(9/29/04) lingerie ad posters; mountain flood; grandpa at his own funeral; mother electrocutes nephew; no emergency hires needed

(Entered in paper journal at 12:17 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Had dream where Grandpa died, came and contacted me.

Mother on mantel.

Newspaper ad murals.

Me in lingerie, wish mom would go so I could change. Mom thinks I'm ungrateful. Grandma P somewhere.

Dream 2

Run outside some place. Mountain path back to home washed to straight cliff by rain. Walk around cliff. Friend falls down path. I shout, No. Friend okay, think, I'm an idiot.

Get up path. Empty river full of bugs. Run down logs. Hear flood coming. Now full of water.

In boat. Crash into other boat. Knock something off. Move nose of other boat crash into boat. Signs to my apartment. In long, dry flume like boat floor. Move nose of another boat. More water. Crash, break boat in half.

Upset. SDM says, Don't worry. But I wish I could've been a good transvestite.

Dream 3

Reading newspaper. Somehow Grandma J asks me about author. Article about South NM, some reservation. From somewhere Grandpa heard. Asks if this is book about Anthrax in XXXXX pueblo. If so, he really feels for those guys. I look, can't make out words, just say yes. See pictures of pottery and crack pipes.

Now TV commercial. Some guy in amber satin dress shirt pulls elbow to bald head, says, This deal from just about now to just about end of Christmas. Another commercial. Woman talking slow, naive, and quiet, voice like Grandma J, but looks like cartoon stuffed person. I think about how voice overs created.

Now in line in empty, church-like room. Don't know other people, but Grandpa behind me. I say, "They've been looking all over for Grandpa."

Grandpa says, "Well, yes, your mom has said he's going somewhere soon. If you know what I mean."

I know now we were in line to see casket. I say, "Oh, I couldn't stand it, to see him dead."

Now feel the pressing of fingers on right side of face. At first afraid, but know it's Grandpa's spirit. Lean into it, hoping to stop being afraid.

Suddenly pull myself "out of" sleep, "sit up" in bed, cry, Grandpa! Now eyes really open (?), try to find clock, takes a second to actually roll head and eyes over to clock without strange blackouts. But at last roll head over and see time is about 12:17.

***

(Daytime paper journal entries.)

Five dreams remembered from last night. I'll write down the last two first, as they aren't written in the Ghost Book.

Dream 5

It was night. I was in a building or outside (?) with a whole lot of people. But in particular I was with some friends, just one or two, all unknown now. My old Los Alamos Americorps roommate B came up to us. He said something like, "Hey, Preemie."

I was happy to see him. It was a relief, because I hoped he could get me "off the hook" for not having been out on a firefighting crew for one of this season's fires.

B came right up to me and said, "Hey, man, too bad we didn't get to see you this year, but we barely needed any emergency hires."

I now looked at my friends as if to say, Now see? That's the truth.

Dream 4

It was a cloudy day. I was in some kind of playground or large yard in which there was a sandbox. I was there with my mom and my oldest nephew and possibly with my sister. My nephew sat under a brown-painted steel structure with a staple-shape, i.e.

It was like the monkey bars, except it seemed to have been made out of rebar and it was less than three feet tall. My nephew, sitting cross-legged on the ground, could easily reach up and grab the rebar.

Now I stood on one side of the bars and my mom stood across from me. We were about ten feet apart. My mom told me she was heading in for a while. I told her, "Don't go." I don't know if I also was going somewhere. But, regardless, I thought that once my mom left, nobody would be there to watch my nephew. I told my mom, "If you leave, nobody'll be able to stop him from grabbing those bars and electrocuting himself to death."

My mom said, "Oh, nothing like that's going to happen." She started walking away.

My nephew, hearing what I had said, reached up and grabbed a bar just to test it out. Nothing happened.

My mom got mad. She went over to the bars while my nephew held them. She yelled, "You don't believe this can hurt you? Well it isn't on right now. That's why you aren't feeling anything. You're lucky. Here. I'll give you a taste of what it's like."

She bent down and pressed a ping-pong ball-sized button in a brown box about the size of two outdoor power outlet boxes. My nephew jolted and then fell over on his right side. My mom acted surprised, as if she couldn't have seen that coming. My nephew just lay on the ground, unresponsive.

Dream 1

I was in an empty room, a really beautiful room, actually. It was maybe thirty feet by thirty feet by ten feet. The walls were white, stucco-like material with arches built into them, just arches for show, like fake hearths or places where portraits might be fastened. Over the "hearths" were mantels. The "hearths" were set up in the walls on something like steps about one and a half feet tall.

There were exits from the room, into fluorescent-lit hallways, I think, but I wasn't really concentrating on them. The tiles were brick red porcelain with black cement between. The light was reddish pink, dim, with undertones of dim incandescent.

I walked around in thong panties and a bra and something like a pink, sheer, babydoll outfit or some kind of sheer, pink robe type thing. My mom now stood up in one of the mantels in a corner of the room, like a sculpted sentry. My grandma P stood somewhere like this as well.

In between my mother and I, pasted on the wall, were huge newsprint ads for Target and Mervyn's. I wanted to look at these ads because I wanted to buy some girl clothes and panties. But I didn't dare look at the ads while my mom and grandma were up there. In fact I wanted them to get out of here so I could change into boy clothes and they wouldn't see me like this.

My mom and maybe my grandma were talking on and on, always implying that I should pay attention. But all I wanted was for them to leave so I could get changed.

Finally my grandma said, "Well, just forget him. He's so ungrateful, after all we've given him."

(I don't know why I said in the Ghost Book that my mother said this. I very well remember my grandma saying it.)

Dream 2

Don't remember beginning. (I have to hurry, too. I have spent most of this time in a daze.) I walked out of some cabin (?) in the woods, which was "some place far away" from my house. I was supposedly of great repute because I had walked this long distance to this place out of the kindness of my heart (?).

I was actually familiar with this mountain. I'd just walk up a tall, steep hill, get over, and the rest of the journey would be easy.

-- Ugh. --

Actually, I can't do this today. I have the dreams down pretty well in the Ghost Book.

Dream 3

As to the third dream, basically it was a dream that ended in my grandpa being dead and "visiting" me. He pressed on the right side of my face. I felt this vividly. I was afraid at first. But I was curious more than anything. I stopped being afraid. I pressed my face in toward the strange pressure of fingers.

The weird buzzing feeling of things got very strong. At some point things were so intense that I told myself I had to call out to my grandpa now if I were to contact him, or else he would disappear. I yelled, "Grandpa!"

I then "woke up" and rolled my eyes all over, "blacking out" before they finally landed on my bedside clock. It was like I kept "waking up" then "blacking out" as if that waking had been a false waking, just a dream-waking. But eventually the waking was true, at which point I got up and wrote down the experience.

(3/23/09) friends among zombies; basement of the lazy

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at home.)

Dream #1

I was at a checkout stand in a large supermarket. The store was dark, with just a couple of bands of fluorescent ceiling lights turned on. Outside it was pitch black. Some other people, maybe black people, stood by the checkout stands, as if we were all waiting to pay for our items. But there were no workers.

I looked at a tabloid rack to my left. The papers all spoke about something having happened to the President. There was no specific idea of people who may have been involved in any of the related events.  But there was an implication that, because of these events, a war would be started. It seemed like all this news was of a trivial, gossipy nature, fit only for the tabloids.

I stood outside with my dad. It was still pitch black night. We stood out on a wide, concrete lot. Somewhere to my left there may have been a tall, wide, stable, stone building, like for a university. There were a few white streetlamps lighting the lot.

Something dangerous was happening. Zombies may have been attacking the area. My dad was sending me out on a small, ATV-like vehicle to retrieve something. I was afraid to go, even though I knew I had to. The zombies (?) had stopped attacking, but nobody knew where they were. I thought that, riding on such an unprotected vehicle, if I accidentally met a group of zombies, I could easily be "gotten" -- attacked by them.

I started off, possibly driving through a fog. I rode through a few places, like back roads, suburban residential neighborhoods, places that looked like secret bases (with chain link fences and barbed wire), something like university campuses, and a shopping mall's parking lot.

At some point I met up with a group of people. We were all riding in a van now. We were riding down a long, straight, slightly graded slope. We were all talking somewhat cheerfully about where we were going next. We were apparently going back to my dad. But I was worried that we really weren't headed that way. It didn't look like we were headed in the right direction at all.

Dream #2

I may have been laying with a large group of people, all of us laying close together, as if we were in a gigantic basement in a gigantic suburban house.

A woman knelt down and tapped me to get my attention. The woman looked like a gardener CA, who worked at a park at which I'd led volunteer groups through New York Cares -- she was shortish and had tan skin, blue eyes, and shortish, squarish, silver and grey hair. The woman said, "I'm not sure, with you young people, what time I should be getting you up."

I felt bad, thinking I should have been up a while ago, and that I was getting lazy.

(9/27/09) struggle for lucidity; the murakami bug

Dream #1

I opened my eyes in my bedroom. The bedroom was dark, and my vision was a bit staticky. I realized that my lights were off, which wasn't usual for my room. (Due to some problems with paranoia, I'd slept with my lights on from about July of 2009 through about the end of 2010.)

I realized I was dreaming. I became lucid. But I immediately began losing my dream. Everything faded into blackness, as if I had closed my eyes. I told myself to open my eyes again. It took an immense effort. But when my eyes began to open, my dream-vision smeared out before me, as if I were speeding through a tunnel the walls of which were made of my dream-bedroom.

I now had my eyes open in my bedroom, with the lights on. I was awake. (I may actually have been awake at this point.) I lay on my back and looked up to the ceiling, my head half-covered by m blanket. I fell into a numbed state and thought I was probably on the verge of sleeping and dreaming again. At some point the lights may even have gone out in my room.

I told myself, Well, you can't get back to the lucid dream you were having. But perhaps if you're in this state, you can push yourself into another lucid dream, or even an out of body experience, an astral projection. I told myself to concentrate. I "concentrated" intensely, almost viciously.

I felt a rushing (downward or upward?) sensation in my body. I felt like closed-eye purple electrodes had attached to my body to pull me upward. I felt like I was scowling, teeth bared, to pull myself upward, out of my body. I thought, I'm doing it!

Everything went black. (I may have woken up and then gone back to sleep for another dream.) I lay in my bedroom and opened my eyes again. The room was dark, swimming with staticky orgone eyebugs.  I told myself, You're dreaming again. Get up this time.

I was suddenly standing, at the foot of where I had been laying, my blanket crumpled up like a cocoon at my feet. I ma have thought of myself as wearing a grey robe, being all grey myself, and even wearing a head covering, like a woman in a Giotto painting portraying Jesus' life might wear.

I lost my energy or my focus again. My eyes closed. I told myself to open them, not to lose my dream. I succeeded in doing this, but almost immediately afterward, the scene became increasingly staticky, maybe even grey-white, and I lost my dream.

Dream #2

I was in a big room with a couple other people. My mother may possibly have been among the people. The room may have been a mix between something like a hallway in an airport terminal and a nice, wood-walled library in a mansion. Natural light came in from a window to the right, the window possibly almost as tall and wide as the wall itself.

On the left wall was a platform that ran along the entire wall, lifted up maybe three feet from the rest of the floor, with railing -- structured almost like the moving walkway conveyor belts at airports, but, again, with touches of wood, carpeting, etc., that made it look like something in a mansion. I stood on that platform, probably with my mother.

We had found a small bug and were now having to dispose of it. The bug was almost beetle shaped, but with a much more distinct, rounder head, almost half the size of its body. The bug's color was a pale-copper brown, dappled with a pale-brown, almost like a pale version of the color on a sunflower seed's shell. We grabbed up the bug in a napkin and tossed it into (or toward?) a trashcan.

My mother walked away, down the long hallway. In some way, it felt like she was walking from one wing of the NYPL Rose Main Reading Room to the other. The other two women (???) may also have been gone now.

I noticed that the bug hadn't gone into the trashcan after all. I saw it wandering around on the floor. I picked it up (it was maybe three quarters of an inch long) to throw it away. But now, panicked, not wanting to be thrown away, the bug grew thin, green, vegetation-like tendrils out of itself. These tendrils grew long and coiled themselves around. They grew little leafs or thorns, so that the bug almost looked decorated with something out of a work by Takashi Murakami.

I tried to throw the bug into the white trash bag, but I couldn't: the tendrils stuck to me like sticky stalks of weeds. I tried to shake the bug off me. The tendrils now coiled all around my hands, and the "leafs" (if they ever had been leafs) were now soft thorns sticking into my skin. (During all this, I noticed that I was wearing white, latex gloves.) I finally somehow managed to shake the Murakami-bug off my hands.

The bug didn't go all the way into the trash. It clung to the side of the bag, near the mouth of the trashcan, its tendrils sprawling out like uncoiled wire, threatening to spring back out of the can by the energy of their own tension. I thought I'd have to be ready for that.

I now walked down the platform, possibly following after the women. I looked at my hands. I noticed that I had cuts on my hands from where the little thorns had dug in. At first the cuts seemed small, just like little scratches. But then I saw that some of the cuts, especially around the knuckles at the base of my fingers, cut all the way to the bone.

I looked into one of these cuts and saw something beneath that looked like firm, porous tofu. It sickened me to see that, but I told myself not to worry about it. It's fat, I think, I told myself. Your friends have told about seeing that before, when they'd broken their bones or cut themselves really deeply. So don't worry about it.

I may now have met up with a few of my friends, possibly from my old improv comedy team from college. My friends all sat in an airport-like seating area that also looked like part of a mansion. My friends might have regarded me like I was a joke, not to be taken seriously, and then gone back to whatever their conversation had been.