(7/2/05) stove in my room; the magical paper; verifying the eagle

(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM at Soap Opera Landromat on 116th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I went into "my" "bedroom" and closed the door to avoid the noise of my roommates. The stove was in my bedroom and took up most of the space. All four burners had something on them. I turned on the back left burner, not aware whether any other burner was on.

The burner turned on powerfully. Blue flames spread all up the sides of the "pan," which was like a thick, deep skillet. I panicked. I may have tried to turn down the skillet, but I think the flames reached out for me whenever my hands got too close to the stove. Now I realized all the other burners were in use.

I thought I should open the door for my roommates, who were standing outside my door and talking about how I always lock myself in. I couldn't figure out why I had the stove in my bedroom. Now the front right burner hissed and pressed out a huge plume of smoke. I turned off all the burners, but everything was still going. I noticed how filthy everything was, too.

Dream 2

An Asian woman gave her student or child (who I may have been) a napkin or a strip of brownish, natural- or recycled-looking paper with what looks now like Chinese calligraphy on it. During the course of the day(s) the child kept wanting to get rid of the paper (?). The woman scolded him strongly. "I" couldn't tell why.

Now it was night. (I'm pretty sure I was the child now.) The child stood in a wide, vast courtyard like at a Chinese palace. In the center of this courtyard was a shrine or temple. The woman, now in beautiful, formal, religious attire, including a flowing headdress, sat at an altar.

From somewhere, pale, peach-colored flames glowed and lit the underside of the woman's face brightly. The woman was saying a spell to get rid of a demon or a curse. Somehow this was the moment, it was implied, for which the child's strip of paper would be needed.

Now the child (I?) had this paper in his hand, but it had also been given up during the day. The Asian woman also had it in her hand, even though it had been given up. (At this point I no longer had the child's view but a "low-angle shot" of the woman sitting before the altar.) The woman put the strip of paper before the altar and said some words, maybe reading it.

But wind, I believe convection from the fire, blew the strip of paper out of the woman's hands. It was like the strip of paper dissolved, though once again, the paper could still be seen floating in the air, not really even going higher than two feet above the woman's head.

Dream 3

It was daytime. I was in the woods with a group of folks who were friends and coworkers. I think we were in a pine forest. The feeling was coppery more than green.

We were doing some research. Everybody had been far more observant than I, and I was jealous and downhearted. Now I saw a bird I took to be a red-tailed hawk. I called it out to everybody as it flew over us. Everybody looked and congratulated me, but I thought they were being patronizing. On a closer look, the bird looked too thin to be a red-tailer. It had a lot of grey and black on it, too.

Now it was night. We were across a river from where we had been. We had to come back to verify the presence of the hawk both at day and night. If the hawk did not appear at night, it was an illusion. We might have started calling it an eagle at this point.

Somehow, as if the area were lit by a back-light, we could make out a limb possibly from a downed tree, pretty much parallel with the ground and about eight feet high. We had to sit all night and stare at that branch. The instant we saw the "eagle" we had to wade across the river and look at the eagle up close.

I could feel the approach, though I also thought the "eagle" had to be an illusion and couldn't possibly arrive.

(Continued entry at 8:30 AM on downtown-bound C-train from 116th Street station.)

At the moment when the anticipation got eeriest an owl landed on a branch behind us. Some of us may have turned around to look. I, jealously guarding my chance at "the big moment," didn't turn around.

In a watery, automatic voice, the owl recited a rhyming poem that ended in the line, "Have you ever been an owl?" The poem insinuated I had been an owl. I didn't want to believe that. I wanted to believe I had been an "eagle" and thus had a close connection with the one we were to see. I waited for the owl to say more. But it said nothing.

I now saw, low on the opposite bank of the river, two bears and either a dog or an elk (?!) on a narrow shelf of grass. I felt there was a kinship between all three animals. But I didn't think the animals did enough to show this.

The "elk" now somehow nuzzled a huge clump of grass over to a bear. The bear began gnashing and tearing at the grass. I smiled as if this were cute. But I couldn't figure out why I thought such a violent, almost insane, action was cute.

Now the "eagle" landed on the limb. I don't know if I was first to see it. Two of us, I and someone like my brother or my friend R, were picked up to cross the river.

(Continued at 8:47 AM on the 7-train from Times Square.)

We wore hip waders. We stood on a shelf of land and maybe a couple boulders that jutted out of the water. My friend was ready to go. But I was hesitant. I thought about how squishy the mud would be in the river and how cold the water would be at night. Then I made a big deal about taking everything out of my pockets so nothing would get wet.

My friend may have gone ahead of me. Either way, I knew I was taking too long getting into the water.

(2/27/08) animal cruelty

(Entered in paper journal at 5:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I stood before a front yard. Strange animals ran around in the yard. There were a pack of three animals like brown bears that were somehow distorted or elongated and slimy looking.

An animal like an enormous sheep ran unwittingly up to the lead bear. It almost nestled right against the bear's shoulder. The bear became very violent.

Some animal like a dog, the same color as the bear, began chasing after me. I jumped up in the air and flew backwards across the street, never quite getting high enough in the air to stop being nervous about the dog-like animal biting my feet. I flew over and around a vehicle like a van.

I was now watching a video of the street scene. The video was of a young man, possibly one of my friends, who had treated animals cruelly. The video showed the man in the backseat of a rundown, large car from the 1980s.

Two small, thin monkeys with black fur and gorilla-like faces ran around in the backseat of the car with the young man. Now in the video one of the monkeys was dead. The man had killed the monkey and was now sucking at its head, eating its brains. I saw this again, but now from outside the car.

(12/27/09) home in the woods; follow that mom!

(Entered in paper journal at 8:24 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with someone, maybe my brother, in the woods. We were near our/my car, which was stopped on a dirt road. The weather was cold. It was nearing night.

Now the night had passed. I had spent the whole night here, in a tent. The other person had "gone back." I stood near the car and looked at the woods around me. I was proud for having camped here all night.

Now I had to go hiking through the woods. But the light was still dark blue-grey, pre-sunrise light. I felt afraid to go into the deep woods in the darkness, or even in the light. I worried that a wild animal would attack and eat me. The area around me was grassy with the occasional shrub or pine tree dotting the landscape, and edged by a deep forest of pine trees.

Suddenly I noticed a coyote hiding behind a shrub and looking at me. I got afraid and made some aggressive kicking move at the coyote, scaring the coyote out of the shrub, which was maybe fifty feet away from me. The coyote trotted away, looking at me shyly. I felt bad, thinking I'd scared away a perfectly innocent coyote. I may have seen a domesticated dog off to the left as the coyote wandered off to the right. I may also have seen another, unrecognizable animal.

I was now back "at home," which was a house like a double-wide trailer at the head of the trail I'd taken into the woods. I stood with a group of people in my family, including my Aunt B and Uncle M. I stood at eye level with a tangled bunch of different, tall-stalked wildflowers. The morning was bright, sunny, and kind of warm, and the flowers and stalks glittered with dew.

Somewhere in a little clearing amid these flowers, I knew, a tent stood up on an oval of lawn. My little cousins (even though in waking life they are no longer little) had camped there the night before. Either my Uncle M or Aunt B was telling me that the kids had camped out here for a little while, but that they had gotten scared or cold and that Uncle M had to bring them in.

Dream #2

I was riding in the backseat (?) and passenger side of my grandma P's car.  My grandma P drove, and either my brother or sister was also in the car. It was a golden, sunny day. We were driving up a steep hill in a residential neighborhood, but we were also near either a busy road or a highway.

Suddenly my mom pulled up from behind us to our right. She yelled out her window at us that she had to go to XXXXX (either a hospital or a jail or both), possibly to see my brother, and that she couldn't stop, she had to keep driving there. So, she said, she would meet us back at home, but she didn't know when, maybe not even today. She said it in such a nonchalant and yet urgent manner that I at first thought all was completely fine.

But suddenly I realized I was headed for the airport, to go back home to New York, pretty soon. I had to get back home. But my mom had all my luggage, including my airplane ticket, in her car. We were going to meet at her house so she could give me all that stuff. But now she wanted to have all of us sit there and wait while she went off and did whatever! I knew the only reason she was doing this was to make me miss my flight.

I told my grandma, "Follow my mom's car! We're going wherever she's going. I'm getting my ticket and getting out of here!"

My mom was already out of sight, but I think we had an idea of where we were going. We drove toward some facility, hoping we were going to the right place. But I wasn't sure we were.

(2/8/10) attacking a mountain lion; internet during power outage

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM, on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was out in the woods, possibly with a group of people (my family?). It was night. I was thinking (and possibly talking) about the dangerous creatures in the woods. At one point I may either have been thinking about or actually walking around in a large circle maybe thirty feet in diameter, in the blue light of the moon.

A mountain lion (which I may have called a wolf) may have come near me or tried to attack me. I jumped on its back and attacked it somehow, possibly by jamming my elbow into the vertebrae between it shoulder-blades. I was still talking/thinking (as if in narration) about encountering dangerous creatures in the woods.

Dream #2

I was in my room, laying down. I looked up from the head of my "bed" and saw, in the dark, "my dog" (possibly a Cocker Spaniel, like my family's dog had been). The dog seemed to be afraid of something. She scurried away and hid behind some boxes at the corner of my room.

I wondered why the dog would be afraid. I sat up to look at her. I suddenly realized it was dark in my room, even though I always kept the lights on in my room at night. At first I thought that maybe I'd started turning off my lights. But I knew that wasn't so, and that something was wrong. Somehow I knew that a power outage had occurred.

I may have been holding a PDA of some sort, or a mobile phone like a G1. It was turned off. I thought I should check the internet on my BlackBerry to see what it had to say. My BlackBerry, I knew, was battery powered. So I should be able to get some news from the internet. But even if I couldn't get news from the internet, I could at least use the screen for light.