(5/31/05) crane-scraper

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

Dream 1

I went inside a huge structure that functioned as a crane.

It was used, I think, to create enormous skyscrapers. But the body of the "crane" itself was actually like an office building. Through the grid of glass windows on its sides I saw a bunch of different office areas.

I was now inside. I had a box of copy paper or office supplies in my arms. I walked through what looked like a kind of dusty, shuffled-through field office, toward a printer. The "crane" kept wobbling back and forth, so that I felt like I was on waves.

I kept looking for some proof that I wasn't wasting my time on this crane project. At some point I was to meet with two or three men and tell them my opinion.

(7/9/06) weak brutality; my brother's fun house; the construction task; the eagle lands

(Entered in paper journal at 10:23 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I lay in "my bed." It was deep night and raining outside. I sat up. I had a window wall that looked out to a front boardwalk area overlooking a river across which were the lights of a tall city. A small car was parked outside: a tiny, boxy, European-style car with a green hood and white roof.

I couldn't see well -- my glasses were wet. I wiped them off as I thought about GS, the star of my high school cross country team. I told myself I had to stop being angry at him and to stop thinking that the things he did to the team sometimes were annoying. I put my glasses back on. I thought, GS was just doing what made sense to him, what he thought would make people like him.

I now saw a group of kids. The kids were black. They looked like troublemakers. The got out of the tiny car. I tried to lay down quickly so they wouldn't see anybody in the house. I thought, Why did I leave my windows open? I couldn't lay down. But I thought at least it was dark.

The kids flashed on the car lights. As soon as they saw me inside the house they bashed open the door, which I had left unlocked by accident, and ran through, right behind the head of my bed, to another door.

I reached around to catch one of them before they left the house. I wanted to show them they couldn't just barge into anybody's house like this. I had a baseball bat. I had they guy in my grasp. I swung the bat. But I swung so weakly that the bat barely even touched the guy.

I was in a living room in the daytime. The place was full of black people. I was very small somehow. People were slung over couches and the floor, lazy and making tons of noise. I had a baseball bat. I tried to hit people. But slowly I got weaker and weaker. Instead of holding a baseball bat, I was now holding something like a small toy bowling pin made out of hollow plastic.

I finally swung at a woman and hit her hard. I thought, Now I can swing and hit! I had a baseball bat in my hands. I thought I had to hit a man now. Hitting a woman didn't prove anything. It was really the men who needed to be taught a lesson.

I stood over a man. Just as I was swinging down at him, he said, "Psst, pssht," like what I was going to do didn't even matter. I lost all confidence and suddenly the bat was just soft, hollow plastic and was so "heavy" in my arms that I couldn't get any speed behind it. It just kept flapping against the guy's face like a piece of paper.

Dream 2

I was in a stairwell with a man and woman. The stairwell was like in a multi-story house: carpeted, with wood railings and pictures on the walls. The man, woman, and I were investigators. A bad person was in the basement. The basement was completely dark. As far as the other floors, I couldn't see them.

A man burst up from the basement. But now somehow he was still in the basement. I said I would go after him. The other two investigators, just sitting on the steps, were suspicious of me but just let me go anyway.

Only a few steps down the steps became a hole about six inches in diameter, lined about three feet down with metal, then opening into the basement. I lowered myself onto the head of a ceramic (?) sculpture of a Chinese lion, white with a green and yellow man and a long, long body.

The light in the basement was dim maroon. I realized now that my brother was down here. In one sense this maze-basement was a kind of terror trap where "the killer" would hunt and kill you.

But in what was becoming more of a reality, this was all just a fun house set up by my brother to impress people. So I went through the maroon into a scary machine room that I had to climb through on my hands and knees. The next room was supposed to be the scariest. But it was just like an enormous tent, with dim blue lighting and a laser pointer shining along the floor. I couldn't wait to see my brother and tell him how good and scary this place was.

I walked into a cafeteria with metal tray counters and glass displays of tons of really good looking Mexican food. I was all alone. A TV played, talking about how important it was to eat healthy. I must have pulled some food together for myself.

I wondered where my brother was. I "spoke with" my mom, asking her where my brother was. I wanted to tell him how good his fun house was. My mom "said" something like, "Oh, don't worry about that. He didn't make up half this stuff anyhow."

Dream 3

I was on the roof of a tall building. It was night and raining. Some people were with me. They sent me to the edge of the building to take care of some construction task which involved moving things from three concrete bins into a shovel at the top of a huge crane.

I moved what were like pieces of garbage into the plastic, white mouth of the "shovel," keeping my stomach to the gravely roof surface the whole time. At one point the "shovel" lifted so I'd have to stand and reach out over the ledge for it. I stood but was suddenly far in on the roof, looking at the concrete bins and crane.

I heard a woman. She and I spoke about my being afraid and about what this whole project really meant.

Dream 4

I lay on a hillside with some friends. It was a sunny day. We all lay on beach blankets, or, rather, knit blankets of bright, gentle colors. The hill was tall, wide, and grassy, with a gentle river at the bottom.

I saw a bald eagle. I called it out to everybody. Everybody treated me like an idiot, saying, "Well, of course that's a bald eagle."

The eagle then flew right up to us and landed. I asked, "Well, it landed right here beside us. How often does that happen?" Nobody answered.

I pet the eagle and spoke a little to it. It wandered away into everybody else's attention. Soon it became a woman, some kind of scientist, who chastised me for not acting as intelligently as my friends had.

(2/11/08) no passport; astral car wash

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

Dream #1

I was in bed. I was reading a book mentioning two kinds of wood or two kinds of forest, one possibly called Greenwood, the other called Dark Wood. I sat up and looked at myself in a mirror. I had little bumps of red acne all over my face. I got really upset at my appearance and began crying.

I stood up and looked out my bedroom window. My mother and brother and sister (as kids) were pulling up in a van.

I was on some vehicle like a subway train. It pulled up to an airport. It was still early. Not all the airport was open. I went through a window-walled tunnel. A lot of people were waiting in an area near the entrance of the airport. After that area, a lot of the airport was dark. The people were waiting for the rest of the airport of to open up. I thought, Why didn't they just go through the tunnel like me? The tunnel goes straight to the plane.

I was on the plane. There were only a few people on with me. Some people were eating. I sat in my seat, on the right side of the plane, by the window. This was an international flight. We would stop for a while in Italy. I hoped I would have time to go see Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, which was apparently in some circle on a road.

I realized I didn't have a passport. I thought I should get off the plane. But it was already moving. I thought, What's going to happen to me at my first destination? I started crying. I looked at the back of the seat in front of me. There was a brass circle with an imprinted design on it of a ring atop a crescent atop a semicircle.

Dream #2

I ran counterclockwise on a field at night. The circuit I ran was marked off by orange, plastic netting. It probably described a rough square around the grounds of a school. It was at the top of a large natural structure.

There were men like construction workers trying to block my path. I managed to evade them. The grass through which I ran got taller and thicker. Some of the flowers on the grass shone beautifully in the moonlight.

I got to the end of the circuit, which was at a cliff. I jumped. It was daytime. I flew through a range of all buildings and then over a river. I saw a tall building on the other side of the river.

I knew something unique was happening, perhaps a dream or an out-of-body experience. I told myself to stay calm and remember things, so I could prove where I'd been. At first it didn't seem like I was moving, I was so intent on the building across the river. But I found that if I looked all over without focusing on any one thing for very long, I kept moving. I focused on a large, red and white construction crane. I also saw some silvery silos in the distance.

I now flew before the large building, which was like a storage-space-rental building. I flew around it. On the back end (or front end?) was a gas station. One sign on the front of the gas station was square, white, with blue lettering.

A few stories up on the big building (behind the gas station) were openings like exits for car washes. I flew up to see people washing cars. I landed in one of these openings. I saw my reflection somewhere. At first nobody noticed me. Then someone did.

(4/27/08) elevator mission; spy-play

(Entered in paper journal at 7:55 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in an office building. The building's interior was dim, with dark walls. It was night or early morning. I had been with a group of people, probably older, wealthier people.

I got into an elevator. The floors were chosen by pressing numbers into a keypad. I must not have pressed anything when I first went in. The elevator car plunged downward. I knew I was quickly descending through underground levels. I didn't want to go too far down. I didn't want people to think I was sneaking around down here. But I also didn't know if the actual speed of the descent might kill me.

I typed "18" into the keypad. The elevator car ascended at first. But then the walls became like windows. The elevator car floated over a large body of water. The sky was a dim, pastel blue, like at dawn.

The elevator car lost speed and height. I soon fell into the water. I tread water. It was daytime, bright, with a cloudless sky. The water was murky green.

A woman tread water with me. We looked around, as if we were here on some kind of spy mission. On either side of us, possible four hundred meters away on either side, were rolling, pale, tan, deserty hills dotted with tall shrubs like junipers and pinons. Along the hills, but fixed in the water, were enormous construction cranes.

We were trying to swim to a certain part of the shore. I hoped we could avoid being directly under the cranes. Each crane held a gigantic sack of something like gravel and bricks. It looked like the cranes could drop the sacks at any time.

We were now on a shoe, walking up to a shallow cave or a tall cavity in the side of a hille. There was a woman working on an oldish looking, heavy piece of equipment.

We had to get information from her without letting on that we were spies. I looked around the area. It looked like it had been made in the hillside by the people who were carrying out all the construction on the landscape. There were steel beams against the wall. It was like the beams were propping up the walls and ceiling. There were heaps of asphalt and rubble all over.

The machinery woman was pretty but tough-looking. She was saying stuff to show off and try to attract the woman with me. The woman with me did actually seem to be attracted to the machinery woman.

The machinery woman now had us carry out a task. Whereas the cavity had just been fully open to the air, there was now a big, wooden door or gate in front of at least half of it, on our left as we faced the cavity front. We had to pull a hose through a hole at the bottom of this wooden door.

As we were drawing the hose into the cavity, I worried that I was doing a bad job and that the machinery woman would point out my inability as a reason why the woman with me shouldn't be attracted to me. But, I thought, I've done stuff like this before. I should be doing a good job.

There was a little resistance on the hose every now and then, but I seemed to work through it, which made me feel good about myself. But then the hose got really resistant. Instead of pulling hoses, the woman and I ended up pulling in two blue, wax cylinders, maybe eight inches in diameter and twelve feet long.

I stood the cylinders up before the machinery woman. The cylinders seemed to have stuff like Styrofoam cups in them. The machinery woman said something about how she liked the cylinders because they were phallic. The machinery woman said that liked to think that I was giving her my phallus, i.e. that I was having sex with her.

I was relieved by this statement. I had thought the machinery woman was a lesbian. I was jealous of the machinery woman, and afraid that she'd try to make the woman with me like her instead of me. But now it appeared that the machinery woman was actually attracted to me!

Dream #2

I stood with a woman like my sister outside a door to a plain, cheapish apartment. My sister and I had been spying on people. We had been into one other person's house just before. It had been a real challenge to get the needed information from the person, who had been quite hostile toward us. I was ready for this place to be just as much of a challenge. But my sister knocked on the door and told me she'd take care of this mission.

The door opened. The man who opened the door was my brother (though he might have looked like Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack character). Without saying anything my brother let my sister enter the house, as if she owned the place. My brother closed the door on me, as if he hadn't even seen me.

I stayed patient, realizing that I, too, would be able to enter easily. I drank a red, sticky, sweet fluid out of a long, thin, clear glass. It was just one swallow, like the dregs in a glass.

My brother opened the door, looked at me, and closed the door softly again. He then re-opened the door without appearing in the doorway.

I walked in. The apartment was empty. There were white walls and whitish carpet. Daylight came into the apartment, but it was dim and kind of sour. The front room was adjoined by a breakfast bar to the kitchen. Back from the front room was the living room. The only piece of furniture in it was a television. My brother stood to my left, just out of my sight, but very close to me.

I asked my brother questions, but very soon he understood that I was trying to get hidden information from him. He stopped talking and sat in front of the television.

My brother was a child now, around twelve years old. The TV was blaring. My brother was playing with neon green toys like the old, two-inch-tall M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling figures and with some grey, plastic fighter jets. Some of the men were arranged randomly. Others were arranged in a straight line ending in a triangle shape.

Some of the men also stood on the wings of the jets and around the jets.