(11/27/05) a stabbing at becket gate; butch and bull

(Entered in paper journal at 10:29 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a house, then I was outside it was if I were inside it. It was dark. I stood over a brown vinyl cushion that had four or five pairs of screws screwed into it. The heads of the screws stuck about half an inch out from the cushion. The screws were black like iron, but soft and warm-looking, like plastic. The pairs were arranged in parallel lines, with a bit of curvature in the lines.

I was supposed to lay my back on these screws to help my spine. But because the lines were messed up, because they had the curvature, I thought my friend R, who probably owned this house, would think I was careless and a slob.

Now I lay on a bed outside, in a steamy, swampy area with only tiny lumps of land popping out of the water. The bed was like a hospital bed.

To my left was a house, kind of like a trading post or hotel. The place had a name like Becket Gate or Becket Garden, advertised on a gaudy sign over the building's modern, big-windowed lodge-style structure. The sign was as big as the house. It was made of enormous wooden figures of animals, all smashed together like the people on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I remember seeing a cricket-like creature, a crane that looked more like a white duck with a stubby beak (even for a duck!), and some animal like a primordial squid. This squid was grey, cone-like, with gel-like skin and a black, dirty back end out of which came long threads like hairs or jellyfish stingers.

I was afraid that the figures of these animals, especially the weird "squid," would call the actual animals. I thought, I wouldn't worry about the crane, because I'm familiar with them. But all the other animals are too frightening. Who knows what they'd do?

I now saw some gigantic "cranes" floating out from behind the building. I thought, They don't look like cranes. They look like some other kind of animal. Why don't they look like cranes? Are they going to start looking like cranes?

I was now inside the house, which was dark, filled with cobalt blue darkness, and huge. I was filing through some cabinets, looking for something. I was sure someone here was angry at me and wanted to attack me.

Now I heard somebody from a room repeating a noise, like, "chuh, chuh, chuh," something really plain and silly, but so angry and insistent it sounded as menacing as a rattlesnake rattle. I walked toward the sound, knowing the onwly thing I could do was face it.

I walked down a wide, huge hallway and past a bathroom. Somebody who sounded like my brother said, "Helloooo, I'm here!" as I walked past. I kept walking.

I think I thought that the voice I heard came from a hurt person, not an angry one. But now that person jumped out of the bathroom and onto my back, "hitting" me in on the fleshy part right behind my collarbone on my right side.

I thought something like, This is (Mary Constance Gardner?), the possessed woman. I also realized it was R, and that I wasn't being hit behind my collarbone, but stabbed. R was stabbing my heart from above.

I thought, No. This is just a possession. You can't be afraid of the parts that seem violent. But I got too afraid. In spite of the fact that nothing really hurt, I still couldn't stand the thought of being stabbed in the heart by some jerk who'd jumped on top of me. Mostly, I was afraid.

Dream 2

I was in a hallway, getting ready to speak with someone at work, JG. But some really butch lesbian stood in the hallway. JG got all bullish, seriously grunting and stomping and eventually butting her head and then body into this woman. JG had done this. But it was the other woman's intention, so that she could show me how much of a bull she was, how she could be forceful with girls, while I couldn't.

I just walked away uninterested, even though I knew that my doing something like that, and having an uninterested attitude like I did, would cost me my job.

(9/15/07) diseased ruins and marshy river; yelling at brother; psychiatrist baggage

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM at Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn Heights.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.

On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.

I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.

I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.

I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.

I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.

Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.

To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.

Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.

In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.

I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.

I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.

A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.

I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.

Dream #2

I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.

My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.

My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)

I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.

Dream #3

My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.

A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.

We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.

(3/10/09) flying over kingdoms; how convenient

(Entered in dream journal at 8:30 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was a grey day. I was on a big piece of land, which may have been like the ranch owned by MR, the head of the department where I'd worked. I was out with a group of my co-workers, people who were about my age or a little bit younger. MR was like our teacher. We all had to do some kind of English test. I was apart from my group, maybe a couple hundred meters away.

I held some little thing, perhaps like a little animal. There were smooth, rolling, green hills in places and snowy, white hills in other places. I was walking through snow. I dropped the thing in my hands into the snow. It disappeared into the snow, leaving just a trace of its shape. I had been thinking about the English project, but now I thought I might not be doing it after all.

I ran and jumped along a snow-covered strip of land like a road between two small slopes. I jumped really far. I thought I would try again, that this would speed me up, as if I were now trying to get somewhere on time. But now I lifted up and began to fly.

Down below me at first were snowy slopes. A strip of land as straight as a road was full of weird, pinkinsh-red things that I thought of as pin-oak leafs, but which also had a fleshiness, like they were starfish or some other kind of sea creature. I may have dropped something again, down into this long pit. To my right were the green hills, where MR and my peers were.

Before me was a wide river. The sky may actually have been a palish grey-blue, which the surface of the river reflected. Across the river was a band of forest and then something like a set of hills and a castle. I was looking across countries. The river, flowing to my left, curved, almost at a right angle, to the left again down the way. I knew that across the river and around the curve was another country as well. I flew along the river to see what the other country looked like.

All the time I was singing some lewd song, a little modern-sounding. I was thinking about how I would no longer need to do English assignment. But I was hoping to justify my new independence somehow. The song I was singing was supposed to be the justification. I would occasionally dip down and touch my feet to the river, then fly back up.

I got around the corner. I saw the other country, which was on my right. But I didn't go toward it. Instead, there was something like a large pond or small lake to my left. In the lake was a small island, which may have been all lawn. There were a peasant mother and her young boy on the island -- possibly also a white crane. I  descended and touched down either on the island or on the water before the island, as if I were going to the ilsand.

Dream #2

I was in some room, which may have been slightly cluttered with electronic equipment and computers. Daylight may have streamed in through a dirty window.

A man sat in front of a computer which may have faced away from the window. I was impressed by the man, even though the man looked a little like a mess. He was tallish with a round, drooping stomach, a long, saggy face, and a head bald except for a slick of dull, black hair around the sides and back of his head. He wore a collared shirt like a polo shirt.

The man was explaining some computer stuff to me. I was trying my best to follow what the man was saying. At some point I spoke about how impressive the website weather.com was, how helpful it was. The man then told me how convenient the internet was. He said he'd made the internet even more convenient.

In the man's bathroom, right above the light switch, he had an LCD strip which was constantly pulling time and temperature from weather.com. I thought, How convenient! Who would have thought the internet could be so constantly accessible! (???) I then thought how I'd like to go one step further and have an internet monitor installed in the shower so I could read or listen to something while I was taking a shower.