(3/29/06) death videos back from the dead; the third rail

(NOTE FOR DREAM 1 -- For a while I had the practice of sketching out my dreams as I woke up from them. The sketched out dreams would then be expanded into the fully written dreams later in the day. I eventually stopped this practice. I felt like it was better just to carry my dreams with me and write them down in a brief form later on in the day. However, in this entry, it looks like I reverted to sketching out my dream -- though I don't see the fully-written dream in this notebook. So Dream 1 is in a very sketchy form.)

(Entered in paper journal at 1:50 AM at home in Brooklyn.)


Dream 1

Night -- death videos with friends -- shoot man in head silver gun -- videos finish -- "go to bed" -- "better to be made fun of" -- man call for woman "babysitter" come back -- i'm floating off -- parking lot, mall -- hear sister talk "death videos" "seal eats child, forty miles per hour" -- in mall, woman can't get inside, finds door -- in restaurant, breakfast spot, chinese people -- seals by windows "really children juggling?" no -- everybody smoking -- i order -- order comes -- credit card, lady goes -- i leave tip -- man pushes me -- takes tip -- i tell him be polite, tell him about my job, can't remember, try to talk about Americorps -- now girls all around -- try to tell them move -- have to go -- in camera store -- aquariums, sunlight, fish, blue rocks, want camera -- stroking beard, ask man, beard chokes me, go away, beard fine -- ask man about film camera -- says not worth it, but -- i'll put on hold -- $20? -- makes receipt out of blue gym mats -- ... -- in race with friends after "pit of doom" -- they beat me -- back in pit of doom -- died -- back from dead -- running back into crowd -- see friends, not as cool as i thought -- run with huge crowd down rocky, beautiful slope grass slope to "park gates" -- also symbolize death? -- already see friends down there, out of shape, i'm surprised -- everybody wearing grey t-shirt dark grey shorts or sweat pants

Dream 2

(Entered in paper journal at 5:21 PM on Q-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan toward Brooklyn.)

I was in a car with "my family." It was day. We were possibly driving to someone's house. But now some of us were in the car and already at or near the house.

My mom and my oldest nephew D were by some train tracks and behind me, possibly by another car. I was walking ahead of them, leaving them behind to get to the place. But I looked back because I felt bad leaving my mom and D. I saw D was about to touch the "third rail" on the train tracks.

-----?----- I yelled, "Don't you dare let him touch that rail!" My mom stopped D. I decided that we should all ride together.

We were traveling along a hilly suburban road, like in a developing mountain town. Now we were at the house, which was plain and solidly purplish-blue, like a painted plywood board.

My friend CV stepped out and shook my hand, talking about how long he had waited -- how much everybody had hoped -- for me to get here. I thought his manner of speech was somewhat weird, like a sweet old lady speaking. And I'm pretty sure I didn't think I was supposed to go into the house. At least, I couldn't stand everybody being focused on me.

(4/3/06) study of the dead; the house of many worlds

(Entered in paper journal at 6:04 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was part of some scientific or medical crew. We were working in a pit of black soil which was grainy and gloppy. The whole scene was indoors, in a dim room. People were getting operations or we were getting their bodies inspected before or after they died. The bodies were naked, and they seemed to arrive by being moved like on a conveyor belt along the surface of the soil and by springing up from the soil. A lot of us were on the soil, on our knees, surrounding the bodies.

Now the operation/study was to remove a leg/the legs from the bodies. I believe each person was supposed to take a turn cutting off a leg. But I couldn't bear to do something so drastic to a human (body). I could no longer even look at the bodies, knowing something like that was being done to them. I felt ashamed for being so weak. But I just wouldn't look.

I looked further down the reach of soil. There I saw a train of legs being relayed by the "scientists." I knew that this was the least I would see -- I had avoided all I could.

Dream 2

I traveled through a house that had many floors, all of which weren't really floors but "worlds" or locations. A top floor was like the stairwell to the basement in my mother's house. This one led down to a kitchen area, a door from which led to a mountainside that sloped and flattened near a residential neighborhood. There were other places I can't remember. I journeyed through these locations to find something or to find somebody to tell them to stop something bad from happening.

I was working to keep away from a mean woman who was somehow like my mother. Near the end (?) I rode on a big wheel tricycle (?)

or

into a living room like that of a very small apartment. The carpet was brown and the windows were draped so the light had a gross, dim yellow look. I had to get through the room, to a stairwell, and up to the next location quickly and quietly to avoid the having people living here notice me.

I got into the kitchen -- a mess, in glaring white window light -- when a tall, mean, poor-looking white man caught me. I was back in the living room. The man had a rifle aimed at me and was telling me to leave.

I wouldn't quite leave -- I knew I had to get through. I tried to make up a story or think of some way to make the man think I was no threat. But nothing I could think of seemed plausible. I kept waiting to be shot.

(5/9/06) a three's company tribute; my nephew interprets the bhagavad gita

(Entered in paper journal at 7:01 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

At first I was over a scene, like the living room for the TV show Three's Company, looking down on John Ritter, the black-haired girl, and a heavyset, brownish-blonde-haired girl.

Slowly I floated down to a room with my mom. We looked up to a television showing Three's Company. The blonde woman had died. This episode was a tribute to her. It took me a while to catch on to this. But once I did I started crying.

I was a little kid now. This was my favorite show. I didn't want my favorite character on the show to die.

My mom and I may have changed the subject, like I was an adult and I wanted to act mature enough to forget about this show.

Dream 2

I was in a small, tacky living room. A lot of family members were around, but I was only aware of my second oldest nephew, J. I lay on my back on the couch, possibly after wrestling around with J on the floor. J jumped on the couch and climbed all over me. At some point he stopped and lay on my left side, under my arm.

J held a book out to me. The book was a beautiful blue, possibly paperback, with white type on black cover. J spoke to me about this book. The book was colored like a hardcover printing of the Bhagavad Gita that I've seen in some libraries -- a brilliant blue). J's comments were clear, eloquent, and effortless. I agreed with them and pondered the book.

Then suddenly I realized -- it was my little nephew J who said all that stuff. He was just a kid -- but his sayings were astounding! They sounded professional. I marveled that adults could think of J as not very intelligent.

(10/2/06) shifting lucid mountain range; the deadly trick; friends back together

(Entered in paper dream journal at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a nice house in a mountain town. The front wall was mostly windows, with thin, elegant wood "tracing" or "framing." It was a brisk day, with thin layers of snow in cirrus-like blankets over portions of ground. I looked into the distance, beyond clean buildings and tidy foothills, to a column of stone that looked magnificent.

I wished I could go there. But I felt some engagement was holding me back. But I told myself, No, you can go there! This is a dream. you don't have to stay here. Just go!

I felt awareness and the freshness of lucidity. I opened the door. The landscape kept shifting. I mainly focused on keeping calm and centered. At one moment the weather was rainy, at another it was sunny and cold with snow. At another it was grey and snowy.

The somewhat lonely street before the busy mountain town now became an almost suburban streeet. I tried to keep focus on the mountain town, the hills, and the column. But they got a little jangled.

A few people got in my way. I started running to get where I was going quickly, but then a young running couple cornered me into a limb of a hanging tree. I felt like I was constantly being detoured by these people. I had to get above it all.

In reaction (not conscious) I began flying. I was surprised, but I kept my awareness. I was intensely interested in reaching the column. But as I flew I saw the mountains change. Their tops would become buildings. Sometimes the entire mountain melted down to a tall building. Finally I saw the column's top transforming into a building. I couldn't bear to look.

My location shifted suddenly. I figured even if the column was no longer here I could explore. I landed on a wide hillside of wild bunch grass at the edge of a grove of white birch trees. It was a crisp, sunny day. There was frost on the ground.

Suddenly I was on a street in a suburban neighborhood. It feels like I was at the top of a hill. It was very dark -- night -- and maybe with no streetlights?

My friend R was in a car that was facing me. There was possibly a light on in the car. R said something like, "The dream is over." He handed me a thick document -- possibly mental instructions on the dream I should be having.

I took the document to get away from R. But I thought, No. This is a lucid dream. I should have more freedom than this!

I told myself to fly to a new location. I changed through the air, immediately finding myself cloaked in nothingness -- oblivion.

Suddenly I landed in front of R's car. R said, "See? There's no escape. The lucidity you had is over. Just take this dream and go on."

I got into the passenger seat and began to read the dream.

Dream 2

A show. A woman ("Lucille Ball") was put up by a man (her son?) to try and force a man under her responsibility somehow to sign something. He wouldn't sign.

So the son and her mother made a plan. The woman took the man to a high mountain and went sledding down it with him, to play some romantic game (the man was infatuated with the woman). She pretended to lose her balance on a steep portion of the mountain. Acting exaggeratedly romantically feminine, she rolled out of the sled ( and the rut or the track the sled was in), calling out to the man.

The mother planned for the man to roll out with her, partially to rescue her, but also partially because she'd thrown the sled off balance (on purpose) pretty strongly. The woman would roll around in the snow suggestively with the man, and at the high point of feigned seduction, coerce the man to agree to sign this notice.

But though the woman and the sled had fallen off the track or rut, the man had stayed in the rut. He had the feeling the woman was planning something, or at least that she had been faking something all along. The man was moving much slower down the rut without a sled. He was naked, muscular, and beautiful, with long hair and dark, rich, Native American skin.

Suddenly a male and female couple came rushing in their sled down this steep portion of the mountain. They had been sent by the "Lucille Ball" woman to attack the man if he didn't agree to sign the note.

The "Lucille Ball" woman felt a sharp pang of concern right before the sled struck the man. Would the man be killed?

The man and woman struck the man in the back and knocked him clean off the hillside. His back had been broken. Now he was plummeting down a cliff. He slammed face first to the ground below a waterfall. I knew he was dead. His body shuddered a few times and then relaxed.

I could tell the woman felt bad and wished she hadn't tried to trick the man into signing the note.

Dream 3

I sat with my friend R in an interesting hall -- very much like the sculpture hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. R told me he had finally stopped being angry at his ex-wife and my good friend C. He was inviting her to dinner. I could come as well.

I sat on steps in front of some kind of techie computer kiosk. I looked up the steps. I saw C with short hair and in a black dress. She seemed to be in much better shape than I'd thought she'd be. I stood and joined arms with her. We walked down the steps and down the hallway.

R was talking about how C was okay with R and R's new girlfriend L being together. I thought, Well, then it obviously won't make R feel jealous that C and I are locking arms. I felt proud and happy to have both of my old friends back.

(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.