(12/13/04) fragment in a musuem

(Entered in paper journal at 5 PM at some Starbucks.)

Dream 1

FRAGMENT --

I was in a museum, taking care of a mammoth skull that had some deformities. I worked under some nice woman whom I could never see too clearly. The museum was long, dim, with nice wood floors and softly white walls that were wide apart. The mammoth skull was tall and narrow, with enormous tusks protruding. It was very elongated, almost like it was melted. Many edges seem to have been broken open -- they exposed the rough porousness beneath the smooth surface of bone.

I was doing something like removing blemishes from the skull, not patching up these exposed portions of bone. But now I did something wrong. I backed away from the skull, both embarrassed that I had messed up in front of the public, who were walking almost inattentively back and forth through the exhibit hall, and worried that my boss would spot me and criticize me for my mistake.

The skull was only a couple feet above the ground. The legs were lowered so they spread out in front of the skull like a dog's when it lays on the floor.

I felt like I should combat my feeling of embarrassment and get back to working on the mammoth skull.

I walked back up to the mammoth skull with more of a sense of being self-assured. But then something else happened that did one of two things; 1) the work on the skull had to be stopped for technical reasons; 2) I was filled with a sudden dread of the skull and was compelled to back away from it so I could see the whole thing, including the tusks.

As I backed farther and farther away I realized how large this animal must have been. Its tusks were almost as long as its legs, which, I realized, reached about thirty feet. The legs ended in tiger paws. I no longer wanted to be in between these legs or in front of this ghostly, deformed, anamorphic skull.

My dread increased. I could feel the mammoth coming back to life, struggling to stand back up. I got away from it. It did now seem to be standing. Behind it was another mammoth skeleton. I rushed now to get away. I could feel both these animals coming to life. I knew these two animals in particular could kill me.

I now saw a dinosaur just down and a ways to the right, past a few other fossil skeletons. There may have been a skeleton of this dinosaur, but also, under a spotlight and in a huge, glass case, was either a model of the fleshed out and scaled dinosaur or else the actual dinosaur, which had grown flesh and life back back onto his skeleton. It seemed at once enormous, maybe eight feet tall and fifteen feet long, round-backed as a turtle, with a long, brush-shaped spiked tail and a short, flat head; and small, maybe like a three-foot-long model posted vertically sideways on a glass wall. I knew if I could get to that dinosaur everything would be fine.

(9/24/06) bomb in the desert; lighthouse post office; videotaped beatings

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A huge crowd of people stood before something like a desert at the edge of a city of enormous buildings. The people were separated from the "desert" by police barricades. But I was in the desert. In some place behind me a nuclear bomb was going to go off or be dropped.

I hurried to and behind the barricades, into the huge crowd of people. I had been blind with frenzy. But even now, on the side of the people, I was terrified. I had no idea how everybody thought just standing behind the barricade would save them from a close blast whose destruction would span for miles and miles.

I knew I had to get to a bomb shelter in one of the buildings. I ran through the streets, against the flow of everybody who ran to the barricades to see the blast. I was trying to get as deep into the city as I could. Then I would go down in to a shelter. I could see the deep blackness of the shelter.

Dream 2

It was a stormy afternoon, dark grey. I ran up a hill to a lighthouse (?).

There was a house, a "post office," at the base of the lighthouse. I had sent a FedEx package through this office. I wanted to make sure it reached its destination (which, apparently, was this post office).

I came in out of the rain, soaked. Someone (?) was with me. A nice, oldish, fattish "fisherman's wife" kind of woman sat at a desk in this homey, cluttered, office space. One of us wore a yellow raincoat.

The post office woman handed me a big, thick FedEx package. I tore it open. I believe if there was someone with me, I didn't want that person to see the contents of the package, which (she?) would try to steal.

But it turned out this wasn't the package I was looking for after all, but a package I had sent myself. I wondered if the package I was really looking for (i.e. the one I had sent myself) wasn't being kept from em by both the person with me and the post office woman.

Dream 3

A TV show interviewing a woman who had been severely beaten by her boyfriend. The woman wanted videotapes her boyfriend had of her having been beaten. At first the TV show host and "we viewers" thought she wanted the tapes for evidence during the trial (which was already stacked against the man completely). But then the woman said a whole list of videotapes she wanted from the man, things from before she even knew the man.

The list of videotapes came up on a television screen somewhere in the studio. There was a whole outline of things the man had done to the woman. It was suddenly clear, and the TV show host said so, that the woman wanted all these tapes because the bad things the man had done in the past really turned her on. In fact, the videotapes of the woman being beaten also turned the woman on.

Looking at the list of the man's acts, I couldn't believe the only thing this TV show spoke about was the man beating up this woman. The man had done a lot of awful things.

The TV show host (a woman?) was chastising the woman for getting aroused by videotapes of herself being beaten. But now the woman was a man (?) and was talking about a disease that bent his penis into a Z-shape. There was a view of the virus (?) that caused this disease. Then there was a view of the man's penis, which looked like a white straw bent into a Z-shape.

(10/12/06) the flesh-colored whale;the kids from the jets

(Entered in paper journal at 8 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was flying over bodies of water. They were in all different sizes and types but in weird, distorted senses. They all had disgusting, dirty water I was afraid to touch. At one point I flew over a "pool" like where a sandbox would be in a "playground." The "sandbox/pool" had a ghastly floor like limestone lumps or toad skin.

I stood by a swing set on a sandbar that edged into a large body of water. The singer Beck was by me, accusing me of something that implied I didn't value him as a person. I tried to prove that wasn't so.

I was flying over the body of water. Soon I was in it -- I had to go in it. I had to go under it and find a flesh-colored whale. There were lots of giant fish down there.

Somewhere far off, people were watching me. I had to prove to them that I was brave. But I also simply needed to find the whale -- regardless of how much I didn't want to.

The water disgusted me -- it was opaque and brown. I just waded in it. But I didn't want to go under the surface. There you couldn't see anything. Nothing was particularly bad. It was just disgusting -- fish deformed, fleshy, like severed arms. I was afraid they could bump into me without seeing me and spook me so much I would go crazy or contract a disease. But still I had to do it.

Dream 2

I was in some kind of building. Through wide, short windows I saw a Stealth Bomber. I called it something like an SR-10. It flew from left to right. I heard some people talking. Then I saw a couple Blackbirds. Then a whole procession of black jets, like cars of a train, blasted before the window.

I hurried outside to see. I was on a concrete area at the top of gravel hill (artificial) bordered by a fence. The jets flew low enough to be at eye level (obviously). But by the time I got outside all the black jets were gone. There were only grey jets, and only a few.

Some Mexican people, mostly kids, were chattering nearby. Some had been dropped off by some of the jets. I looked to my right, down the roughly two-hundred-foot slope, to a lot (like a parking lot!) full of jets.

The kids asked me if they could stay at my place (while they waited for the next wave of jets to come pick them up?). I thought to my place -- how I had left girl clothes everywhere and how the kids might dislike me for the girl clothes. I also thought of how dirty my place was.

I thought I couldn't have the kids stay with me and see what a loser I was. I gave the kids a weird excuse -- (I had to talk to my "landlady"?) -- making it clear I had to go away for a moment and then come back and tell the kids if they could stay, though I (possibly they) already knew it couldn't happen.

I was disappointed in myself. I thought, I can't even be brave enough to let these people into my house?

(3/28/09) movies you don't ever want to see

(Entered in paper journal at 10:15 AM at home.)

Dream #1

I was in a video store. The place was well lit, but the walls and ceiling were dark. The shelves were metal frame style shelves, mostly about shoulder-height. The place was large, and there were a few other people around.

I found a shelf of lesbian movies -- really, lesbian erotica. The cases of the movies were all dark. They were either, or both, VCR cassette cases and DVD cases. There were little cover pictures and blurbs on each case. Most of the blurbs were written like copy for a porn magazine. I was intrigued by it, but I also felt ashamed for looking at such obviously pornographic material.

There was a wide "doorway" into another section or room of the store. I walked toward it. At some point before I got into the room I saw a shelf full of pornographic films with the title PIG or P.I.G. I didn't even want to look at these cases: I knew those films were really twisted.

In the other room there was another shelf full of lesbian movies. A sign above the shelf said something like, "Due to popular demand, we have brought in more of these enticing movies." The sign may also have said something about enjoying the movies in the summer heat.

Whereas the movies I had previously been looking at were lesbian movies that seemed to have a lesbian erotica edge, these movies were really just flat-out lesbian porn. I walked way from the shelf, not really interested.

There was a tall, wall-sized shelf before me. All the movies on this file were from the PIG series. I only saw the sides of the boxes. Each box-side had a picture. I had the feeling that these films were like porn, but that they also had something like real torture or death scenes in them. I turned away and walked off to the right.

A wall-height shelf to the right had a sign over it saying, "MOVIES YOU DON'T EVER WANT TO SEE." This shelf of movies had the faces of the boxes all showing. I could tell these were movies with real death scenes in them.

I tried not to look at any of the boxes, but I saw a photo (as big as on a poster) of a heavy, dark-skinned, Hispanic (?) man with long, straight, black hair. The man wore a red t-shirt and had his hands folded as if in prayer. Between the man's hands was the end of the man's hair, or else something like hair, which was coated in or transforming into a mass of congealed blood.

I saw another photo, this one only the size of a video cassette case's front, of a young, white man with short, red hair. The young man wore a black t-shirt. Out of the left side of the man's head grew another head, which was like the man's first head, except grey and distorted.