(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.

(9/25/09) attack of the rats

Dream #1

I was in a room with a few other people, one of them possibly my mother. The room was something like half a stage. It felt very wide but very shallow. The floor was wood or stone. At the back were something like stone steps, two or three, white and porous, leading up, perhaps, to nowhere.

I may have been laying on the floor. But now there were rats scurrying about. We had to get rid of the rats right away. I may at first have thought that we were going to beat the rats to death or poison them. But I now knew that we had to catch them, one by one, pick them up, and inject them with a poison that would sedate them. Then we would take them out of the place.

But the rats were all running around so quickly that I had no idea whether we could actually catch them. I may also have been afraid of touching them: if they were so quick, they might bite me just as quickly.

(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.

(3/1/10) flying too high

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM, on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was a bright, sunny, clear day. I had flown up into the air somehow, and I was now flying over a small, desert town. Beside and just slightly behind me (or possibly just in my head?) was a woman. At first I had floated just over the treetops, then a little bit higher. But now, as the woman and I "spoke" (telepathically, at least to some degree), we floated up a couple hundred feet in the air.

The woman may have spoken about birds -- probably hawks. I now noticed that a bald eagle was flying just below us, maybe ten or fifteen feet below us, wheeling around counter-clockwise and looking up toward us. I knew that the eagle was flying at the top of its range, which I assumed was very high.

I wondered how high I was, and if maybe I was too high. i looked down to the earth below me. The town below was just a spot on a wide expanse of coppery-brown and tan desert land. I could see the curvature of the earth, tilted somewhat. I could see the sky fading to a violet black, as if I were about to leave the earth's atmosphere.

I suddenly felt giddy. I thought, For sure, I'm too high. I now descended rapidly back toward the city. I quickly saw a grid of (red-plastic-roofed?) houses, and I knew I would land on the street between those houses. I felt, however, like I was descending too quickly, and that my impact with the ground would kill me.