(12/1/04) mucous rock star; acne mash

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 PM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I had a white, mucous-like substance forming bumps on the skin of my forearms. I went up and sang with a rock and roll group on some small stage with plain, white lighting. The stage was barely elevated from the floor.

I forgot the words to the song. I left the stage. I sat in a huge, puffy chair with someone, some girl I knew. The chair was velvet and purple.

The bumps had stopped on my arms. But now they came back.

I was in my mom's garage. It was daytime. I saw how the whitish, milky, translucent bumps sank back down into my pores and created huge sinks and pits. I knew the worry was over. I did something else in the garage, but I don't remember it now.

Dream 2

I was in a dim room at a small, dark, wood table with my friend R and his friend KZ. We were playing cards. I made some joke to KZ. He didn't really get it. I walked away and sat on the floor with R, who was just suddenly there. He said something about how he liked my jokes.

The room faded into a pastoral setting a hillside with trimmed grass and a few thick trees. I don't know what two people I was now sitting with. But I got up and walked quickly away when a bee came toward me. It was kind of rough and golden brown yellow. I tried not to act too worried, like I was just going for a short walk.

I walked along the edge of a square that was thickly packed with trees. I walked along a wide strip of short, trampled grass and stones. i went up a slight incline before turning right and walking on a flat surface.

As I walked I heard a strange conversation, which seemed to have been given by two early twentieth-century psychologists. They spoke of a young woman who had acne. One psychologist had determined this acne was psychosomatic, but not in the usual way. The woman chose to eat foods, to force herself into situations where she had to eat foods, which caused acne. The two main foods were green olives and white, dry, crumbly cheese like feta. I'm not sure whether this food physically caused acne or whether this food caused a separate psychosomatic reaction.

I now came to another right turn in this square walk. A much wider, road-like path with a large, green traffic sign went off to my left as I faced the third side of this square. I think I rejected that path because I didn't want people to think I had gotten lost. I got back to the beginning of the square, which was in the center of the fourth side, i.e.

I was now a son for a father who had come to visit. My brother and sister were there. The place was a dark, stage-like room now. My dad was an attractive, healthy, blonde man with blue eyes. He was making arrangements for us to stay at a hotel. I was conciliatory and cheerful. I flopped sideways into a tall, plush, purple velvet chair.

My mom was there. I made some lighthearted joke to her about "my dad." She said something like, "I get that joke. But don't say it too loud. You know how sensitive your dad gets."

I now stood up quickly, like I had been asleep in a room full of friends and had suddenly realized the absence of one of them. I turned around. R's friend SM was there. We had been watching a movie. I felt R had left. I thought I had told some joke R had found insulting and that he'd left. Then I realized I was wrong. I asked SM, "Is he taking out the dog?" She said yes.

Now R came in with the dog. We all turned to watch the TV, which played some episode of M*A*S*H. The view was of a foot that had been blown off the leg of one of the main characters.

We tried to remember, before the reveal, which character had lost a foot. I said, "Maybe Captain XXXXX." This was apparently one of the older men on the show. I wasn't even sure I'd gotten his name right.

Now it was no longer certain whether the man had only had his foot blown off or if his whole body except for this bloody foot on the bed had been vaporized.

(2/5/06) ghost ants; david bowie and the black man

(Entered in paper journal at 10:05 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was somewhere like a national park visitor center or some camp center in the woods. I sat with my back against a tree. My legs were bare and bent up against my chest. Some ants, not many, but rather large, maybe two inches long, and colored like a bruising sweetgum leaf in late November, pink and purple, crawled near me and then up onto my legs.

The ants were going through a mating process. I had to gather them up while they were doing this. But I was too fascinated watching them to do anything. But now as they finished they dissolved, or rather deflated like dry husks and then fizzed away. I knew I had missed my chance to take their magic.

There were other ants, and these now crawled up on me. I thought, I have the chance to take the magic again. But I didn't want to touch the ants because I thought they were diseased. Also, these ants were clear, like soba noodles (?). I thought they were like ghosts of the ants that had already mated. These ants would walk up on my knees and "vomit" a thick, yellow glop out of their foreheads. Then they and the glop would fizz and spike violently.

Two "researchers" saw what was going on. They and I took samples of the fizz (this, by the way, was impossible -- the ants vanished in the fizz; the fizz didn't exist afterwards) in to a little, shed-like laboratory. I stood at a weird angle relative to the "researchers," like I was up in a corner of the room, looking down at them.

The researchers stood over a white, square, plastic tub of water. They figured either that the ants fizzed because of a disease or that they fizzed into a disease. If either of these hypotheses turned out positive, I was probably going to die from the disease.

The researchers dropped the fizz into the water. This may have been done by "pinching" water out of something like a plastic thermos-lid-like cup and then sprinkling the "pinched" water into the tub. The fizz created a violent fizzing on a small area in the center of the surface of the water. This really didn't mean anything, one way or the other -- yet.

I couldn't stay in the room any longer. I figured I was just going to die. I went out to find more ants. I wanted to prove they didn't have a disease.

Dream 2

I saw a video of David Bowie and a black man singing at a concert. the black man was large and had his head resting joyfully on David Bowie's left shoulder.

I now saw a newspaper photo of David Bowie being kissed and held by the black man. The black man didn't really want people to know about his relationship with David Bowie, but he also liked him, and they were "awesome" in concert.

Now David Bowie and the black man were singing a catchy song I didn't really like. The stage had a crystal-blue background against which everything looked really nice.

Now a bunch of famous people, mostly black, came out on stage. Some people came out on a long, low, chrome motorcycle. The chorus of the catchy song was repeated over and over. Now I saw it all as if from a far back, way up seat.

(8/3/06) the lawyer in the cave; i got quartz in me

(Entered in paper journal at 5:57 PM on N-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan to 7th Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

Something like a television show where a woman went down into a deep cave (an "ethanol plant") to help workers fight for their rights (?). None of the men could believe the woman had come down here. She was a woman and a lawyer. The men didn't expect women in these situations. They also didn't expect white collar people like lawyers to come down here.

I saw a few views of men behind weird veils of subterranean formations like beaded curtains. There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere. The whole view was fuzzy like a TV with bad reception.

The woman got older and a little more eccentric as she walked farther. It became clear she was tough and talented at fighting for people in these situations.

The woman encountered one "miner" who bashed open a bubble-like stone formation to reveal a cauldron full of some fizzy, acidic, black, warm liquid. The miner said this was some kind of dissolving fluid that helped to make the "ethanol," but that close contact with the liquid would dissolve living organisms. Nevertheless, the man reached his arms down into the liquid to pull out something like a pelt.

The woman was in a room (still deep in the cave), sitting on a table with her legs stretched out. She had a shawl over her legs. She was desperately pulling the shawl all over her body.

I (in the room now?) was afraid and disappointed because the woman might have been getting sick. A lot of the miners came in now and spoke to the woman about the cause of their lawsuit. I saw (in pictures) that a beagle had been killed by the dangerous liquid. I wondered if this was the only reason for the lawsuit. It didn't seem like enough.

The beagle lay on its side on the floor at the woman's feet, like it had just carelessly been thrown or left there. It looked preserved -- stuffed -- almost salted somehow.

Dream 2

It was a sunny day. I had come to a river in a big city, like the Hudson in New York, to pick up a little boat for a trip I was probably taking for work. I walked with an old man who looked like a fisherman on something like a boat or a platform on the water. The platform was white, plastic-like, and thick, but hollow feeling, like the lid of a Coleman cooler. It was huge and featureless.

We got to the edge, near the underside of an enormous bridge overlooking the city shore. The man pointed out a pedal boat (like the boats at Central Park or at lakes at amusement parks -- flat, plastic, square devices you pedal to move along the water). The pedal boat was half-submerged in the water.

This was apparently my boat. I thought, I didn't expect the boat to be so flimsy and wet. I tried to figure how I could fit my backpack into the boat so it wouldn't get drenched in one of the seemingly unavoidable puddles of dirty water in the boat.

I said I'd take the boat. We walked back toward a cabin that was on steadier footing.

The man now had an assistant who told me something I couldn't understand. I asked the man to repeat. He said, "The boss says you have to take the 3:15 AM ferry back. That's the latest one. But you have to take it, because you have to have the boat back at 6:30 AM (?)."

There were a lot of people, all (?) of whom I knew, mingling around the cabin, which was wood-paneled and like a new cabin on a nice yacht. I hemmed and hawed about taking the ferry. I would be working until late at night, and then I'd have to take this awkwardly late ferry.

At some point I was walking by a railway, in a thin depression. The depression became a space before wide windows in a house.

I hit my toe and got a big sliver of glass in it. I pulled the sliver out. It was now a one-inch-long quartz crystal with a point and even, solid facets. It was veined, almost marbled, with my blood.

I was panicked. I thought I would get a disease from this piece of glass (which I also still held in my hand, i.e. along with the quartz). But then I thought the crystal (I didn't call it quartz yet) was mystical, that somehow I would get some kind of power from it.

But then the panic came over me again. I stood up and hurried to some man in the distance, saying, "Quartz! I got quartz in me!" in a jittery, repulsed, quivering tone.

(10/16/07) where the new building was; emergency party; like a worm made out of brains

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I watched, from the back passenger seat, a car pass a field with trees like cherry trees. Somehow I thought this was where my company's new building would be (in waking life, my company was in the final planning stages for moving into a new building -- we would be fully moved in, if I remember correctly, by about July of 2008 -- only to be moved into another building in January of 2009!)

I thought, This would be a nice area to take runs. There was a path running through the field. We passed along a creek or river at the bottom of a slope of rocks. The creek itself was rocky. An empty boat, with two paddles, clanked along some of the rocks.

I thought, But this is New York City. The roads are bad on (my boss) BS' knees. We really couldn't come up with a running route that would be good for BS. I also thought of asking my co-worker CJ if he wanted to run.

We passed another river, which ran at the bottom of a waterfall. The waterfall gushed over huge, round, coppery rocks and flooded the river.

We passed a building that was built in three sections. I saw it from the back. The two back sections were roundish with green, metallic framing for the windows. The front section rose slightly above the back sections and was octagonal, probably of pink stone, with a shallow, a-frame roof. It was in a field of dry, yellow-tan and orange-tan grass.

Now it was like I sat backwards, looking out the back window, in the backseat and on the driver's side. My mom was driving the car. My brother and sister were also in the car. We drove on a straight road, through slightly rolling stretches of flat plains -- yellowy-tan grass with some hints of green and orange and some glimpses of rich (?), brown soil beneath. There were occasional, thin clumps of trees, the green of their leafs as pale as floating clouds.

Then I saw a white tree. It was de-limbed, so all it was was a white trunk with four limb-stumps coming off of it. It looked like a wild, raging horse to me.

I thought my mom would be impressed by how much I liked looking out the window. I asked my mom some question relating to telling her about the things my siblings and I had done. My mom surprised me by answering something like, "I don't care. Don't tell me anything." I tried to change that statement into something more positive in my mind.

We passed a stand of thin aspen trees that edged before some tall, redbrick buildings like apartment complexes.

Dream #2

I sat in my desk at work. There was an alarm. A man's voice came on over the alarm's intercom speaker. The man announced a party (?) in XXXXX's office.

When the alarm had first come on, I had been afraid, wondering if the announcement would be for an actual emergency. I had worried whether I would do everything alright and help everybody effectively through the emergency. Now I was a little disappointed. It was just a birthday party?

For some reason I wasn't wearing shoes. But my shoes were sitting right next to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to the cubicle in front of the office where the party was. The party was, somehow, both in the office and down the hall.

The party was for one of my co-workers, AR, who was, like myself, an Administrative Assistant. Someone told AR, "You could be head of GM (i.e. Global Markets) one day! You throw parties so well!"

I was disappointed. Hadn't my old co-worker and mentor ES, now herself an Analyst like my (and, before, her) boss BS, said to me once, "You could be CEO of this company one day"? (I'm pretty sure that in waking life ES never told me that, although she has always complimented me on my "abilities" -- whatever those abilities are/were!)

I now reflected, Maybe you just said all that stuff to kind of puff up your assistants, make them feel more important than you really think they are, just so you can keep them working. How else, I thought in my jealousy, could someone make such a kind statement about AR, who, I peevishly thought, scarcely worked as hard as I worked?

I didn't even want to go into the room now. I was too ashamed. I took my time putting on my shoes.

AR called, "Preemie, get in here!"

I said, "I'm coming."

She said, "I've been making decisions to be nice. But pretty soon I'm going to have to stop making decisions!"

I thought, Nobody's going to talk to me that way!

But now both AR and ES were out in the cubicle with me. They were both saying nice things to me.

Dream #3

I sat watching a movie. I walked out and then back in. I walked up to my seat as the movie was ending. There were shots of blue sky and power lines, vistas of plains, and other shots I loved. The narrative of the film ended, a song began playing, and the credits began to roll.

But as the song started, a voice (of some Hispanic boy?) called out, "Hey, uh... The film is pretty much ended, everybody. We would appreciate it if you got up and left."

I was in a front row. I had my stuff sitting against the railing in front of me. I stood to pick it up. I had forgotten that I had brought a coat. I had actually brought a lot more than I had remembered.

I walked out into the hallway, which was like the hallway in a city building, just off from the reception lobby. I stood in a weird junction of hallways and right by a garbage can. I stood talking with two black girls.

The girls mentioned a young man, one of their co-workers (they all worked at this movie-house), who did a lot of other stuff. I wasn't sure what the "other stuff" was. I asked, "Does he work somewhere else, too?"

The girls got upset, like I had insinuated that all the boy could do was work in places like this. One of them said, "No. He goes to school. He's studying to be a scientist."

We talked a little more. Then I had to leave. One of the girls walked with me out into the dark, blue-grey evening. The girl smiled and said, "I've always wanted to see the car you drive."

We stood in a mostly empty shopping mall parking lot. The movie-house was now more like a restaurant. I saw my car in the distance. It was an old, beat-up car, like one I drove in my last year of high school -- except that the paint job on the car was now all new and shiny.

I thought, I can't let the girl see that thing. Besides, this girl wasn't the girl I wanted. Both girls were pretty. But the girl I liked, the other girl I'd been talking with in the movie-house hallway, had rounder eyes, not thin eyes like this girl.

The girl with me stopped to talk with a mother and her kids, who stood by a van. I thought, While the girl's not paying attention I can drive away. That way she won't see my awful car.

I turned to tell the girl goodbye. But I saw her from behind and was too surprised to say anything. The girl was now short, ugly, and poor-looking (???!!! -- I'm sometimes shocked by the things I've said!). She wore a blue t-shirt and tight blue jeans which showed off her big bottom. Her big bottom really turned me off.

A black man who was about my height and a little bigger than I, smart-looking, with thin-rimmed eyeglasses, walked past me. I must have thought this was the friend the two women had been talking about in the movie-house hallway.

I thought, Now's my chance to prove I don't think the girls' friend is capable only of working in a movie theater. I apparently thought I could do this simply by making small talk with the man in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said, "Hey, man, we'll see you later."

The man walked past me without even regarding me. I thought, Okay -- you show kindness and it isn't returned!

I walked toward my car. My mom walked beside me and to my left. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The phone (a regular, old-style flip-phone -- as I remember it from waking life, a black Nokia) was cracked. I thought, Maybe it's just cracked on the surface. But I opened it to see that the crack ran across all its surfaces. I looked at the sides. They were messed up, too.

I almost started crying. I thought, What did I do to make this happen? Can't I take care of anything I own?

It was now more like daytime. The car was by the entrance to the mall. My mom and I were at the end of the parking aisle, maybe twenty feet from the car. We passed a needle-leafed tree in a planting island.

I had been speaking with my mom and barely attending the stout tree. But, reflecting on the tree after we'd passed it, it struck me that the tree had weird, tiered, pink and white flowers on it. I told my mom, "Let's go back. That tree looks weird."

We went back. I looked at the branches. There were strange, but somehow sensible, tan-brown, brittle, cone-shaped things standing atop the thin branches. I thought, Maybe I just mistook these things for flowers.

But then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the pink and white flower. I hadn't seen the flower because it was on the periphery of the tree, not in the center, where I had focused my gaze.

The trunk of the tree seemed to end about two feet up from the ground. From the top of the trunk came an agave-like plant with spiny, yellow, purple, and green leafs. I said, "That's what I thought I saw! Isn't it odd?"

I reached out to touch the plant, to make sure I was seeing leafs and not more cones. The plant felt odd. And when I pulled my hand back, I noticed the top leafs moving, as if of their own volition. I thought, That can't be real. I have to be seeing things.

My mom and I were walking away. But the plant really bugged me. I had to look at it again. I told my mom, "Something else didn't make sense." I didn't want to tell my mom what didn't make sense -- namely, that the plant seemed to be moving on its own.

We went back to the tree. Now I saw that the plant grew out of a hollow in the top of the tree trunk -- although it was a part of the tree. I saw steady, directed movement from within the trunk. I knew the movement wasn't volitional, but that it was growth -- life.

I saw a spiky (like a sea-cucumber), worm-like appendage emerge from beneath the leafs. I shouted to my mom, "See?! I wasn't imagining! This thing is growing quicker than normal!"

The thing emerged, as huge as a boa constrictor, and wove its way through the thin branches of the tree. It was like a worm made out of brains, with a head like a gigantic breast. It hung over a branch above us. I knew if it touched us it would incorporate us.

I told my mom, "Run to the car!" We ran and got in.

The thing was growing. It had taken over the tree and spread toward us through the parking lot. I didn't know if we could get started and drive away quickly enough.

I saw a car coming from an underground parking garage to the left of the tree. Now the parking garage was like a car wash. It sprayed water all over the car. Jets of water flew outside the garage. They hit the plant-thing. As soon as they did, the thing dissolved into yellowy, thickish, soapy-looking water.

I hoped that more cars would come through the garage to get washed. The thing was dissolved now, but I felt like it would regain its consistency. I thought that more water needed to hit the thing before it would lose its ability to re-stabilize.

(12/27/08) a tangle tale; the gravel pit

(Entered in paper journal at 9:23 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood out on an open field by myself on a greyish, warm day. I was flying on a red kite. The kite was really big and seemed to be at a towering height.

At some point I may have seen a tangle of other kites, which were red and blue. I may have tried to avoid the tangle. My kite avoided the tangle, but then a strong wind came up and dissolved the kite. All that was left was the frame, and possibly a clear, gelatinous film where the red plastic (?) had been.

The kite may have crashed, and I may have run out of the way of it. I now looked at the tangle of red and blue kites. It was a bundle of long strips of red and blue kite fabric. The strips reached up to the towering distance my kite had reached, but they touched down to the ground as well.

I saw one of the strips lose its ability to fly. It seemed to disjoin from all the other strips and to slide out of the body of the tangle under its own weight. I was afraid the if one strip fell, the whole mass of strips would fall, and that if they fell on me, they would kill me.

I ran out of the way, though not particularly panicked. It was like as soon as I started running I became less afraid, remembering how lightweight and soft kite material really is.

I may have seen the very barren structure of what would be a tall building like a warehouse or movie theater when it was fully constructed. I now stood under a tarp-tent with a white roof and plastic, white poles.

There were people in line, possibly "to watch" the kites. I got in line, but some old man butted in front of me in a really annoying way. The man was shortish, bald, fattish, with leathery, tan skin and brownish sunglasses. He had a little girl, maybe his daughter, with him.

I at first tried not to show how annoyed I was at him. But I suddenly got uncontrollably angry. I got close to him and made gross noises. Then I actually hit his right ear. This may have caused some kind of stir. The line may have broken up, the people in line may have turned to gather around me, thinking I was crazy.

Dream #2

I walked out onto a strange field with my mom. The day was grey with heavy clouds. The field was dark brown, wet earth with tall clumps of grass.

My mom was leading a group of us on some mission. My mom may have stood on or before something like a small pond that was either frozen over or had solid matter in it that could be walked on. She was taking an instrument like a shovel or jackhammer and either breaking the ice to take something out of the water or taking the solid pieces out of the water.

My mom called and waved to the others of us as if she were a military leader. The others went up to the body of water, which had a dark, grey metallic gleam to it. Somehow the whole atmosphere looked "as if" it were stormy and apocalyptic.

I didn't go with the others, however. I had a bag of bones (?) in my hand. I needed to go bury the bones. My mom yelled after me to come with everybody else. She sounded very threatening. I yelled, "Fuck you! I have to take care of my own things!"

The "bones" were now seeds. Then the seeds were encased in the squares of a chocolate bar. I walked over to a gravely pit. The pit was a burial pit. The pit had a lattice structure, a grid of wood, embedded in it.

I remembered that the bones of John Lennon had been buried here. I didn't want to disturb the bones. I was afraid they would bring John Lennon back as a bad spirit. I also knew I (or others?) had buried other seeds within this pit. The seeds themselves were like bones, and disturbing them, I feared, would also have bad consequences. Nevertheless I tossed in the (now) almonds, which were coated in the melted chocolate of a candy bar (although some were still in full squares), into the burial pit.

But when I pushed my "shovel" -- some weird, metallic instrument like a roto-rooter with a spade tip -- into the gravel, all the gravel in the pit began sinking. In some squares of the grid, the gravel receded entirely, revealing something like a living space below, almost like an ugly, messy version of Bugs Bunny's house, maybe with some skulls lying around.

I thought I would need to find more gravel to fill the pit back up. The pit may have needed to be full for the magic of the seeds to work. But my fear of the consequences of disturbing the bones and the seed-bones may have caused the pit to lose its gravel.