(6/23/07) the giant fly; what i never saw; two girls in one; lucid in reality

(Entered on Q-train, but don't know when.)

Dream #1

I lay in bed. I opened my eyes and looked at the wall (to my left). An insect, a small roach, I thought, climbed quickly down the wall. I was disappointed to have a roach in my house. I thought I would get up and kill it. But now I saw two on the wall. I thought I might be seeing things.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were lots of insects (flies?) climbing all over my wall. I leaped out of bed, possibly in a straight-bodied roll parallel to the floor and landing in a crouch facing the wall. The wall was full of insects. I wondered what I could do to get rid of the insects. I thought I might have to call an exterminator and leave my house for a little while.

Down on the lower, right section of the wall, or perhaps on the "left foot" corner of my bed, was a fly about the size of my fist. It seemed to call for me, and to control all the other insects so that they, too, would call me. I was afraid, but I got closer. The giant fly made a semi-melodic, buzzing sound, almost like wings beating against a champagne flute. The fly's body was spiny and shine, an orange-green, reflective color. It had orangish wings.

Dream #2

I walked into a nice, big dining room. There might not have been any table. The room was narrow and long. The walls were wood. Some dim, warm daylight came through a yellowish curtain at the other short end of the room. The door I walked in through was at the lower part of the right long wall. A little farther up that wall stood my co-worker and good friend CL. Between us was a chest of drawers.

I walked in and immediately turned to face the chest. CL asked me if I had brought XXXXX (can't remember). I had some green, fleshy-looking sack in my hands. I cut it open and pulled out a "flying saucer." This was something like a silver table ornament or serving tray. It looked like a cake tray with no glass top and with ridges or slots all through it. I put it on the chest.

I thought CL might be trying to hide this object from others, as part of an overall conspiracy. I thought CL might be trying to convince me as well that I hadn't seen the flying saucer. CL very harshly asked me a question insinuating that I had already told my co-worker JB about the flying saucer. I became tense and slightly afraid.

Dream #3

I sat in the front row at some show. The seating was all rows of folding chairs. The floor was white tile. The lights were brightish orange and fluorescent. The place was full of people. The "stage" was level with the floor. On the back wall (a back wall) was a screen against which was projected a karaoke video.

A song started up. The girl to my left, who looked like my co-worker and fellow-Assistant FA, said, "Oh, you should sing this one! You love these guys!" It took me a second before I recognized the song as a Smashing Pumpkins song.

But I couldn't "catch" the words fast enough to begin singing with the music. Plus, the words on the screen weren't the same as the words to the song. And the video would occasionally fade in and out unexpectedly. I  told the girl that I did love this song, but that I didn't know it well enough to keep up.

I began cuddling with the girl. She had nice, dark skin. She wasn't thin, but she had the prettiness of a thin girl.

I was disappointed in myself for being so boring that I couldn't sing a song.

I now sat laying across the girl's chest. The girl now looked like one of my good friends, PD. She was still not thin. She wore a pastel turquoise-green, soft-fabric shirt. Below the collar, squared holes were cut out to look like an Egyptian necklace. The fabric between the holes was also strung in a way to look and feel like beads.

I ran my left finger along this "necklace" collar-piece. I also touched some jewelry on the girl's right upper arm. I felt like a child. I hoped this wouldn't turn the girl off and that we could still have sex. The girl said, "I will miss you very much when I am gone."

Dream #4

I woke up from a dream. I stood out of my bed by the foot of the bed and walked to the wall facing the foot of the bed. There was a wooden ladder folded against the wall. I was going to take it away from the wall, but I hung on one of the steps and looked at my wall. There was a yellowish, chipped substance dirtying the wall.

I didn't remember such messiness. At first I thought, Well, maybe I don't look at this wall well enough to have seen this dirty patch. Then I thought, No. This wall is different in another way: it's missing its little framing decorations: it's just completely smooth.

The discrepancy between this wall and my normal perception of my bedroom wall made me wonder where I was. I told myself, I just woke from a dream. I have to be awake. But I was now getting the strange feeling that life was a dream, and that I could wake into lucidity from waking life just as I would wake into lucidity in dreams.

I did something like what a person would do holding his breath and bracing for a plunge into a swimming pool. I thought, This is exactly what people think can't be done. And I'm trying to do it.

I felt the electric buzz (which, as I'd read in the literature, was a precursor, not for lucid dreams, but for out-of-body experiences). But when lucidity came, I realized that this had all been a dream after all. I wasn't "lucid" in (or ex-) reality. I was only lucid in my dream.

I wanted to explore the lucid dream, but I didn't believe I could imagine anything other than what I was presently seeing: the ladder and the wall. So I told myself, You are going to turn around clockwise. As you complete the turn you will wake back into waking life and you will be back in bed.

But even as I "held my breath, braced," and turned, I thought, Why am I doing this? If I'm lucid I should go exploring. But it was like I couldn't control myself, like I was being controlled by another will and now was in a gravitational spin that I couldn't pull out of.

(10/29/08) injured woman; diseased group; inaccurate work

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

Something like a movie or a documentary about a woman. The woman may have been going to sue a group of people for having gotten her involved in some situation. I saw old black and white photos of the woman. The woman was fat, with short, sloppily arranged hair. She had pale blue-green (?) eyes. In one photo she may have been opening presents with someone like her father. In all the photos she looked mentally unstable.

I now saw the woman lying on a bed, on her back, with her head hung down over the side of the bed. It was obvious the woman had some kind of motor-system dysfunction.

The woman was "talking" -- actually it sounded and looked more like she was narrating. The woman's voice played in the background as the woman, without speaking, was, in my view, trying to pull something out from under her bed. The thing was possibly a cane that looked like a weed-whacker with a microphone at its top. The woman slowly pulled herself out of bed and walked toward the bathroom.

The woman was "talking" about the situation, and how she had already come into it with a lot of bodily troubles. The woman said how the situation had caused her to get a gunshot in her skull (she might have shot herself) and how she also ended up with severe injuries limiting even further her use of her arms and legs.

Dream #2

Something like a movie. A small group of people had been exposed to something like a degenerative pathogen. They had gone their separate ways and then started to feel the effects of the pathogen. Some of the people had managed to stop or delay the effects, but not until after the degeneration of their tissue had caused a loss of blood. It seemed like everybody from the small group would die, except, perhaps, an evil man who was going to do something even worse to all the other doomed men so that he could live.

The scene was now of a "cop" getting ready for bed. He had been at the scene with the other men and had been kind to them, while warning them about whatever they had been doing. I thought he was nice. He was apparently played by Klaus Kinski.

The cop was in something like a barracks with a lot of other men. The place looked like a cabin, with dark wood walls and floors and dim (but full) light from hanging electric lamps. The place seemed very warm and comforting. The beds were all close together. The men were all in white long underwear. The beds all had white sheets, but at least the cop's bed was also blanketed in a thick fur.

The cop got into bed with another man and turned his back to him. He at first pulled the blanket over him, but then pulled the blanket away to reveal that his nose (maybe eyes, too?) was trickling blood. He'd gotten infected, as well.

I thought, Oh, no! Not him, too. He's such a nice guy! But I knew not only that the cop was infected, but that he was also doomed to die much more quickly than the others, since nobody would be around to help him delay things.

Dream #3

My co-worker CL and my boss BS had worked together on some project. CL now poked his head into BS' office to thank him for the work, which was almost completely related to the industry CL did research on, and only slightly related to the industry that BS did research on. But BS, and possibly my co-worker IA, now warned CL not to trust the work after all, as it had been done mostly by me, and I had done an inexact job.

Both BS' and CL's offices were dark. BS may not have been in his office at all.

(1/31/09) blind ticker

(Entered in paper journal at 7:20 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was walking with my old friend R, who may have looked like my co-worker CL, in the lobby of a big and modern, but old-looking, movie theater. R was talking about some cartoon, like a Don Bluth cartoon, that he was going to use as a part of some community meeting he was going to attend later this afternoon.

R asked me if I was going to come along with him. I said I didn't think so. He said he thought I had told him yes before. I felt bad, and I tried to remember if I had told him yes.

We were in the theater now. The theater was dark. Even the movie screen seemed to be dim. The place was full. R had been walking with me, but now he was gone. I turned and saw he had headed into one of the rows quickly, to throw me off guard. The row was far back from the screen, where I wouldn't be able to see. I knew that R had also done this on purpose. I walked into the row. There were three seats open. R took the one in the center. I knew he took it so I couldn't sit by his wife L. I took the seat to R's left.

There was either a preview or a fake preview playing (or possibly just the beginning of the film). A big, muscly man with oiled skin, long, rocker-style hair, and wrestling shorts, was sliding down some kind of ice-passage on a snowy mountainside, like the luge. He may have pulled himself up onto the edge of this thing. He grabbed a man who was now in the slide with him. He threw him out. The man fell to the snowy ground, ten or fifteen feet below.

I started laughing. It was like I wasn't even in my chair now, bu kneeling on the floor by R. I said, "This is just like the fake preview they had in that other movie! This is a serious movie, but it's just like the fake preview in..." I couldn't remember the name of the movie. I said, "In... not Tropic Thunder. What was that movie?"

R said, "Blind Ticker."

I said, "Yes!" and started laughing again.

We were now sitting at a table like in a pizza restaurant. The lighting in the area was very red-pink, and there were mirrors on the wall. I sat on the edge seat. R sat to my right. A man, who looked like an oldish military man but who may have been wearing only a diaper, came up and spoke to R in a friendly, relaxed tone about some business the two of them had to take care of together. The man now stood in his military outfit, which was of a pale sea-green color, and shook R's hand.

I had been picking wax out of my ear with my right hand. The man, saying goodbye to me, offered me a high five. He apparently hadn't noticed that I had been picking my ear. I tried to wipe off my hand quickly and without the man noticing.

But when the high five was done, the man wiped his hand and looked at me with a little polite disgust. He told me something like I should wash my hands carefully before getting into social situations with people. I bashfully agreed.

Another man came up and shook hands with me. Again, I was afraid that the man would be put of by my hands. But he didn't seem to notice. This man was younger, with a greyish military suit, wavy, black hair, and an olive complexion.

I now sat as if by myself at a table full of people. A group of kids came in and sat at the row of tables across from us. At first the kids were teenagers. They were all slightly rowdy. It was obvious they had just come from some kind of educational event.

The group of kids in the table to the right started making fun of one of the people they saw. They called him a "transsexual, transgender, cross-gender, or whatever." I now noticed one of the boys, who was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and was small but very beautiful. He had straightish, flowing, black hair, and smooth, olive skin. He wore a nice, grey pea coat.

The children all seemed now to be six or seven years old. I sat at the far left end of a booth/bench now, instead of a table. A group of people my age sat to my right. We were like a volunteer group. The kids still sat at the table, like we were at the pizza place. But the red-pink light was gone, replaced with white fluorescent, and the atmosphere was like a Mexican food restaurant in the East Village.

The kids all seemed to be having some kind of mental problem or some weird manner of speaking to each other. Or perhaps they were playing a game. Many of them held overshirts or knit jackets over their heads like shawls. They were all mumbling to each other, almost whispering. But then they would point out a couple people in particular and say they were whispering, as if that was a point of their character showing they should be either pitied or treasured. The volunteers all looked on in a cherishing, pitying way.

The girl currently pointed out was a Mexican girl with dark skin and long hair. She wore a green shirt with black stripes and black jeans. Somehow I caught the girl's attention. She was singing and somehow crawled across her table, onto the bench, then onto my lap.

It was now like a lot of the volunteers and students were gone. I asked the girl how to sing a song in Spanish. I hummed and thought I was humming a Gloria Estefan song. But I was actually humming the Norah Jones song "Don't Know Why." The girl sang the song in Spanish.

We had a blanket pulled over our heads. I rocked the girl back and forth. I thought of the girl as autistic, and I thought, I'm really making a breakthrough with her!

Now some skinny, but bully-like, Mexican man with very short hair and a bushy mustache, wearing tan clothes or a military outfit, was sitting to my right, right next to me. He smiled and said, "Beautiful song. Gloria Estefan, isn't it?" By the way the man was smiling I could see that he was trying to take the girl's attention from me.

I saw a very pretty woman off to the left, at the front of the store, behind a cash register. I thought, Is this man sticking close to me because he wants to take this girl's attention away from me or because he doesn't want to seduce the cash register girl while I'm not looking? I wished that if the latter were true, the man would just go talk to the woman and leave me alone. I didn't care about that stuff -- I was trying to heal somebody! But the man did get up and walk over to the woman.

The girl lay down to my left, on some weird structure. Her head was on a wooden box, like a cigar box or a small food box. She was singing a different song in English now. She had a different look, like an Hispanic girl in Victorian costume. She looked like she was going to die. But her song was very powerful. It may have ended in Spanish.

The girl may now have been the first girl again, in the green shirt and black jeans. She may have gotten up to stand with the Mexican man and woman. I stood up, probably to leave. I saw a small newspaper stand to my let, just beside a small cooler for drinks. The stand held the New York Times.

There was a cartoon on the front page. It was in an Orozco-esque style, with very drab colors. There were two priests, probably from two different Christian denominations. One of them held a big, white cross between them. Both priests had scars and stitch-marks on their necks, like they had been decapitated and had their heads sewn back on. Behind the men and to the right was a gigantic white cross that lay down, almost completely smashing a house. The ground was barren and brown. The sky was black.

The newspaper article below the cartoon was accusing Wall Street of a ton of awful things. The article claimed that the crimes everybody on Wall Street had committed were tantamount to murder, and had, in fact, led to many people's deaths. The article also accused people on Wall Street of being some kind of cultic priests.

I felt ashamed, like I didn't want anybody to know I had worked on Wall Street. But I also thought the article was ridiculous. I thought, Nobody's as bad as this. This is obviously written by somebody on the outside, who immediately thinks everything that happens on the inside is strange and evil.

(2/23/09) antigone-stic boss; manga duckling; panties at kmart; feet hard as shoes

(Entered in paper journal at 9:07 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my office," which was something like an office space at the World Financial Center buildings in lower Manhattan. I sat at a long desk. My "desk"  -- a part of the long, grey table, was to the left of a square column. There were no computers at the long desk I sat at, although there may have been computers at the long desk behind me. My desk, and possibly even the whole floor, was almost completely empty.

Off to my right, a woman, maybe in her mid forties, white, with auburn hair, wandered along the aisles of desks. To my left, at the end of the long desk (maybe fifteen feet away from me) and on the opposite side of the table, sat my co-worker, and a person who had stood up a lot for me to help move me along in my career, CL.

CL asked me how something was going. It was like we were doing business together. She may have been scribbling on a piece of paper (although the long desk was otherwise empty of papers). I told CL, very politely, that everything was going well, even though it probably wasn't.

My boss BS walked into his office, which was in view of the long desk at which CL and I sat, separated from us by another two aisles of long desks. All the offices (along the wall) were dark. I may have been afraid that BS, having seen me talking to CL, would pile a ton of work on me, to keep me from talking to others.

The scene seemed to have changed. I was now "somewhere else," -- maybe "at home," maybe in BS' office. I got a phone call from BS. He said, "Hey, Preemie, I was wondering if you could help me with XXXXX." (I may have seen the word "Antigone" before my eyes.)

I thought, Yeah, I have plenty of time for that. I said, "Absolutely."

I now saw BS' computer screen in his dark office. I saw through his blinded window walls and his open door to the floor of desks outside. I thought to myself, Wait a minute. I don't have time to help him. I'm busy doing something else right now. Right?

Dream #2

I sat in a bedroom, on a bed. The bedroom was smallish. There were two beds across the room from each other. To my left was a light of some kind. The room was harshly, but palely and gently, lit. There may also have been a feeling of iridescence. I may have figured that I had to go somewhere. I stood up and took a small book with me. I held the book open and was reading it like one may study a catechism.

To my left, at my feet, was a tiny, strange animal. It seemed to want me to pay attention to it. I kept turned slightly away from it, like I was still heading toward wherever I had to go, but I knelt, so my knees were heading up toward my chest -- almost like a girl might kneel when wearing a business skirt.

I held my left hand out, ramping up from the ground so the animal could walk up onto it. My hand was twisted at an unnatural angle -- something I thought was supposed to help the little animal. The animal climbed up onto my hand.

I stood back up, still half-looking at the small book I carried. But now, on a closer look, the small animal looked like a little duckling. But its eyes were big, round, blue, like a cat's eyes, except with a teary or gummy look to them. The "duckling's" covering (not feathers?) was yellow with tinges or a halo of blood-red, as if the duckling had blood vessels even in its "feathers."

The duckling seemed to have human feelings. It didn't want me to go wherever I was going. It was nudging my hand somehow to prove this point. I sat down now on the other bed. I may have set down either the duckling or the book on the floor (if the book, then just before my feet; if the duckling, then just to the right of my feet -- or maybe I set both down).

The book, which had before been something like a catechism, now became something like a manga comic about schoolgirls. The duckling (although still to my mind a duckling) was now a girl in the costume of a manga schoolgirl. Her uniform was solid navy blue with a small red sash/bow across her chest.

The duckling/schoolgirl sat on the bed, to my right. I put my arm around her waist. She leaned her head against my shoulder. I continued reading the book.

Dream #3

I was in a store like a Kmart. I stood among racks of women's clothing. The racks were the round-display style, and widely spaced from each other. The store seemed relatively empty. I held a few items of women's clothing that I wanted to try on: some khaki shorts, a cream-colored top of some sort, and some pale aqua bikini briefs with pink stitching or trim.

I must have gone to try everything on. I saw myself in the mirror with the panties on. My body looked good. I was thin again, and my stomach was nicely muscled. I didn't care about the other clothes now. Now that my body looked good again, I wanted to try on other lingerie.

I was back where I started. I left the shorts and top on some shelf-island of jeans. I held on to the panties. I took a glance from side to side to see if I could locate the lingerie section. But it wasn't in sight. I now walked, clockwise, through the store, looking for the lingerie section. I walked through a few sections, but none of them seemed to register to my perception.

I now exited the store -- almost without noticing that I'd done so. (I may have been walking through the store, when I'd realized that I wouldn't have enough money to buy lingerie, so that I'd have to go to an ATM to pick up some money first. So I may have walked out of the store without noticing, while looking for both the lingerie section and an ATM.)

I stood in the hallway or walkway of a shopping mall. The light was dim. The floors were brown tile, and the walls were brown brick. There were island gardens with little palm-like plants. All the shops had their lights on, but some had their gates down.

I suddenly realized I had walked out of the store. I still had the panties, and I hadn't paid for them. Someone would come after me for shoplifting. I thought, I have to get back into the store.

I saw the storefront, which may have had a sign in the style of a Walgreen's sign over it: the cursive writing in red, plastic lights. I knew this was the other entrance to the store -- the one I must have used to get into the store in the first place. (In fact, I might not even have noticed that I'd left the store until I saw this storefront.)

I held a book and the panties in my left hand. I tried to cover the panties completely with the book. It looked like a couple guys were pulling down the gates for the store. I was worried for a second, but somehow I got in anyway. I crossed the security gate and breathed a sigh of relief.

I now took a look, from this point, for the lingerie section. There were a few people, kind of poor-looking, stout-looking, white men, milling around near me. I looked behind me and saw a whole panel of ATM machines. They were all fixed into a display counter, looking like something you might see at an airport. The panel was light brown. The whole place also had the feel of a McDonald's. I walked over to the panel and started playing with the touchscreen to get some money.

Dream #4

I was in bed with a good-looking, tan boy with longish, blonde hair. The boy was wearing dark blue, satin panties, a garter belt, and possibly black, thigh-high hose. We were both under a thick blanket. The room was dim, as if a small light came from some other room like a bathroom.

The boy positioned himself over me, preparing to lay on me. But as he lay on me (I think we were going to play that I was a girl and that he, as a girl wearing a dildo, was penetrating me), he knocked his feet against my feet. He suddenly got turned off. He rolled away and asked me (in the voice of my girlfriend H?), "Could you please take off your shoes?"

I thought, I'm not wearing any shoes! But I said, "Sure."

I thought this wouldn't work out for us after all. I'd taken so little care of my feet that now they'd become as hard as shoes. There was nothing I could do now, and if it turned the boy off, then I was just out of luck for the night.