(5/27/06) maverick's crash; shower by the fridge

(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.

(7/3/07) a driving emergency

(Entered in paper journal at 5:56 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

Am image of my own face, up close, in slight shade. My face very scraggly, some crust of dead skin barely hanging off my chin.

I heard a TV (?) news announcement, a woman speaking, saying that different cities had been making emergency plans. It might have been announced that Washington DC had driving routes out of buildings and possibly out of town.

The emergency became a man who had driven into "a wife and son." A certain policeman was investigating this. But now the policeman was the man who had hit "his wife and son." The son, in my mind's eye, looked like a girl -- long, blonde hair. The son may also have been wearing a dress. He had huge, blue eyes.

I saw the car. It was tipped over in front of a house. The house looked like it was on a stage, but also like just behind it and on its right were the rushing remnants of an elevated train or highway. I thought, and hoped, a little, that I would see the crash in replay. I thought I would get some meaning, some answer, if I could see the death.

I felt like the man was around here. I thought he might have killed himself in the crash. I also thought he might have been getting ready to kill himself, possibly by slicing his throat while he was in the house. I hoped that if that were the case I might at least be able to see it, if not the car crash.

(12/9/07) deadly friends; las vegas descent

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

Dream #1

I stood on a subway platform with my old friend R and his fiancee L. The platform was very busy, but it was wide, with tall ceilings. I was waiting for a Q-train. As one train pulled up, R started talking about how he and L did something really cool that I could have been a part of if I hadn't stopped being friends with him.

The train that pulled up was an N-train. It was heading in my direction. But I needed a Q-train. Through the windows of the train I saw that my train was coming, but on the other platform. I ran off from R and L, kind of happy not to have to listen to R's talking anymore.

I didn't know if I could make my train. The stairwell up, which I would need to take to cross and get down to the other platform, was full, mostly of Hispanic people, mainly Mexican. Somehow, though I managed to jump about three-quarters of the way up the stairways side and grab the handrails.

I waited until a group of people made an opening for me. Then I flipped myself onto the stairs. The handrails were a softish-feeling aluminum.

I quickly ran to the other stairway and jumped down over its side. I got into the train (which appeared to be packed with people) right as the doors were closing.

I walked through the car. It was almost completely empty. It was filthy, and it had a weird smell, as if a homeless person were in it.

Three little Hispanic kids ran around in the train. I thought they were chasing around me, trying to taunt me in the guise of playing an innocent game with one another.

The kids' mother lay on one of the long benches (grey benches). She was covered entirely by a (pink?) blanket. Somewhere near her was a dried patch of blood. I probably stepped in the blood. It was sticky. I headed quickly into the next car, more out of a sense of indignant disgust than fear.

I was in a very dark room. My mom was somewhere, possibly even just talking to me by cell phone. I may have stood by a desk, kicking little cubes of safety glass out of the ridges of a green car-floor-mat.

My mom told me about the last time she'd seen my brother. My brother's friends had done something bad to him. My mom told my brother something like he shouldn't be surprised that these things happen if he keeps making friends with people like that. My mom said that my brother agreed and didn't seem too violently upset.

But my brother ended up found (?) in some place like an area by the side of a road or in a field. His mouth had been taped, my mom said. I could "see"/"feel" my brother's mouth and eyes taped over with silver duct tape.

My mom said it had later been determined that my brother had conspired to have himself killed by a friend. He had gone to a friend's house and had a drug mixture called a "coke XXXXX" ("coke set"?). He passed out. He then had his mouth taped by his friend so that he couldn't breathe -- as if the drug mixture impaired my brother's ability to breathe through his nose. His friend then took him and dumped him somewhere (roadside or field) to die.

Dream #2

I was in a commercial airplane. We seemed to be landing. I could see a lot, as if the windows on the plane were enormous. Suddenly we pulled up steeply. We ascended quickly, to a level where the blue sky became dark indigo. Big chunks of snow flew all around us. I laughed with glee. It was like I could feel the snow.

We now descended in Las Vegas. Somehow we landed on the road heading to the toll booth for cars. We pulled into the toll booth as far as we could.

A van in the toll booth pulled backwards and crashed into us. Its whole back end was smashed. I worried that the driver would sue us. But I realized he couldn't: he couldn't blame us for such a stupid action of his own. He must have realized that. He drove off to our side and away from us without even going into the airport.

I was at my dad's house. My stepmother was there and was somehow also my mom. I was trying to get out of the house and go somewhere. But my mom/stepmother kept threatening me, saying that if I left, she would make me very sorry. She also tried to convince me that, for now, this was where I wanted to be.

(1/4/08) a burger king bathroom; communications and death

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a hill of a small street at night. I was looking for a place to go to the restroom. There was a Burger King to my right. The whole street was dark, no lights, except a small sliver of light from the Burger King sign. The Burger King was part of some long row of shops in a stout, decked, wooden building that somehow reminds me of the Old West.

I walked into the Burger King through a side or back door. The place was only half-lit. I was in a small cul-de-sac to the right of the main dining area. In the dining area were a couple workers, probably a man and a woman. I hoped they wouldn't notice me. I had no intention of buying anything. I just wanted to use the restroom.

I went into the restroom. It was kind of barren and trashy. I might have started using the urinal. (At this point I may have woken up. The feeling of anxiety about the workers potentially thinking I was a creep because I hadn't bought anything was still with me. But now I thought, It was just a dream. You get that one for free.)

Dream #2

I sat before a computer, probably in a dark room. To my right, about ten feet away, were some friends of mine, possibly both girls.

My computer might have had two screens. On the bottom right corner of the right screen was a little grey "button" logo that had a right-facing triangle on it, like a "play" button. On the rest of the screen was something like a control panel with lots of virtual touchscreen buttons. The panel was grey like steel, but all over it, and the background of the screen, was a strange iridescence. The background was probably iridescent in bright colors. The left screen may have been much like this.

I believe I had been conducting business on my left screen when I heard a voice come (as if from the play button) from the right screen. It was a woman's voice. The woman said, "Hello?"

I looked down at the play button. I knew this play button was part f some new internet fad, where people spoke to each other by recording short messages via this touchscreen button and then sending them. Sometimes you could send to random people. Sometimes you could receive from random people.

I didn't quite know how to work the system. I pressed the button and said, "Hello. My name is Preemie." But before I could finish my message, I got the "Hello?" again.

I pressed the button and asked a short question. But as soon as I sent the message I got another message back. The woman said, "My name is Maya. I'm a teacher at Princeton University. I can't talk much with you now. I have to get to my next class."

I thought, Are all messages pre-recorded? This woman hasn't yet responded directly to any of my messages. I sent a message again, like, "I hope you have a good day at classes."

My friends in the distance giggled at me. They said, "Don't you know you don't talk to people on things like this? Who knows what kind of wacko that person really is?"

I thought, Well, that's true.

(At this point in my journaling, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed entering my dreams in my paper journal at 6:40 AM at the Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.)

I was pulling away from the building, backwards, as if I were in a car. It was night, on a smallish business street that was fairly well lit. I had to pull all the way around three or four stopped cars, one of which was a police car. I pulled around and then behind them.

I then realized that the two non-police cars had been in a wreck. I slowly pulled up beside one car, on its right side. I had to stop there, as if the cops had the road blocked. I might no longer have been the one driving the car I was in.

Beside the passenger window were a group of middle-aged ladies. The ladies were kind of fat, with feathery, blonde hair. They were talking about the victims of the wreck. I couldn't tell if these women were the victims' mothers or police practicing telling the mothers about their children when the mothers arrived.

I looked out the driver's side window, as if I were looking past someone who sat in the driver's seat while I sat in the back, passenger's side seat. It looked like the black car had been smashed up, crumpled like a can, with its roof torn off.

There were three women in the backseat of the black car, and maybe other people in the front seat. Everybody in the car was dead. But it looked like the women in the backseat were just sleeping. The woman in the passenger's-side backseat was most easily visible. She was palish white, with dark hair.

I thought, This is my first time seeing freshly dead bodies. I felt like I should be ashamed for actually wanting to see the dead bodies. But I also felt like I would put myself in a dangerous situation by looking at the bodies for too long. I thought, Well, regardless, I'll have plenty of time to look at them. We aren't going anywhere for a while. The cops won't let us move.

(8/4/08) drought-stricken areas; torture tour; muddy road; dangerous work

(Entered in paper journal at 6:37 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1
I stood out in a barren field or a desert with a group of people I knew. In my head I heard someone ask another person why they had been deceived about something.

The air suddenly became very breezy and dusty. I looked to my right and slightly behind me. There were a group of people working on something like a drought-stricken field in China. The earth was very red.

I looked to my left and just behind me. Beyond some rolling hills of sandy, red soil topped with weedy vegetation were another group of people working another field, perhaps in America, perhaps in the Southwest. The earth was also drought-stricken and red.

I thought to myself, The two sides are practically the same.

Suddenly I was struck with the need to find something or to get to some place, possibly because it would help to save the people in the drought.

I ran up a small hill. As I ran, the air became windier and dustier. I got winded. The hill became steeper and steeper. On a couple occasions I thought I had reached the top. But then I would see an even steeper slope. Finally the slope was almost vertical, so that I was even afraid I would tumble down it.

The soil was soft, like sand or cinders, and scarlet-colored There was a big, flat, tan boulder barely protruding from the soil to my left. I put my foot on it and pushed up. I grabbed as far up the slope as I could. I must have grabbed onto something like a ledge. I was certain I had reached to the top. But I still wasn't certain that I would actually make it up onto the top.

Dream #2

I walked up onto the second floor of an apartment (or a brownstone?). I might have been led. There were three rooms. The hallway had green carpet. The three rooms were all empty and very clean-looking. They all had the same plan, with a big bay window opposite the door (!).

These rooms were all torture rooms. I was being brought here to be tortured.

I got angry. I felt like I was being shown such kindness, out of politeness, by being shown the rooms. But, I thought, if I were going to be tortured, I should just be tortured.

Dream #3

I was driving along a highway in a rural area. I turned off onto a small road to my left. It was a side road that would get me where I needed to go.

There were a few cops along the road. Apparently there had been an accident. It was more like a vehicular homicide. I think the road was blocked off, but I got up it anyway.

Along the right side of the road were traffic cones. I tried to avoid driving on that side of the road. But the rest of the road was so muddy, as if a storm had just blasted through this area, that I had no choice but to drive with my right wheels on the blocked-off side.

I thought that my tire tracks would go right over the tracks of the person who had caused the wreck, and that I would now be blamed for the vehicular homicide.

I got up to the top of the slope, which was a parking lot for a National Park's visitor's center. I parked. A ranger and a few other people came up to my car. They were all people I knew, and they had been expecting me.

A young, blonde girl, maybe twelve years old, told me about the recent storm. The girl was doing the watershed work I used to do when I'd worked on an Americorps project in a National Park in 2002. The girl told me, "Now I finally know the meaning of XXXXX."

Dream #4

I saw (as if I were floating in the air) the "top floors of my company's new building," back-lit by a yellow-gold sunset sky. (In waking life, my company had moved to a new building, which was still undergoing the final stages of construction.)

I heard construction workers, like a memory, talking about how people at my company wanted the workers to finish the final floors as soon as possible, but how the workers felt like they couldn't do it. The workers said that if they were pushed too hard, they would just find a way to halt the project altogether.

I noticed that the top floors of the building were like a frame, where the outer walls had pretty much all been put in, while no windowpanes had yet been installed. I saw a group of workers install a whole grid of windows at once.

The work of attaching the windows to the frame was very delicate and dangerous. The workers had just installed a particularly dangerous portion. But the next section they had to install was even more complicated and dangerous. As I watched I got more and more nervous and dizzier and dizzier.

(9/24/08) a trucker in greenburg park

(Entered in paper journal at 6:14 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a semi-truck (though I may have had an out-of-truck view of it at first). It was daytime. The truck driver, who at first may have been like a narrator, was talking about some work that had been done on the engine to make the truck go a lot faster.

We were on a road in a kind of busy part of the mountains. As we passed a small, white gas station (on our left), we noticed a car behind us, rushing to catch up to us and pass us. The truck driver knew tht the car driver was just trying to taunt us, feeling that he had a faster car. But the truck driver pressed on the gas and kept the car behind him.

I got a look at the car's driver. He looked awful. He was fattish, with ugly, long, scraggly hair, a stubbly face, a mustache, and mirrored eyeglasses. The car may have been white. It was towing some kind of small U-Haul trailer.

The car sped up again. We sped up, too. But this time the truck actually lost ground to the car. The truck driver jostled with the car to make the driver lose his nerve. But the car got ahead of us.

But father down the road we saw the car again. It was pulled over, with a cop car beside it, hunged over a smooth, steep shoulder of road. At first I thought the car had been pulled over for speeding. But looking at the car, I saw how its front fender was all mangled up, like the car had gotten into a crash. The driver was also hunched over the wheel.

The truck driver was now like my brother. The truck was like a pickup truck. We veered off to the left, onto a side road. We drove down into a wooded area.

But soon we were climbing trees. We had gotten high up in a dense tangle of trees and were looking down at the landscape. "My brother" said that when you looked from this high, you could figure out what kind of course you should take when you got back on the ground. But there was some kind of trick, he said, to being up here, that would help you know and remember the course you should take on the ground. I felt like I knew that trick as well. I remembered back to my days in the desert in New Mexico.

I continued climbing through all the trees. Some of them seemed skinny as saplings, unhealthy, even dead. I noticed a birch tree with silver bark.

A father  and his sons were at the base of the trees. I could hear them. They were getting ready to climb the trees. It was like this place was now a National Park.

For some reason the trees now seemed a lot weaker and more unstable than before. The boys (two of them? preteen) were now up in the canopy with me and my brother. My brother seemed to be getting along with them.

I wanted to get out of the trees. I felt like they were going to break soon. I was so afraid by now that I was clinging to the limbs and climbing around on my belly. I told my brother I was going back.

As I crawled along, the trees changed into something like a wood-slat bridge, which felt very weak to me. It led to something like a tree house, which was probably a visitor's center for this National Park.

I could hear the kids talking with their father, as if they were also including my brother and me in the conversation. I could also hear myself talk with them or imagine what I might have said to them. They were talking about what a good place this was and how nice it is to find some green space in a world that's been so overdeveloped.

I was crawling (more like slithering) through a doggy door that was really tight for my body. I came into a dirty space like a small landing for a set of steps. It was bright and dingy white. In the corner of the landing was the shell of a "roach" (probably more like a cicada). There might also have been some kind of goo coming out from somewhere.

In my head, one of the boys asked me the name of this park. I said, after thinking about it, "Greenburg."

(1/17/10) can't stop the crash

(Entered into paper journal at 8:38 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with my family. I was in the backseat, and possibly on the passenger side, but I was driving the car. It was night. We were on a lonely road in the desert. We had come from a town, to which I had driven (I saw, in my mind's eye) earlier in the day.

My mom, who sat in the driver's seat, reminded me to drive faster on the way back. I said I would. I remembered having had some trouble with other cars on the highway because I had driven at a slow speed on the way up. I had driven at what I'd thought was the correct speed, but it had been too slow.

We now turned right, off the small road and onto the highway. The landscape around the road was filled with tall mounds of red stone bounded by tan expanses of ground and little green shrubs The rad went downhill, though occasionally it would roll up a little. We were all alone on the road, but I kept my speed  up, slightly more than I though I should have, because I was jittery about someone driving up behind me and getting impatient.

I took a turn which I hadn't quite seen in time to drive through smoothly. It was a very wide curve on a long, mild, downward slope. The road itself was wide. I fell under the momentum of the missed turn. Instead of winding right with the curve, I drove forward and slightly left. The car was slowing down as we approached the left edge of the road.

I was trying to regain control of the car, but I couldn't. I knew we were going to go off the side of the road. I asked my mom how I could regain control of the car. But she didn't answer. I hoped that our drive off the road wouldn't be terrible. I called to my mom again, but she didn't respond. She just kept still.

We drove off the road. We rolled, slowly, gently, down a bank-slope about six or seven feet tall, then stalled on a flat stretch of land.

I called to my mom, asking how we could get out of this space. She just sat still, facing forward. I called to her again and again. She was motionless. I realized how worn out she looked. Her hair was grey and meager looking. I called to my mom again and again. Now my mom slumped forward as if dead or unconscious. I got extremely worried. I called frantically, "Mom! Mom!"