet be sure, and then he would be easier to defeat.

"I" (the woman) heard the priest call, "Is it ready yet?" "I" thought he was down the hallway. But now I saw him sitting in one of the wooden folding-chairs of the sanctuary. He had seen my movements. I was sure he knew I'd planted a decoy.

I walked to the priest. he sat at the very left edge. He was a thick, but maybe short, black man with golden- or yellow-irised eyes. He had a predatory look on his face, which "I" just took to be anger that he'd been betrayed.

I don't know where "I" was now, but "I" felt like "I" was being chased. There was a chance, I realized, that this priest wasn't alive at all but that he was a zombie and was just making himself up to look alive.

Now I "was him," though I still felt "my" (the woman's) fear of being chased. "I" (the priest) jumped out of the chair and onto the platform. The back "wall" was a huge, sheer curtain billowing in the breeze.

"I" called out a saying having to do with the power "I" had gained through "my" evil acts, and how "I" was still alive with them, as if the empty sanctuary were full of "my" disciples. Then "I" continued "my" momentum (?) and jumped through the curtain to an enormous tree at the top of a vast, grassy hill among vast, grassy hills.

"I" (the woman) was almost relieved. "I" knew that if the priest made it into the tree he would stay there for it was the symbol of ultimate attainment of power. But I (the priest) only jumped high enough to brush my fingers against the hedge-manicured underside of the canopy, the limbs and branches and leafs of which looked like those of a Zelkova tree. So, failing to reach the canopy, I flew back into the sanctuary.

I ran after the woman now, demanding to know why she ahd set a bad sacrifice before me. I was now watching both the woman and the priest, though I was still feeling the woman's emotions as if I were still a part of her or identifying with her. The woman was being shoved and thrust against the wall. Now she was naked. The priest threw her back and told her that she would have to sit naked suring the service.

The woman sat in a back row, a row of wooden chairs with very ornate cushions, while everybody else, a half-zombie crowd, sat in the very front rows. The woman (I still feeling her emotions) admired the artistry of the chairs, until it dawned on her that these chairs didn't exist.

The woman moaned in desperation. She knew she had been knocked out or hypnotized or caught asleep. While she had been asleep the priest manipulated her dream to seem very real. She was still in that dream, and her body was up on the altar.

The crowd of half-zombies looked back at the dream-woman and laughed. The woman's dream-body was in the physical sanctuary, and the woman knew it, even though she was mainly perceiving the dream.

She/I looked as intently as she/I could to the altar, to see what they were doing to the physical body. But what I saw was three women on a bed, wrestling with the woman, alternately trying to seduce her and beat her into unconsciousness or death with rolling pins. Some of the women were naked, some were not. There may have been blood. The crowd below laughed at the woman, like she had clumsily gotten herself into an embarrassing situation.

Meanwhile I/the priest stood at the back of the sanctuary. I looked down some steps into a basement, where I could see piles of meat. I called for something to be fetched from down there.

I/an old, nun-like woman, came from somewhere and told the priest, "We don't have any more water from the XXXXX containers." (Something like white plastic or white-coated cardboard.)

The priest said, "It's okay. Just use the water downstairs in the XXXXX containers." (Like cone-shaped paper cups of cardboard color, except as huge as barrels.) "Nobody can tell the difference, anyway.

I'm not sure if I/the nun or I/the pries actually said the container names. We may just have seen them through each other. When the priest mentioned the second type of container, I/the nun could actually taste the delicious, cold water.

(6/1/08) my ancient friend; rescued from cannibals

(Entered in paper journal at 9 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was near the edge of a tall plateau that overlooked the ocean. A black dog sat before me at the very edge of the plateau. I was afraid the dog would attack me, but I walked up to it anyway.

There was somebody, possibly a woman, possibly my mother, standing down at the foot of the slope. The person called up to me, yelling something disparaging about my interaction with the dog. The person wore a strange costume, multicolored, like Chinese or Caucasian dress, with a triangular headdress of some kind.

Possibly out of defiance, I knelt and put my right arm around the dog and pet the dog. The dog was like a Black Labrador. It was very friendly. Suddenly I realized the dog was mine or had been a friend of mine.

I was now somewhere like the kitchen in my great-grandmother's house. I was still petting the dog. I grabbed the dog's left foreleg. Something about the leg seemed sickly thin.

I felt the presence of people, possibly Ancient Egyptians, behind me. I may have realized that the dog and I had had a relationship in Ancient Egypt, as if it were a court dog and I were its caretaker, or as if I were some member of the court and the dog had been mine.

Dream #2

I was a woman. I was with two other women. We three were all beautiful and blonde. We probably wore sundresses. We were investigating a house. The people who lived in the house were suspected of doing something bad.

The house was all or mostly basement-level. We had gotten down into the house, into the living room. It seemed like there was nobody there, although we could see that the table was set for dinner. The food seemed to be orange: maybe orange-colored blossoms and oranges or peaches.

Somehow I had gotten separated from the other two women. I was in a dark bedroom. The living room, which I could see through the half-closed doorway, was also dimmer than it had been.

I knew that the other two women had been caught by the people living here and were either dead or being prepared to be killed. I knew now that the people in the house were cannibals and had trapped us to kill and eat us. I knew that the people who lived here were home now, with guests. I had an idea that I could get out of here if I left the bedroom and moved through the living room at just the right time.

But now the man and woman who lived here came into the room. They turned on the lights. The couple were older. They looked like a couple in their fifties might have looked in the 1970s. The husband looked like Larry Tate from the TV show Bewitched.

I knew that the couple had had me trapped in the bedroom this whole time, though I hadn't suspected it before, and that I couldn't have left, even if I'd been given time to try.  A few of the guests also funneled into the room. They all stood around like this was just part of the dinner party.

The husband produced a book, which he opened in order to show me pictures. The book was like a 1960s style cookbook, with photos in black and white and line-drawings (like in CPR manuals) of people preparing food.

But the whole book was on preparing human body parts for being eaten. One series of photos showed an arm being chopped in pieces. It may have been the arm of the woman preparing the food in the photos and line-drawings. The woman may have been cutting her own arm, while it was still attached to her body.

The husband now took on an angry demeanor. He yelled at me for invading his space. He told me something about how all the people around me would eat me sooner or later, and how I would never be able to rescue my friends.

The lights were off again. It was like I was by myself again. But I could still hear the husband. He may have been in the room. He told me to read the book, and that if I started getting hungry I could just start cutting pieces off my own body and eating them.

I now saw, as if I were watching the situation as a movie, a stone-floored outdoor area, possibly near a building. There was a square hole leading to an underground cell. I knew my two friends were in that cell.

Suddenly a group of people like ninjas ran into the scene. They were dressed in thick, navy blue fabric. Their bodies were covered completely except their eyes. Their head coverings were wrapped in layers, more like Arabian turbans (except around the head and face) than like a ninja's small face mask.

The ninjas ran quickly, making windy, shuffling sounds with their clothing. They all slid down a pole or rope and into the cell. They were here to rescue my friends.

(1/27/10) guggenheim wilderness; aunt's dead head; friends on a ledge

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a tall building like a museum. I floated (or walked?) upward alongside a ramp-like walkway (like the spiral walkway at the Guggenheim). The building was dim, with the only light coming from windows somewhere. The place felt unfinished somehow, as if there were a lot of bare concrete all over the place. The handrail-barriers of the ramps were painted traffic-sign yellow.

As I floated upward, floor by floor, with the ramp to my left, I may have noticed doorways into the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I was looking all the way up the flights of ramp.

At the top, my old friend R stood behind the handrail, looking down. He was talking to me (I could hear him like I was right beside him) about things he'd eaten. He was making it sound like he was leading up to saying he'd eaten human flesh, but like he was afraid to admit it.

I tried to listen passively, without any reaction, so he'd say whatever he felt like saying, so I'd know for sure what he was talking about. But he paused and instead something like, "I'm a lesbian vampire, and I've drunk blood."

I was now standing before one of the doorways to the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I walked in. I walked along a waist-high shelf of books (to my right) the top of which was possibly cluttered with papers. The light was brightish white fluorescent.

I thought of myself (saying to R?) that I didn't think vampirism was so bad. I was now trying to get "back" to somewhere from this place. The place was now something like an empty warehouse or workshop. It was very dim inside, almost black, with the only light coming from a large doorway (for tractors, etc.?) at the front.

I walked through that doorway and into a field. The sky was grey, and the wind was breezy and warm, as before a big storm. I had to cross the field to get "back" to wherever I was going. But the field (somehow) seemed harder and harder to cross.

Finally I was plowing through waist-high, dense vegetation like dormant, tan grass, which smelled like sage. Something had made me decide I needed to get down low and plow though it, like I was swimming through it. I was afraid of getting messy from it -- it was so dense and fragrant.

My left side brushed along the underside of a thick evergreen's broad, minutely-branched canopy. I thought it might be a good idea to hide under the tree. But I decided against it, thinking the tree would get me as dirty as the "grass" was getting me, and that, under the tree, I'd probably also get bugs on me.

It was now dark and raining outside. I was in the middle of a camp. Large, multi-person tents stood around me. But now the area was being flooded. The water rose to about six feet. Some of the tents were swept away. Some of the tents had had their doors open, and were collecting water all the way to their tops.

I heard R talk about how he had come here to work on his (Masters degree?) research project on water, but how things had gotten out of hand and turned out this way.

(Stopped writing here and headed into work. Back on B-train, heading home, at 8:20 PM, I started writing again.)

I thought that possibly things would still be alright. I wondered if people could perhaps get into the tents and zip them up, to keep the water out. But it occurred to me that the water would just lift the tents up and carry them away. I thought of all of this (and saw it in my mind's eye?) as I saw water rise around me, as if I were standing in the water, though I actually wasn't quite there. I saw everything as if stage lights were being shone on it all.

Dream #2

I walked along a balcony-like area on a high-up floor in a building that may have been something like a museum. I ended up in a small room that may have resembled a bedroom or living room in a cheapish apartment. I looked through the doorway, out to the balcony (hallway?). I may have seen my aunt, possibly in a wedding dress.

I was now fully in the room, the door closed, with a few relatives, possibly including my cousin P. We all lounged around in the space, on a few couches, etc. At some point my aunt came into the room. She was being a real bully. She may have been wearing a wedding dress.

Later, I held my aunt's face in my hands. It may just have been the skin of her face. The eyes were closed, and trails of blood came from the eyes and other orifices. The head/face had been wrapped in something like a wedding veil, which I had unwrapped around the face. I thought I had killed my aunt. I may have thought that I needed to do a more complete job -- possibly by smashing the face, even crushing it somehow.

Dream #3

I stood out with a group of friends on the ledge of the roof of a building. I looked down to the street far below. The day was grey and rainy. The ledge was a grey stone, veined like marble. I was a little afraid of the height and of the possible slickness of the wet stone. My friends and I spoke about a number of things. We were all relaxed and having a good time. Our conversation was calm and serious.

At some point I got overwhelmed with being at the ledge. I had to step back. I did so calmly, as if I were simply through with seeing things from the ledge. I stood against a white-painted concrete (?) barrier. It went up to just above my waist. I went around some kind of glass-walled part of the building.

Looking down into the space between the barrier and the glass wall, I could see metal, slotted sheets, like sheets for fans. I knew that these sheets went down into the building, which was something like a museum, so that if I fell, I'd fall a long way through the museum and probably die when I landed.

The ledge was now something like a two-foot-tall, concrete step. I knelt against it. I back away from it and looked to my left. My friends were sitting by the step, all talking with each other. The grey of the day was now a little brighter and paler.

I joined my friends. We were all talking about a dinner we'd had just downstairs, maybe two floors below. It was good, very classy. But it was a little less than perfect. I said, "Yeah. If only they hadn't started out with that beef custard." (In my mind's eye I saw a small ice cream dish with yellow custard topped with a brown powder, which was probably something like powdered beef.) My remark had somehow shocked everybody. They stopped talking and had a slow, unsure attitude.

I looked off to my right. It was now a clear, blue, warm day. My friends and I sat in a concrete and pebble path in a small garden, still on the roof of the building. There were a moderate amount of people all around. In the distance to my right was a shallow pool of crystal blue water. The pool was a long rectangle with a white stone lip around it that stepped maybe six inches above the ground.

A beautiful woman stood in the pool, wearing only a loose, pure white overshirt which sagged off her right (?) shoulder and, possibly, a white swimsuit. She was tanned and blonde. Her hair was dark, pulled back in a ponytail. The water came up to just above her ankles.

The woman had her legs held together and she bend down at the waist by about twenty degrees to look down at something in the pool. When she did so, the shirt-bottom came up just enough for the curve of the woman's bottom to be seen. I and a couple of my friends looked on in solemn amazement.

But now an old, Japanese man, thin, but broad-faced, with scraggly, white hair pulled back in a fraying ponytail, with black glasses and a big, loose tank-top, came up to the group of friends, towered over us, and yelled that looking at little children was wrong, that it was pedophilia, and that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I looked around and saw a shopping center to my right. It was kind of set up like Lincoln Center, with porous, which stone and a lot of diagonal ramps and walkways, low ceilinged tiers, etc. I told my friends that I thought I would go shopping here before we had to leave. My friends may have said they thought they'd come with me.

(2/14/10) an interesting cookie

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM, at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I sat in an office space. I sat in a half-cubicle that was wide and open to an open space across which was another desk, to my right and behind me. A woman sat at that desk. Her cubicle was stacked with papers.

The woman was speaking "on the internet" to someone. She was trying to locate my older brother (who died when I was 17 years old). My brother was late to work or had recently often been absent. The woman was going to have to fire him.

My older brother was in some dark space, like he was hidden in the dark box of an old television set, with just a dim light glowing on his face. I felt like there was no reason to fire my older brother -- it seemed like he was already doomed., and that it would be senseless to fire him.

My old co-worker ES walked into the space between the two half-cubicles. I looked forward in my desk. I had a big plate full of pieces of chocolate chip cookies on my lap. I fingered through the cookie pieces, possibly eating some, as I thought about my older brother.

ES now offered me a piece of cookie, which she said was surprisingly delicious. I turned back to ES and grabbed a piece of cookie. The cookie looked extremely white and sweet, like some kind of Indian condensed milk dessert mixed with a sugar cookie (which was supposed to be a chocolate chip cookie. I took a piece and ate it.

The cookie made me hear things. It was data that I needed for my job. I heard an Asian woman talking. She said, "At first she tried to get away by clawing her way along with her fingertips. So I bit off all her fingers." The Asian woman then explained that she had also either cut off or eaten the woman in question's forearms, and possibly her legs.

I could see in my mind's eye a place that looked like a corridor of the ship in the movie Alien. The light may have been a bit blue-grey and darkish, like in an anime.

I may have felt kind of strange about ES, suddenly, like she was a part of something I couldn't approve of. But I also wondered why he would think this cookie was so delicious. I then decided that she meant, not delicious, but interesting, as in, it allowed you to receive information in a new and interesting way.