(7/12/05) thumbtack ritual; elevator possession; mrs. piper's crystal ball

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Some view, comic book-like, of a man lying on the ground while people poked thumbtacks into him. Only three or four thumbtacks would be in at one time and they'd all be arranged according to certain points, on the body, e.g. two near the hips and one at the belly button. The man was green-skinned, with heavily inked lines for his musculature. The hands and arms of the (three or four?) people reaching to put the thumbtacks into him were red and blue.

Sometimes people would put other objects on the man's body, like charms. At the end they put three green apple cores across the man's collarbone, even spaced. At this point the man picked up a thumbtack and put it into his left (?) nipple.

All the time I thought I would not do what the man was doing to himself, even though it was some mystical ritual. But now I was definitely disgusted and afraid, and a little ashamed, of the cowardice that held me back from being willing to do it.

Dream 2

I walked into a department store in a mall, following after my NYC Americorps coworkers DO and SC, whom I thought I had upset. I walked past a female clothing section and tried not to act interested in wearing what I saw, just in case DO and SC were around and could see me.

Then I saw them. I was walking away from an elevator bank while they were walking toward it with a group of men of different races. They saw me, and as I continued walking, they followed me to talk a little more.

But DO was grabbed by one or two of the men and told to stop clowning around. DO was apparently getting married to the sister of one of these men, so he was trying to act good. SC and I headed after them to prove we, as DO's friends, were also good people. But the elevator door closed as we reached it.

We took another, hoping to follow the group down (to the basement?). But the elevator we got into was going up first. The elevator had about five or six people in it, including me and SC. As we went up the elevator got faster and faster. It changed into a tattered, faceless, metal lift in a somewhat wide, metal shaft with plenty of light and rust everywhere, so the wall and cords almost looked fleshy or organic.

People disappeared, as if straight out of memory, as we ascended. I was afraid to look down the shaft. I thought I'd be sucked out of the lift.

When we got to the top floor only SC and I were left in the elevator. Slowly the elevator changed again, into what I thought then was two airplane cockpits. But they both look now like theaters, with beige, pleather seats and a meager supply of flight controls at the front.

One, which appeared where the shaft had been, had two television screens by the flight controls. The two screens showed the inside of an airplane in some television drama. The left screen had an old, thin, female flight attendant, who seemed to be staring straight at me.

This cockpit was the down elevator. SC got into it as I thought that there was something reassuring about the flight attendant's stare, lilke it gave this whole strange experience a feeling of reality.

Now that whole area went black -- just faded out. I thought I had something to do with that, like I was making the surroundings predictable by making SC disappear as the rest of the people in the elevator had disappeared. I now sat in the larger cockpit, which had up at the front a movie screen. I sat in one of the back rows.

I was possessed, but I didn't realize it, perhaps through the rest of the dream. I wrote with my left hand into a torn piece of pinkish-purple, fibrous paper. There were some things already on the paper, like figures or sketches or small math problems. But I (writing and yet not aware) watched words appear on the page in wide, sloppy scrawl.

In the writing, something was being explained, I think, about how people had been killed or tortured. I thought a ghost was writing these words. It made me sick to think that what was writing these words had done the disgusting things people were now talking about, and that this "ghost" was right next to me, treating me as a friend.

Then "it"/"I" flipped over the paper and wrote something like, "Next week I will be in full contact with you," or, "I will be in full contact with you for one full week." I knew what this meant and I knew it was something I had wanted, but I now knew it was something disgusting, and now I didn't want it.

But now I realized (even though I still didn't know that my hand was writing) that I had been possessed by this thing. I could feel it climbing around in my chest. I threw up in two tiny spurts, each about half the size of a fist.

Dream 3

I went into what I think was an antique store. I was looking for a crystal ball used by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century psychic Leonora Piper, whom I think I called Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Alta Piper.

The store owner involved herself in my search and then concluded that she no longer had Alta Piper's crystal ball. I hadn't told the store owner that I couldn't buy the ball, anyway, and that I was just looking to be around it to see if it did in fact have any magical powers or feelings surrounding it.

The woman showed me some silvered crystals in a box and then two necklaces, one with sea-greenish, milky, translucent stones

and the other with a ruby in the center outlined by gold and with a large plate of diamonds around it.

I touched the sea-green stone necklace and felt an electric surge of pain. I dropped it back onto the table.

I really wanted the necklace now (and I really did not want it as well -- I was afraid of it), and the storekeeper could tell I wanted it. But I couldn't even afford this necklace, which was maybe one-third the price of what the crystal ball's would have been. I was ashamed to tell the woman I really couldn't afford anything in her store.

(8/2/05) subway elevator limousine

(Entered in paper journal at 4 PM at Starbucks on Broadway and Liberty in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was on a floor, maybe the twelfth, of a tall building. I had been following a lady around, maybe to help her with something, possibly to apologize for something. I don't think she wanted me to follow her. We went past an elevator bank.

She disappeared. I went into one of the elevators, thinking she'd gone in there. I wanted to go down either to the tenth or eleventh floor. I knew I'd have to skip a floor to get there, but I didn't know if the elevator could go that far.

The elevator started going down before the doors closed. As it was only halfway down the floor it stopped, with the doors open, like the elevator car was just a shaft with a floor. A woman stood in the half-open door crack and looked down on me. She had stopped the car.

I worried that now I wouldn't get down on time. I did something and was going again. But now I was going down really fast and for a longer time than I thought I should have been going. There were windows and blinds in front of me. I pulled down one of the blinds to see that we were descending onto a "subway" platform.

When I pulled away from the blinds it was like I was sitting on a Metro North train. The train stopped. I got out. I may have been with woman.

I turned around. I "saw" that I had left some papers and books in my seat. I wanted to go back and get them. But the doors had closed.

I ran up to the front of the train, which was now a long limousine with black-tinted windows. I knocked on the glass. I knew that as the car hadn't stopped moving yet the driver would open the door, although he still might be rude and bullying and prevent me from getting my stuff.

(4/27/08) elevator mission; spy-play

(Entered in paper journal at 7:55 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in an office building. The building's interior was dim, with dark walls. It was night or early morning. I had been with a group of people, probably older, wealthier people.

I got into an elevator. The floors were chosen by pressing numbers into a keypad. I must not have pressed anything when I first went in. The elevator car plunged downward. I knew I was quickly descending through underground levels. I didn't want to go too far down. I didn't want people to think I was sneaking around down here. But I also didn't know if the actual speed of the descent might kill me.

I typed "18" into the keypad. The elevator car ascended at first. But then the walls became like windows. The elevator car floated over a large body of water. The sky was a dim, pastel blue, like at dawn.

The elevator car lost speed and height. I soon fell into the water. I tread water. It was daytime, bright, with a cloudless sky. The water was murky green.

A woman tread water with me. We looked around, as if we were here on some kind of spy mission. On either side of us, possible four hundred meters away on either side, were rolling, pale, tan, deserty hills dotted with tall shrubs like junipers and pinons. Along the hills, but fixed in the water, were enormous construction cranes.

We were trying to swim to a certain part of the shore. I hoped we could avoid being directly under the cranes. Each crane held a gigantic sack of something like gravel and bricks. It looked like the cranes could drop the sacks at any time.

We were now on a shoe, walking up to a shallow cave or a tall cavity in the side of a hille. There was a woman working on an oldish looking, heavy piece of equipment.

We had to get information from her without letting on that we were spies. I looked around the area. It looked like it had been made in the hillside by the people who were carrying out all the construction on the landscape. There were steel beams against the wall. It was like the beams were propping up the walls and ceiling. There were heaps of asphalt and rubble all over.

The machinery woman was pretty but tough-looking. She was saying stuff to show off and try to attract the woman with me. The woman with me did actually seem to be attracted to the machinery woman.

The machinery woman now had us carry out a task. Whereas the cavity had just been fully open to the air, there was now a big, wooden door or gate in front of at least half of it, on our left as we faced the cavity front. We had to pull a hose through a hole at the bottom of this wooden door.

As we were drawing the hose into the cavity, I worried that I was doing a bad job and that the machinery woman would point out my inability as a reason why the woman with me shouldn't be attracted to me. But, I thought, I've done stuff like this before. I should be doing a good job.

There was a little resistance on the hose every now and then, but I seemed to work through it, which made me feel good about myself. But then the hose got really resistant. Instead of pulling hoses, the woman and I ended up pulling in two blue, wax cylinders, maybe eight inches in diameter and twelve feet long.

I stood the cylinders up before the machinery woman. The cylinders seemed to have stuff like Styrofoam cups in them. The machinery woman said something about how she liked the cylinders because they were phallic. The machinery woman said that liked to think that I was giving her my phallus, i.e. that I was having sex with her.

I was relieved by this statement. I had thought the machinery woman was a lesbian. I was jealous of the machinery woman, and afraid that she'd try to make the woman with me like her instead of me. But now it appeared that the machinery woman was actually attracted to me!

Dream #2

I stood with a woman like my sister outside a door to a plain, cheapish apartment. My sister and I had been spying on people. We had been into one other person's house just before. It had been a real challenge to get the needed information from the person, who had been quite hostile toward us. I was ready for this place to be just as much of a challenge. But my sister knocked on the door and told me she'd take care of this mission.

The door opened. The man who opened the door was my brother (though he might have looked like Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack character). Without saying anything my brother let my sister enter the house, as if she owned the place. My brother closed the door on me, as if he hadn't even seen me.

I stayed patient, realizing that I, too, would be able to enter easily. I drank a red, sticky, sweet fluid out of a long, thin, clear glass. It was just one swallow, like the dregs in a glass.

My brother opened the door, looked at me, and closed the door softly again. He then re-opened the door without appearing in the doorway.

I walked in. The apartment was empty. There were white walls and whitish carpet. Daylight came into the apartment, but it was dim and kind of sour. The front room was adjoined by a breakfast bar to the kitchen. Back from the front room was the living room. The only piece of furniture in it was a television. My brother stood to my left, just out of my sight, but very close to me.

I asked my brother questions, but very soon he understood that I was trying to get hidden information from him. He stopped talking and sat in front of the television.

My brother was a child now, around twelve years old. The TV was blaring. My brother was playing with neon green toys like the old, two-inch-tall M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling figures and with some grey, plastic fighter jets. Some of the men were arranged randomly. Others were arranged in a straight line ending in a triangle shape.

Some of the men also stood on the wings of the jets and around the jets.

(2/3/10) demoted; don't take the elevator

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

Dream #1

I was at a desk in an office space. The space was dim, as if half-lit, with the lights over me being off. The desk was like a trading desk, with a number of work spaces at a long table. The table was grey. I sat at the right end. On the wall to my right were offices with their lights on. There may also have been filing cabinets, or some other kind of office furniture, between me and the wall. I was probably alone at the desk.

As I worked on some project, a man came up and stood behind me. He asked me a few questions about what I was working on. I explained it to him. He pointed out certain things that were, he felt, not appropriate to say about our company. This mainly had to do with the fact that we didn't have certain personnel (management?) on our team yet. I didn't quite know this, being a contracted worker, not a permanent employee.

I said I would keep the items out of the report I was working on. The man then told me (the man may have been young, tall, thin, and a bit pale skinned), "Well, I think there are a lot of things I feel uneasy letting pass through with this report. In fact, let's hold on with this report. Come with me. I'll show you someone to talk with to see what work is good for you to do."

I stood up and walked to the left, down a smallish, wideish hallway, to a smaller, but more open, area with more light (tannish-yellow fluorescent). Along the right wall were large, tan filing cabinets. In the center of the room were two folding tables, maybe six feet long each, set end-to-end with each other. Along the wall were offices. Farther up, I could see a conference room, lit by natural light. The man pointed me to a seat near me on the right end of the table. I sat down and faced the filing cabinets.

Another man had come and sit down in the space across from mine, possibly as I had been sitting down myself. The man was extremely thin, and possibly tall. He was white, but very tan. His skin had a hardened, dried-out look. He had blue-green eyes that looked pale, even though they weren't. His head and face were slightly stubby. His head had a few texture-lines, from veins. In a couple places, those veins had been scratched or cut, and patches of dried blood were caked to them. The man wore a vivid, pine-green shirt with thick, dense paisley designs outlined in black.

I though, for some reason, that this man was gay. But I could also tell that the man's job wasn't the same as my job. I was being brought here, I feared, so I could be taught how to do an easier, lower-level job. I was afraid that it had been decided that I was no longer competent to do the higher-level work I'd been doing.

Dream #2

I was in a lobby-like area, possibly on the second floor of a building. The area was wide, tall, open, with white floors that looked like hospital floors.

I walked into an elevator. The elevator had two doors, one before me and one to my left. As I got on the elevator, a couple women from my work ran toward the elevator, telling me not to get on.

The elevator door closed, but I may have stuck my arm in the left door to reopen it, then looked around the corner to find the women, who had been standing before the door.