(12/29/05) murder by self-defense

(Entered in paper journal at my friend R's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was on a field with some young guys who had attacked me with something like clear baseballs. I was close up in the guys' faces. The guys lay on the ground. I had attacked them in return. They now seemed knocked out or dead. But now the guys shouted at me somehow, like they had only been pretending to be out or like they were shouting from outside their bodies. Either way, they were trying to ridicule and frighten me.

Now I looked at a magazine article about a young woman who had, at maybe only nineteen or twenty years of age, gotten the death penalty. A few of the photos in the articles were like videos. Some showed the woman going to the electric chair. One may have showed her dead. A chilling one at the end showed her walking away from one interview -- it was strange to see a picture of her dying or dead right beside one of her before death.

Another series of photos, all squares one-third inch to a side, maybe twelve squares across the top of a page, showed the woman's progression into insanity. In all the photos, the woman wore blue jeans and a magenta, v-neck shirt. She often wore sunglasses.

In an early photo in this series, the woman stood by the bed of a pickup truck. The woman's hair was short and feathered. The woman had a kind of homely, lower class look. She always looked intimidating, but I think I was in love with her. I might have known her personally. As the photos progressed, the woman got skinnier, less intimidating, but more haunting. In one, where she smoked a cigarette, she looked to be about fifty years old.

Now I read or "got" the story. The woman, at the time of the last photo, was attacked by a group of young men and women, each of whom had a deadly weapon. The woman had been holding the receiver of an old, rotary-style, wide-base phone.

The woman used the receiver to relieve every person of their weapon. Then she killed every person with the receiver.

The law ruled that the killings were done maliciously and not out of self-defense. So the woman was sentenced to death.

(9/9/06) hiding from my family; "i" was "anthony perkins"

(Entered in paper journal at 8:55 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in "my office" -- much wider, shorter, dimmer, yet classier, in a way, than my office in waking life. I was aggravated by my boss and got so mad I began yelling and punching a wall by an elevator. People stopped and stared at me. I knew I was probably in trouble.

I was in an enormous house "in New York." The walls were adobe red and the place was full of beautiful, deserty light. The floors even seemed to be of dirt. My family was also there somehow, though I also was moving in there by myself.

I was up on the second floor, in a big room with a window (and balcony?) overlooking a streetcorner that looked like it was in a small desert city. I spoke on the phone with somebody, probably one of my mom's best friends, TH.

TH wanted to come over. I tried to tell her my location. But I'd forgotten it. I had to go downstairs and find the address. It was 4th Avenue and 3rd Street.

I didn't want to stay downstairs for too long because I didn't want my family to see me and start bothering me -- and I didn't want to say the address too loud because (?!) I didn't want my family to find out where I lived. I went back upstairs.

Dream 2

I was watching a TV show about white people that was made by black people. The character at the moment was an old, fat, well-dressed businessman in an old-style train station. Strong, black people had pushed him to an incredible point of frustration.

The businessman wanted to do something violent. But the view became tunneled and distorted and intense. The man fell to his knees. (I have a feeling this was all "an A Tribe Called Quest video.") The man stumbled through some vague scenes until he ended up climbing onto a hospital bed in a dim hospital room with grey-yellow walls.

The man grabbed onto a man like Anthony Perkins (maybe at first a female nurse, then "Anthony Perkins" as a patient). The man kept calling "Anthony Perkins" Mother and grabbing onto him for dear life.

"Anthony Perkins's" back was torn in places to reveal muscles and ribs like it was dried out and cured. Now "Anthony Perkins" was in his own hospital room, which was bigger and lighter than the previous room. He was talking wwith a female nurse.

"I" was "Anthony Perkins." "I" said something like, "Maybe if he can find something like a mother to hold onto, that will keep him normal on the outside. What do you think? Will he ever be able to get out of here?"

The nurse said, "No."

I looked at the door, slightly understanding why the nurse said no, but still feeling disappointed.