(1/5/05) money had arrived

(Entered in paper journal at 6:35 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I walked or was dropped off at the end of a tree-shaded, concrete bike path in the suburbs that apparently wound along a hillside behind some houses and possibly along but up from or up and away from a creek. I was now at an asphalt cul-de-sac with houses' side yards on the left and right. I was going home. I think I was going there quickly because money had arrived.

As I walked, a kid walked past me who scared me. I was all alone with him on the street. he was tall, with a hooded sweatshirt, black grey with some design, and dark, baggy jeans. His hands were in the "kangaroo pouch" of the sweatshirt. His face was a tattered board of wood, like a brown-painted beam now chipping and splintering. I thought there were eye holes for him to see through, but I couldn't find any. Nevertheless he managed to look straight at me.

I acted unafraid, though I was extremely afraid. I got to a busy street. On my side the street was flat. There were a lot of small storefronts in small, white buildings. The street was wide and rushing moderately with cars. Across the street was a large, sweeping hill, possibly with a church somewhere.

I was about to get home. But I was afraid the man was following me. I didn't want him to know where I lived.

Now I was walking past my house. I looked in the windows as I passed to see I had letters. I was now inside my house. The place was a messy, kind of small house, all grayish and musty.

The two letters had been slid under my door. I thought at first that they were eviction notices. I picked them up and walked into my bedroom with them. They were checks from my great grandmother A.

The "checks" were actually just sloppily written letters with some monetary figures on them. One was an almost crumpled square of novelty paper, a pinkish, sandy color with a blue border dotted with seashells and sea creatures. The figure on this sheet was $28. There was an awfully written letter on it and also faded figures of addition and subtraction.

I thought to myself that this must be a carbon copy sheet and that my grandma must have absently-mindedly been doing figures on the top sheet before sending me the letter. I wondered if the "check" would be any good in such a messy state. Besides, it wasn't enough money.

I went to a kitchen table. There were a few more envelopes on the floor close to the wall. I fell down, crouching on the floor, feeling also like I was in flimsy clothing or beneath a matronly blanket.

I opened one of the envelopes. A ton of papers fell out. One looked like a folded postal money order. I didn't think it could be. I unfolded it. It was. I read the amount the order was good for. $192. I couldn't believe it. I was reading it upside-down. I looked at it once again. It was still upside-down. $192. I felt great relief. This would be enough to supplement my income for a few weeks.

(10/28/06) start wire head injury; my articulate, angry nephew

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was somewhere like a library. There were a bunch of mean kids around. I didn't want to mess with me with them. The library was wide and spacious. I levitated about as high as I would be off the ground if I were riding a skateboard. Somehow that made the kids notice me less. But some who did made me even more of a target, or were about to.

The library became a wide open plaza, pink cobblestone, with some shops and then a broad, wide walk out to the ocean (or a big river?). I levitated a little higher and lined myself up with the walkway. I landed.

I planned to lift up somewhat high and speed myself all the way down the walkway. For some reason I had only been able to levitate to certain heights, proportional to how much space I had around and before me. But I knew if I wanted to stop being a target for these kids, I had to levitate high and move fast. Plus -- it was just a simple pleasure to feel the height and speed.

But somehow when I blasted myself upward, I hit some wire which I called a "start wire." It was clear and plasticky, possibly somehow glassy. Standing on this wire, I had to put on my clothes.

But I must have been pulling to levitate, too, because the wire was shaking up and down uncontrollably. When I tried to put my pants on, the wire acted so wild that I was tossed around in all directions. I couldn't see or get my bearings. Everything was a jumble.

I knew that either the wire would break or I wouldn't be able to hold onto it sooner or later, and that I would either be thrown in the air or at the ground. Either way, 'd hit the ground. I just hoped I'd get thrown into the air so I might control my spin somewhat and break my fall a little. But that didn't happen. The cord snapped, and I rocketed straight to the ground head-first.

I came to at night. I was by a shop. Some friends (?) were tending to my head wound. My head, the back right portion, I believe, was completely smashed open. My friends had dressed my wound, but my brain was damaged.

There was another person in front of the shop. (The front of the shop was curved inward, as if it faced a circle.)

The other man was on the left side of the curve. I was on the right. The friends divided to tend to each of us, and some would go back and forth between us.

There was some plan to replace brain in each of us using portions of brain from the other. But I didn't want this to happen -- I didn't want to have any of that guy's brain in my head -- I wanted my own kind of intelligence.

Besides, that man seemed to have a horrible head injury, and the same treatment being applied to both of us implied that I also had that kind of injury. I took that to mean that I had been made stupid. I hoped this wasn't true. And so I hoped that it would be discovered my head injury wasn't that bad after all.

Dream 2

A department store like Kmart. I was behind my mom and my second oldest nephew J as they walked don the "aisle," but I wasn't really there. J was speaking surprisingly articulately, but he only spoke one or two words. I could feel the words in my ears.

J was so angry. He was almost to the point of violence. My mom (who may have become my great grandmother A) had to pull him into one of the clothing rack areas. I watched from the "aisle." J had a huge newspaper (the New York Times?) in his arms. The paper almost as big as he. He was tearing the paper apart violently, although my mom's/grandma's move to the move to the rack area had calmed him down enough to stop him from shouting the one or two words.

Finally J chaneled his anger and spoke almost preternaturally articulately. He pointed to another section of the store, a display shelf of jeans (?), to a fat woman. He made it clear that if this woman kept coming at him he would not control his anger -- he would attack!

(1/12/08) lesbian doll sex; seduced by old friends; steamhippie

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a helicopter or watching a man in a helicopter. He was talking about how he was flying a plane. The helicopter was very small, maybe the size of a VW Beetle. When the man got to a certain height he said he would now make his descent.

I now saw from the man's point of view. I had wondered how something was filming (or taping) him from the air. Now I "saw" (where?) a jet of some sort, which I assumed was the vehicle on which the camera was positioned.

I now saw as if I were piloting the helicopter. I was descending much more quickly than I thought a helicopter should descend. I descended over a green field which seemed also to have some construction activity on it. I knew I was going to crash. The helicopter crashed.

I stood before a bus bench on a gritty city sidewalk. The helicopter was crashed, lodged between the bench and a small tree. The helicopter was like an oversize toy, maybe a couple feet wide and a few feet long. Its blades were stubby. They were still spinning around, stutteringly. The helicopter, which had been white, was now charcoaled over with smoke and burns.

My family stood behind me, talking. It was my grandfather, my mother, my great grandmother, and a couple other people. I knelt before a reddish-pink, velvety armchair that stood out on the sidewalk.

There were two dolls. They were crudely made, like third-rate Barbie dolls with almost Raggedy-Ann type heads.They had no clothes on. The doll on the left had no limbs.

I wanted to imagine the dolls as lesbians. I wanted to see them having a lesbian relationship. Bu I didn't want to move them with my own hands -- it seemed like that would make them "not really lesbians."

But then I noticed that the doll with limbs was geared. It could make simple movements if switched on or wound up. I may possibly have wound the doll up by spinning a white, toothed wheel which stuck out of its back, saw-wheel-style. It now rolled its head right and forward, as well as possibly shifting its whole body onto its right side and then back onto its back.

I sat the limbed doll right next to the limbless doll and propped the limbless doll on its left side. In this way, it looked like the limbed doll was purposely kissing the limbless doll and then moving its body up against the limbless doll's body. I was turned on by this.

My family was all heading into a building just off from the sidewalk. They got my attention so I could leave, too. My nephews were there, too. I realized these toys might have belonged to one of my nephews. I felt bad for having played such an obscene game with the toys.

As my grandfather walked past me he saw the toys in their movement. He suspected I had made the toys make these movements, but he wasn't sure. He looked at me with a slight disgust. I felt even worse than I had before. I tried to think how I could cover my act.

I walked toward the doorway. It was like a doorless entry, very small, like for a bedroom doorway. It was set in a kind of rundown building. The inside was, by my view from the outside, very dark. I could hardly see my family members once they entered.

Dream #2

I was in a large, dim bedroom with my old friend R and his fiancee L. We might have finished watching a movie on TV. I lay on one bed and R and L lay on another.

We were now getting ready for bed. I felt very tired and grainy-eyed. R got out of bed to turn something (the TV?) off at the other end of the room.

L sat up, kneeling in a way so her knees faced me. She wore a red, shimmery camisole or dress that looked too dressy for being pajamas. She had it pulled up enough on her legs so I could see the crotch of her panties, which were lavender and satiny. She looked at me to let me know she had let me see her panties on purpose.

When that didn't turn me on enough to make me go for her, L lay stomach-down on the bed, facing away from me and toward R. She pulled her "dress" up so that her whole bottom was exposed to me.

I knew L was trying to seduce me, and I was turned on. But I didn't really want to be with L. I also knew that if I was with L, I'd have to be with R, too. I didn't want that.

It was now like we all lay on the same bed. This is the way it had to be when I spent the night. The lights were probably all off. I lay on the left side of the bed, my head to the head of the bed. R and L lay with their heads to the foot of the bed, to my right. R lay next to me, and L to R.

I could tell that R was trying to seduce me. R thought that if I lay in the same bed as he, he still had a chance at seducing me. But I did my best to stay laying opposite R and L and to avoid touching them as much as possible.

Now I lay with my body entirely against the headboard. Something seemed very strange about the bed. It was like R and L were coiled around each other in an elliptical hollow on the bottom half of the bed. (The image in my head now reminds me texturally of the "Thou affrightest me with dreams" drawing in Blake's Job series.)

Dream #3

I sat near a booth-like shop on a small chunk of sidewalk (like Astor Place) in a downtown-like area. It was a sunny, but possibly cold, day. I sat on a bunch of blankets. I may possibly also have been covered in blankets. I was very bleary-eyed.

The shop-booth, to my right, was hung with random (motley) fabrics, which gave it a rundown, but very warm, look. There might have been steam coming from outside the shop, which made sitting outside it very pleasant in the cold weather.

I was, or was suspected of being, either a crackhead bum or an undercover cop posing as a crackhead bum. I may alternately have been myself and a young, black man. To my left, in the sunny street, was a big van, which might have been a police van. I tried not to appear to be associated with the van. I looked back behind my head. There was a tall building of green, reflective glass.

At first there was some shady activity going on between two black people in front of the motley shop. I tried not to pay attention to it. Now a black man, kind of strange-looking, like a hippie wearing a biker jacket, was asking something to the people in the shop, who were Chinese. The man produced a camera from his pocket. I understood the man just wanted someone to take a photo of him in front of this shop.

The man turned first to hand his camera to an Asian man or woman, who sat, like me, in front of the shop, covered in blankets. The Asian person was fattish, slightly worn out, with thickly scraggly hair. He/she wore a black biker jacket. But he/she could hardly hold the camera, let alone snap a photo: his/her fingernails were long and curled so that his/her hands were pretty much useless.

The man handed the camera to someone else, maybe to me. The person took a digital photo of the man bending over some kind of product, behind strips of curtain-fabric hung with globes. Steam might have been coming up around his face. The man wore a bandanna which I thought was mystical. He posed as if he were smelling and enjoying the steam.

The picture had been taken. I saw the image on the camera-back's screen. Seeing the photos, and how the man obviously took this experience to be so mystical and important, I really liked the man. I didn't want to get too close to the man, still, because I was pretty sure if I showed too much of my personality. I maintained a servile attitude toward the man.

I now saw one of my nephews, possibly my oldest nephew, but maybe from when he was five years old. He sat on the blanket by me. I thought, I need to act stronger in front of my nephew. I need to make him feel secure. So I did my best to act as cheerful and confident as possible.

(10/30/08) caring for great-grandmother; brahms idol lucidity

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

Dream #1

I was in the room of an empty (?) apartment. I was there with a couple other people. It was daytime, and bluish, pale light came in through the windows. The floors were dark wood and the walls were brick.

A woman wanted to do something to open a window. She may have wanted to remove the window entirely. I just stood and watched, as if I were too lazy to help, or as if I were afraid of something happening if the window were opened. Another man came up and helped the woman remove the window. It was now night. When I saw how easily the man had removed the window, I felt ashamed for not having helped.

My mom now sat in a big house, talking with someone I couldn't see. The person was like a member of the family, but also like a nurse or someone else carrying out a business duty. The person was telling my mom that my great-grandmother could no longer take care of herself and would need to have a lot of people living with her to take care of her. They would all need to live either in this house or in the house next to or behind it.

Apparently all the people had chosen what house they would live in. I could imagine that the house of their choice would get crowded and dirty rather quickly. But I thought the other house, which everybody regarded as the "second," inferior house, was nicer and more spacious. I thought about its big living room in particular.

Now I sat across from my mom. My mom said, "They're definitely going to need to live in one of the houses. Which house should we live in instead?"

I said, "The second house."

Dream #2

I walked into a building. I might have come into a hotel lobby. I was going to a cattle call for American Idol. I kept walking through a series of hallways. I couldn't find anything. The hallways were all pretty busy, though most people were walking in the opposite direction from me. One person, talking about the line, said, "People are going to be in that thing for a long time."

I was now following a young man. He was about my height, heavier, pale white, with longish, light brown hair. He wore eyeglasses and a maroon shirt. We walked through what appeared to be a number of back hallways and stairwells. I kept wondering why I'd even wanted to come to this audition anyway.

We mostly walked alone. But when we'd emerge in a more frequented hallway we'd meet with some other people. I saw a couple people I knew. One was a shortish, Mexican, boyish-looking woman. She wore black clothes and a black trucker hat that was cocked to the side. She gave me a friendly nudge on the ribs and said hi.

Finally the young man and I walked down a stairwell to meet what was apparently the back of the line for the American Idol audition. The line seemed like it must have reached down a few more flights before extending even farther through a hallway.

The young man called out, "Is this the line for the Brahms symphony?"

A woman who was maybe in her mid-forties, like a mother, but still attractive, blonde, wearing a white sweater and blue jeans, told the young man, "No. But I'm sure if you wait ten or fifteen minutes, this line will clear out, and you'll be able to find the line for the Brahms concert."

I suddenly thought, Why am I in line for this audition at all? I should be in line for the Brahms concert. I got out of line and walked out a door that was at the bottom of the flight of stairs.

I stood in a desert environment. It appeared to be late in the afternoon. I felt a tremendous sense of peace.

Suddenly I realized I was in a dream. I told myself to focus. I started to float up in the air. The area around me was a desert area beside an industrial area or a place like Los Alamos National Laboratory.

I felt like I was starting to fall back out of the dream. I shouted out, "No! I want to stay here! I don't want to go back!"

I told myself that if I just focused I could stay here. I needed to get back down to the ground first. I was barefoot. I told myself that if I could just feel the gravel of the road, that would make everything real for me. I looked around. There were two old soil-mounds that were now growing white and yellow flowers.

I felt myself being pulled backwards, as if I were being physically pulled away.

The building was white, ridged sheet metal. The sky was deep blue, clear, but with deep grey clouds on the horizon. It was a warm day, but a thunderstorm was looming.

I told myself, If I could just feel the warmth of the day, I could make this real, and then I could stay here forever.

(11/1/08) goose mill; seduced by great-grandmother; last year in the suburbs

(Entered in paper journal at 9:14 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a building top with a couple other people, one of whom may have been my senior co-worker SuD. We looked out over a closely-packed set of buildings in dimmish grey light. SuD was telling us the history of this city. The building we stood on was a big part of the history.

But now we were going to talk about another building. I thought we were going to jump from this building to the next one in our discussion. At first the jump looked small. But I thought, How could we possibly jump from one building to the next? I looked down at the other building top again. It looked far down and all the way across a street. I thought there was no way we could do it.

SuD continued speaking. He said, "This city used to be a lot dirtier. In fact, all the building tops in Chicago were piled with old garbage and debris."

SuD continued talking about Chicago. He pointed out some buildings in the distance, beyond the small cluster we had been looking at. SuD spoke about the "golden glow" the sunlight would sometimes give the red-brick buildings around us.

I longed to see those colors. In my mind's eye I saw the buildings in that light, as if I were descending, down along the golden, canyon-like building walls, to the pavement below.

I now stood with a group people before an old building in the woods. The light all around us was greyish blue, like late afternoon on a cloudly day. The building was painted greyish-blue. It looked very old, but it also looked like it had modern siding on it rather than actual wood.

Our guide (no longer SuD?) said that this building was a mill. The building was in two parts, which were joined from about three-quarters of an inch up to the top (I have no idea what that description means...). The tunnel or underside of this joining was lit with the orange light of a fire. The place looked a little like a stable. There might have been animals like horses and goats milling around aimlessly. There were also geese, which were very frightening to me.

We were walking away from the building. Our guide said, "Of course there are geese here. This is a goose mill."

I thought, I never knew there was such a thing as a goose mill. I never knew you ground geese to eat them.

Now that we were walking away, the woods were like a tunnel-ramp in a subway station. I looked down. I watched a goose beside me basically squirming along the ground on his stomach in stuff that looked like mashed potatoes and gravy. The goose was violently smashing his bill into this stuff. I thought, Is this what's meant by milling?

Dream #2

It was daytime. I was out in some rural area. I was with one friend and someone else. We may have been near a gas station. The other person and I went into the "gas station." The place became the person's house. The person now became someone like my great-grandmother. This person seduced me.

We were now back outside with my friend, who was a woman. The "gas station" building was now a lot larger. we were wandering alongside it on something like a wheelchair ramp.

The other woman kept trying to talk about how she had seduced me. But I couldn't believe it or admit it, especially in front of my friend. But the woman was becoming seductive again. I couldn't resist her. She gold older and older again. She was naked. She looked like my great-grandmother. She was leading me back into the gas station. It was like I was hypnotized. I couldn't resist.

Dream #3

It was night. I was at a house party with a lot of people. Pretty soon all the people were women. I went into the backyard, where a lot of my friends had gone. The backyard was huge. It looked like a suburban version of the grounds of the mansion in Last Year at Marienbad. The sky and air were dark, dark blue. There was a fountain somewhere, a lot of chairs, and some long, foam mattress stretching through the whole scene. All the girls were grouped together in different places. Some of them may have been kissing or embracing each other.

I walked to the end of the yard, then turned around and walked back. As I did, I saw a particular woman, a friend of mine, lying down on the foam mattress with another woman. They may have been near the fountain. My friend wore a black dress. She may have had thick arms. She started kissing the other woman.

(2/24/09) two parades; movie theater fight; impressing family; girlfriend's family emergency

(Entered in paper journal at 10:35 AM at Housing Works Used Bookstore Cafe in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with my family. I'm not sure what seat I was in. It was daytime. We backed out from my great-grandmother's house, as if she had a driveway in front of her house (though I'm pretty sure that in the dream she did not), curving the back end of the car to my left and then driving away to my right.

My brother was making some complaint, possibly about how XXXXX (can't remember) was driving. But I saw that at the end of the block (would have been the south end of the block, not the north end) there was some large blockage of traffic, almost like a parade procession.

My brother now said something like, "That damn dog -- it always scares people like this." My brother meant that a dog was somehow scaring all the cars and blocking up the traffic. I might have seen a dog like a border collie running back and forth in the intersection.

Since that area was blocked, we decided to leave via the north end of the block. That end of the block was also crowded, this time with horse-drawn carriages. By this time, the car I was in may have disappeared. I and my family members walked along a cobble sidewalk (?) which may have been moderately busy with people. Some or all of the carriages were driven by dogs. The dogs seemed to have human personalities and would look over their shoulders at the crowd and possibly even wave to us.

My family (maybe just my mom, my great-grandmother, and I?) continued walking. We were now at the top of a stairway and plaza area like the stairway and plaza area for the Angel fountain in Central Park, except that it was slightly smaller and felt a little bit restricted, either by the streets of a small town's main street or by a bit of virgin or undeveloped land which was too precipitous or muddy (?) or tangled to be traversable.

The day was now very hot an bright. I thought it had been fun to walk like this, but now the weather was too uncomfortable. I seemed to be huddled together with my family, as if we were all looking over a map to decide our action.

We decided to walk down the stairs. We (now my mom, my sister, some of my nephews, and I?) entered a tan-painted cinder-block building like a park bathroom. The inside was also "like" the basement of a house. But really the interior was just a wide, open concrete space with a fountain in the center, and maybe a few sinks along the wall.

The fountain in the center was just a small, metallic fixture, like a shower head. It shot long, thick (half-inch?) streams of water which arced up maybe ten feet in the air and reached out almost to the walls of the interior. There were a stable, strong-looking father and his child playing in the fountain. The father was tan, with darkish, blonde hair. He may have been wearing a pale grey sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. His child was maybe eighteen months old, wormy-white.

My nephews and I played on the opposite side of the fountain from the father and his child. I played as if I were a child. At some point I closed my eyes and stuck my face right under one of the downward-arcing streams.

My mom now called from the doorway. I realized I had been acting silly and childish, as if I were trying to be a child of the many, or as if I were trying to attract the man sexually. Looking around, I also realized the man was now gone. I felt foolish. I walked out to meet my family, but possibly also to look for the man.

We may have walked up the set of stairs. The stairway and the level areas now looked different. They seemed more walled in. The walls also seemed to be bordered, on the opposite side, by stout-looking pine trees. The ground may have been covered with red bricks, which may have been the same as before.

Dream #2

I sat at a booth-table in a restaurant with my co-worker and friend FA. I was playing with plastic items like the non-Lego accessories (mainly little fences?) that would come with a Lego scene-kit. In particular I played with a plastic or putty disc (grey or brown?) around which had been wrapped a ring of (grey or brown) plastic "fence" or "train track."

FA and I spoke about some movie she and I had seen separately. She knew I'd have picked up on certain elements that she knew I'd know she'd like. She was now telling me about the elements, trying to be exact, as if she wanted to impress me. For some reason I couldn't help correcting her, with a brief interjection, in two instances.

For the first instance, I may even have felt a slight offense, as if I thought her inexactness showed she didn't really care, that she was actually just pretending. In the second instance she got the character's name wrong, just slightly, even though the character's name was FA's name exactly.

As I interjected FA's name, FA and I were suddenly in a "movie theater." The "theater" looked more like a nice cafe or restaurant, or even a living room, except with seven or eight one-aisle rows of (purple-fabric?) movie theater seats, and a black, curtained wall up front, with a small movie screen on it. The floors were wood. The walls were rustic, red-brick, like in a pizzeria. There were cheery, block-style flower paintings on the wall. Along the wall to my right was also a small, columnar chest or pedestal of dark, purplish varnished wood, with a slim vase of yellow (?) flowers on top.

FA and I sat in seats, maybe one seat apart from each other, as if we each had our stuff in the seats directly to our right (?). FA and I sat on the right side of the theater, just a couple seats in from the aisle -- there were maybe six or seven seats on each side.

A young man, maybe Hispanic, kind of wide-built, wearing a big, puffy, tannish coat, similarly colored denim pants, and a wool cap, walked in front of us. He first stood in front of me, his back to me, and plaed on his BlackBerry, as if he were going to stay there and play on his BlackBerry as long as he wanted, to test my patience. When the man saw I didn't seem to care, he kept moving along.

The man now stood in front of FA. He would step back, really trying to get into FA's space. At first FA and I just talked, as if it didn't annoy us. But then I finally got angry and told the man to get out of FA's face. The man just kept pretending like we didn't exist.

I stood up and tried to push or pull the man out of FA's space. I was in a weird position, as if I were one row behind the man and FA, and as if I were trying to grab him by reaching my arms backwards over my head. My body didn't seem to have any power, not even power to move with any speed.

I gave up on this method, and now, sitting near the aisle, in the row in front of FA and the man, probably sitting on one of the seat arms, with my left arm slung over the seat back, and again kind of looking backward to the two of them, I yelled at the man, "Get the hell away from FA!"

The man had taken off his hat. His hair was puffy, with medium curls. He had a round face but kind of lean-looking eyes. He gave a quick, loose-throated chuckle like a fit high school basketball player might give in place of talking trash when he knows he's good.

Again I tried (somehow) to force the guy away. FA said, "It's not worth it, Preemie."

The man and I now stood at the back wall, near a wooden chest, also dark and purplish colored. I was wildly angry, and I was trying to fight against the man, but once again I had no power in my arms at all. The man and I were wrestling with our arms.

I kept shouting threats at the man until they or one of them finally hit a nerve. The man said, "Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?" He reached into his left pocket. I knew he was going to pull out either a knife or a gun. I was afraid, but I kept still not wanting to give the man any satisfaction of knowing my fear. The man pulled out a knife as long as a keychain Swiss Army knife and as sharp as a butter knife.

Again FA told me to forget about it to ignore the man. The man and I "fought" by wrestling arms again. I was completely overpowered, but somehow I had managed to grab the knife an throw it away, into the empty movie seats.

The man and I now stood apart. The man made some threats about how he would really hurt me now. I was afraid, but I was still so mad that I knew I'd start fighting again. I also knew that if the man got the knife again, he'd kill me.

Dream #3

I sat in a bedroom with my mom. The bedroom served as a living room. Natural light came into the room and was very bright. The walls were harsh and bright. There was a buffet along one of the walls, and possibly a big pile of junk, possibly burying some shelves, along another wall. I and my mom sat on a bed against the wall across from the buffet. There were no sheets on the bed. There was probably a television blaring away on top of the buffet.

It was like I had been back in my hometown, on vacation. My mom was telling me something like she wasn't going to take me to the airport to go back home. I immediately got angry. I stood up and yelled at my mom about how she was destroying the trust i had for her and how I would never have the same kind of relationship with her ever again. I yelled that she absolutely had to take me to the XXXXX so I could go home. But my mom just kind of lounged on the bed (as if it were a couch) and watched the television. She looked like she couldn't care less about anything I said.

I now shouted at my mother, "I know you think I'm of no consequence, and that I've never done anything. I know you think I can't back up anything I ever say. But don't you know what I've just gotten done doing? I was a stock researcher on Wall Street! That was a pretty important job!"

My mom suddenly perked up. She said, "Is that what you've been doing? I've never understood that." She stood up and (somehow) told my brother and sister that she and the two of them needed to make up for the way they'd been treating me.

My mom now came into the room (as if she'd been gone) carrying a brown, paper grocery bag. My sister may have done the same. My mom now pulled out a couple of apples. She may have offered me the apples. But she also just set them on whatever little bits of shelf she could find under the piles of stuff along the wall.

Dream #4

I stood on a sidewalk on a bright, sunny day. The street was wide and busy. The sidewalk was also wide, but not very busy. On the other side of the sidewalk may have been a large (?) vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence that was in bad shape, probably bent over, into the lot, at a forty-five-degree angle at one point. However, the vacant lot may also have been only a small, unkempt space on a small triangle island near the larger sidewalk. Either way, to my right there was also a subway entrance, which I may just have come up from.

I was on the phone (right ear?) with my girlfriend H. She was hesitant in talking to me, but then she finally burst out, saying that her father and everybody on her father's side of the family had just died. She was now terribly upset, crying and screaming.

I asked H if I could come over. I told her I'd be over as soon as possible. But I couldn't quite figure out where I was. I didn't know if I should get back on the train or just walk. I also didn't know if it would take me fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or even longer for me to get to H's house.

(3/26/09) exploring a childhood neighborhood

(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at Starbucks at 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked away from one situation/location, possibly one that had involved my family. I was now walking down a road like the road bordering the south end of the small town in which I spent a fair portion of my early childhood and my later high school years.

It was a late afternoon in winter. The sky was pale grey-blue with a band of yellow on the horizon. The yards, sidewalk, and road were all covered in a sheet of snow that seemed even all the way across, maybe a couple inches deep, with a slightly icy crust on top. The sunset light was glowing brightly off all the snow.

I turned right, onto a side block. I was walking down the middle of the street, as if there were no worry of cars coming along. The light of the sky was a mixture of pinks, oranges, yellows, golds, and blues. The snow reflected the pinks and oranges and yellows of the horizon so that it seemed the sky blended directly into the snow.

At some point I realized something was weird about this situation. I didn't quite realize I was dreaming, but I knew I wasn't quite in a normal waking situation. I knew that I'd have to find something to remember, to "bring back" from this strange situation -- like one might bring back "evidence" from a vision, remote viewing session, or out of body experience.

I now recognized this block as being the block where my great grandmother lived. I wanted to find something here that I could come back later and verify. I knew that if I went into my great grandmother's house I could find something, which I could possibly verify later on. But there was a good chance I'd already have known about it. So going into my great grandmother's house wouldn't be very helpful.

I decided instead to go next door, into the house of my cousin B and his wife A. I'd never been in there before. So if I could find out a couple characteristics of their house and "bring them back" with me, I could verify later on that I'd been to this place.

I was kind of flying now. It was something like early morning. There wasn't any snow on the ground, though it was still apparently a winter day. The light was bluish grey. I had, before I'd started flying, been walking north, then east, in the bright snow. Now I was flying to the west.

I flew up to my cousins' house, which was white with blue trim. It seemed like the front screen door was closed, but like the actual front door was open. I went into the house, possibly walking straight through the closed screen door. I knew everybody was in the house, but that they were all still asleep.

I immediately noticed that the floor had all different colors of rugs on it. The rugs all seemed to be of a towel-like, terry cloth fabric, except one portion, which may have been regular carpet. One part of the floor was grey (this may have been the carpet), another part green, another part yellow, and another part red. I stood on the grey portion, in a tiny section of room slightly divided somehow from the rest of the living room.

I may also have seen, at some point, a little bird, like a chickadee, hopping around on the floor to my right.

Looking forward, I could see the living room open into the dining room, which itself may have opened into a room with big windows overlooking the backyard, some kind of common sun room. I told myself to remember the carpet: it was strange.

I then flew, just a couple feet off the floor, into the dining room. There was a large window, almost as wide as the wall, on my right. Near the window was a medium-sized, oval-shaped, wooden table with a couple chairs. The table was scattered with papers like mail.

I thought I'd go back outside. I wasn't really interested in this place. I thought I'd have more fun outside. At first I thought I should go back out the door. But I realized I could just fly through the window. I wasn't sure whether I could do it at first. But I decided to try.

I flew downward, at an angle, toward the window. The window was (now) covered with blinds. I may have flown through the window, then back into the house, then back out the window again. At one point I felt how the blinds "clung" to me a little -- how they almost seemed to clatter along with me as I flew outdoors. I flew over the yard, maybe seven or eight feet in the air, over a fence dividing two yards.

But now it was like I was flying over the yards of the house my family lived in during my last couple years of high school and the house next door to it. I had just flown out of the next door house.

In the yard of that house was some animal, maybe a bird or a dog or a bird that had then become a dog. The animal was either barking or chirping at me. If it was a dog, it was like a bulldog.

I was afraid to land. But I somehow felt like the only way I could continue my investigation was by landing.

(10/2/09) she'll be gone soon

(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was wandering around a square track of grassy land, in a "path" like a mowed or heavily rolled-over strip of grass. It was a sunny day, a little humid, the air yellow-white against the blue sky.

My family was nearby. I was walking my way back to them. I had had to get something or do something for them. But I might not have been able to do this. Now, working my way up the last stretch of grass, i saw my family sitting out on two slopes, as if I were down in a level rut, and my family were up at both tops of the rut.

My family sat in white, plastic chairs, partly in shade and partly in light. Just beyond them was a grey, rectangular house like a double-wide trailer. This may have been my great grandmother's house. I knew I'd probably had to do something for my great grandmother, who was going to die. My great grandmother was going to die regardless of whether I completed the task. The task was more like an act of kindness or nostalgia, like locating an old object.

I could now hear some of my old family members talking. The people sitting outside, I could tell, without quite seeing, were my cousin AH, my great grandmother, my grandfather, probably my mother, and a couple other people.

I knew now that my great grandma had a disease affecting her brain, like Alzheimer's disease. My cousin was speaking very cheerfully, but I could tell she was trying to be cruel to my great grandma. She said something that sounded at first like she was going to tell my great grandma, "You're doomed. You're basically already dead." But she then changed what she said, sounding more innocent and naive.

She then said, "And then I thought, Well, why don't I make a test? So I said, 'Grandma, first touch XXXXX's top button, then touch XXXXX's second button, then come back and touch XXXXX's top button, then go touch all the buttons on everybody's sweaters.'"

(I could see that everybody sitting in the chairs wore big, baggy, knit, tan, wool sweaters which had large buttons down their fronts, like the puffs down the front of a clown's outfit.)

My cousin continued, "When you couldn't accomplish this task, Grandma, I thought to myself, Yep. That's it. Grandma's mind is going for sure. She'll be gone soon."

I now looked up, seeing the ceiling of my great grandma's back dining room -- the one from her waking life house, not the double-wide trailer. Light from the back window passed across the ceiling, glazing over the light fixture.

I thought to myself, Why did AH have to say such a cruel thing? I was mad, but suddenly I was very sad.

I looked before me. My sister, who was a thin girl wearing a pale purple, long-underwear-style shirt, came up to me and hugged me. As she did, AH walked into the dining room and sat down at the table.

AH said, "And then I said, 'How weak is that? To get so upset over such a nobody dying? I always knew he was so weak emotionally.'"

My sister was now gone. I was infuriated. I knew AH had been taunting me, implying that I was weak for caring about my great grandma.

I turned to face AH, who now looked like a girl C, a girl about my sister's age, who ended up being like another member of my immediate family. AH kept on taunting me, talking about how weak I was, for crying because my great grandmother had died.

AH was now seated in some weird way, so that she was backed against the corner of the room, her right side facing the window. I punched her in the nose. She just leered at me like it didn't even hurt. So I punched her again and again, until her nose was red with blood. Still she acted like she couldn't even feel anything.

Now my sister came in and began yelling at AH. My sister asked how AH could dare to taunt me like this. AH, now looking like herself, but at about the age of fourteen, stood with her back to the window, right about in the center of the window. I kept punching AH in the nose as my sister kept yelling at her.

Suddenly the window was broken in a fragmented, shard-tattered arch, arcing about halfway up the window. AH stood outside the window. Her nose was so busted open that it was just like a red blot on her face. She stood on the lawn, is if the lawn outside were level with the kitchen floor inside.

In the outdoor light, AH's face took on a pale, almost purplish-white glow, as if AH were being camcorded and the image was slightly light-shocked. AH had a spattering of blood on her face, circling around her nose. The blood looked almost bright maroon, more like cranberry sauce than blood.

AH shouted, reproachfully and furiously, "Why did you have to do such a cruel thing to your cousin? To your own cousin?!" She ran away to the right. I suddenly realized that I had hit my cousin, I had hit a girl. I couldn't believe I had done such a cowardly, cruel thing. I got so panicked that I screamed out. (I actually believe I woke from this dream scream-whimpering.)

(1/23/10) the weak door; large, empty room; two drug dealers

(Entered in paper journal at 9:50 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen, looking down toward the back door. The place was dark. There was light coming into the house through the backdoor window. I noticed that the door was open a crack. It didn't seem to be able to click shut. The door itself felt soft, like a flexible piece of fiberboard. I saw a deadbolt on the door. I tried to lock the deadbolt, but that was just as weak and ineffective as the door and doorknob.

I got afraid. I knew that there were thug-like kids in the neighborhood. As soon as they found that the door was unable to close, the kids would "break in" here to cause trouble with me.

I tried again to lock the door. But my great grandma now said (from behind me, probably not actually present, but palpably audible), "Oh, I never even try to lock that door. I just let it stay open. And whatever happens, happens."

I tried to keep my great grandma's frame of mind, the peaceful, or resigned, sense of equanimity. But I just couldn't. I couldn't stand the thought of those punks coming in and causing trouble with me.

Dream #2

I was in a large room, something like a gym set up for a high school dance. There were a lot of people dancing and mingling. The room was dark, not extremely crowded, and kind of noisy.

At some point a group of us decided it was time to leave the dance. We walked through an emptyish, high-school-like hallway (possibly with the floor checkered with red and green squares) and then into another room.

It was now like we had been part of some show, something like a theater performance. The room we were now in was enormous. It was like a dining hall, full of round, eight-seat tables. The room was wide and tall. It looked nice but run-down and dirty at the same time. It looked like a mix between a fine dining hall, a college dining hall, and the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library (possibly because the ceiling was dark wood). The only light in the room was fluorescent light which came into the room through the doors from the hallway.

We all stood by the wall. Also by the wall sat a young man who was a lot like me. he sat by a table, his back against the wall. To his left was a rectangular table with a couple tallish, brown, plastic coffee-tanks atop a thin, white, tissue-paper tablecloth. It seemed like there had been an even here just a little while ago. The young man was reading a paperback novel.

I looked around the room, at all the space and quiet. I thought to myself that I would like to be like the young man. I preferred this huge, dim, empty room to the dance hall full of people.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom in an apartment with my brother. I sat on the bed. My brother sat or stood before the door. The room was smallish and brightly lit with incandescent light. My brother left the bedroom. I followed him. He walked through a short hallway to answer the front door. I followed him. The light in the hallway was dimmer than in the bedroom.

Two young men entered. Both were white. One was about my height. The other was very tall and thin. The shorter one wore a big, thick coat and had a shaggy head of blonde hair under a wool cap. Both young men carried plastic bags full of huge, barrel-like jugs of Poland Spring (?) water. One of them may have been carrying one jug with no bag.

The shorter man bustled past my brother and into the kitchen, which was through a doorway before me and to my right. My brother followed the man. I looked into the kitchen. The kitchen was dim, no light on, kind of dirty, but not small -- actually large enough to have a table at the back of the room about as large as the bedroom. The shorter man put some of the bags on the kitchen counter, on the right side of the kitchen.

I felt like these two men were drug dealers. They were actually bringing my brother drugs. But the drug was so powerful that as soon as my brother took it, he'd need to start drinking tons and tons of water. So part of the cost of the drug included the jugs and jugs of water.

I kept trying to watch the two men, to see when they'd slip my brother the drug, which I imagined to be in a white paper bag like from a pharmacy. But I also felt like these guys weren't just drug dealers. They were trying to cause serious trouble with my brother. They were trying to gain his trust and then hurt him somehow. I was going to stop them before they started.

The shorter man took some water to the refrigerator, which was on the left wall. He opened the refrigerator door. The fridge looked full of food, too full for the water to fit in.

The tall man stood across the doorway from me. He leered at me from the corner of his eyes as he stood facing the kitchen. He wore a thin, pale-beige, windbreaker-like jacket. His hair was thin and shaved short, reddish-brown, and a little spiky. His cheeks were lightly dotted with pale-pink acne. The shorter man may have been talking to the taller man. The taller man may have responded only in slow, slick grunts, like he was too good to take the trouble to answer.

I had to find out what was going on here. I tried to be polite and introduce myself to the tall man, but I ended up stuttering in fear, barely getting out words, and sounding quite sheepish. The tall man turned his head toward me, gave some sign that he didn't need to regard me, and turned back to the kitchen. He lifted an eight-ounce glass of orange juice to his lips, took a drink, and lowered the glass.

I was upset that the man had treated me so rudely. I was now angry, and I figured I'd get something out of him. I got up close to him and started yelling. He walked into the kitchen. I followed him, yelling at him, trying to get him either to answer or make an aggressive move. There was now a light on in the kitchen.

The tall man walked back toward a sink, on the left (now?) side of the room. He leered at me over his right shoulder. He was trying to figure out a sneaky, chicken-shit way to do something dirty to me. I could tell. I figured he was going to dump his orange juice on me. I could imagine the juice and pulp on me.

I saw the cup. The man tried to pour it slowly. But I grabbed the cup with my teeth and steadied it as the man let it go. I may have drank some of the juice. But I now held the glass in my right hand. Not a drop had spilled on me.

The man was walking back toward the hallway. I was still yelling at the man. I thought I would throw the glass of orange juice at the back of the man's head.

(1/28/10) dance how you want; hungry or not?; uncle not getting better; her first lesbian lover

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at the Starbucks at 49th and Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, right across the street from where my office was at the time.)

Dream #1

I was in a park-like area, like the plaza area like the MetroTech Commons park in Brooklyn, except hillier, with the rolling ground covered with Belgian blocks or stone tiles.

I was listening to music that I was playing on a boombox. I danced to the music in a slow, backward and forward "locomotion" movement. I smiled and cocked my head up and down like I was happy with myself, like I thought I was smooth and impressive. I suddenly got afraid that I would go crazy if I allowed myself to act like this, or that, at the least, people would think I was crazy.

My great grandmother appeared before me. She was short: she stood up to about my chest. I may have told her what I was doing, as if I was uncertain whether I should be doing it. My great grandma told me, "Well, keep doing it! Enjoy! Have a good time!" My great grandma walked away. I think we were planning to meet each other again at some point.

The boombox was now playing either classical music or an NPR-type show. I jumped around among Belgian blocks which had been pushed upward like little stubs. I may have thought of myself as a little bird while I did this. I was moving my way around a little planting bed with a small shrub-like a boxwood in the center.

A couple of girls sat at a green-painted, metal table to the right of the planting bed. They may have been talking about something having to do with their job. I was hopping around naively, as if I were oblivious, like a child, to what the women could were talking about. But I actually was connecting to the things they were talking about.

Dream #2

I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen. The light may have been a bit brighter and warmer than usual. I stood before or sat at the tall stool before the kitchen counter. My great grandma came (from the dining room, to my left?) and stood across the counter from me. She told me that I must be hungry. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. She may have offered a grilled cheese sandwich.

I was indecisive. I thought that I was hungry, but that I'd possibly be smarter waiting to eat until some dinner that I was heading to later.

My great grandma got a little annoyed with me and asked me, "Are you hungry or are you not hungry?" She was now mixing something like oatmeal in a big, black pot. The oatmeal looked gooey, like it already had milk in it, and i had red strips in it, which I thought of as something sweet, like long strips of stuff like the pink pebbles in Pebbles cereal. But the strips also looked like long strips of tomatoes or red peppers or even meat.

I told my great grandma that I was hungry. My great grandma may either have spooned some oatmeal into a bowl or left the iron pot in front of me. She then walked into the living room. I thought that I really didn't want to eat the oatmeal if it had tomatoes or meat in it.

I walked into the living room. A couple of my family members, at least my mom and brother, were in the living room. My mom sat in my great grandma's usual favorite chair. My brother was farther back in the room. Looking out the front window, I could see that it was night.

My great grandma opened the front door and walked out. She may have been bundled up in a padded, beige jacked and a wool cap, so that she looked like a little kid. She said she was going somewhere. The TV was near the door, instead of farther back, on the left side of the room, as it would have been in waking life, when my great grandma was alive.

The TV started showing a program about my cousin N, who had done a lot of really good stuff, apparently, with cars or a car company. I and my family members were very proud of N. We wanted my great grandma to see.

I called to my great grandma to catch her before she headed out the door. But she didn't seem to hear. She kept moving, very slowly, apparently, out the door. I called louder, but she still didn't hear. Finally I just walked up to her, grabbed her, pulled her back into the house, and forced her to look at the TV.

As I held my great grandma, I was kneeling down, so that I had to reach up to get my arms around her waist. I basically had my great grandma pinned in place. I was holding her so that her arms were pinned to her sides.

Dream #3

I was at "my dad's house." I sat at or stood before an oval dining table of dark wood. The table was covered over in cluttered papers. The floor around the table was similarly cluttered. The carpet was grey. The room was dim. To my left may have been either a large window or a sliding glass door.

My dad sat before me on a stool before something like a breakfast bar. The breakfast bar was kind of incongruous in its setting, being nowhere near the kitchen, and kind of serving to separate the dining table from the living room.

My dad started talking to me about some football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I laughed and listened, as if I knew what my dad was talking about. But then he started asking me about specific players. I didn't admit that I had no idea who they were, but my kind of blank responses to his questions gave me away.

My uncle R came into the room. My dad and uncle may have decided that it was time to go. We left. My uncle R was much taller than usual, and thin. We walked through a hallway, which had glass walls on the other side of which were restaurants and shops.

My dad asked my uncle how he was doing, if he was getting any better. My uncle said he didn't think he was. My uncle said he needed to stop and go to the restroom. We stopped outside a restaurant which may have been a Chinese or Indian restaurant.

My dad and I stood in a little alcove before the door. Two small steps led up to the glass door of the restaurant. The alcove was just a little square, maybe six inches by six inches. The walls of the alcove were yellow and stucco-like. There may have been a small table with a potted plant on it. Just inside the door of the restaurant were a curtain of little red lights.

My dad and I stood silently for a moment. Finally I asked my dad, "Do you think Uncle R will get better?" My dad had possibly been looking at the wall, his left profile to me.

We now stood in a different hallway. One wall was still a window-wall to the restaurant. The wall across the hallway was possibly, however, to the outside. My dad shook his head sadly, to tell me that no, my uncle R would no get better.

My dad still looked "like" my dad, but he was much shorter, white, with pale blue eyes and pale, grey hair. He now acted like a little kid, or even like a little puppy. He began cuddling with me, hopping all over me. He was, I thought, trying to make it clear that he was happy to see me.

(At this point I stopped my paper journal entry so I could head into work. I then restarted my paper journal entry at 8:30 PM, when I got back on the B-train into Brooklyn, after work.)

Dream #4

A woman sat in a restaurant ora cafe. Something suddenly reminded her of a former lover of hers. She caught her breath as if thinking how silly it was to have forgotten. The woman was a fair-skinned, white woman with slight, chestnut-brown hair. The restaurant she sat in was dim.

After recalling her lover, the woman remembered a scene with her lover. The scene took place in a dark room, lit only by a candle or two. The two women were on a bed. The woman's lover was an Asian woman with long, silky, black hair. She wore a pink teddy with black lace trim. The teddy may have been pulled down below her breasts. The lover knelt on the bed, her legs wide apart, and arched her breasts up in ecstasy. The woman may not have been visible.

The woman was now in a bookstore with another woman. The bookstore was lit with fluorescent light. The store was wide, with high ceilings. The shelves were all pretty close together. They were tall, made of a kind of cheap wood, dented or chipped a little, or with the finish kind of wearing off. The place had a run-down feel, like an old public library.

The two women were far back in the shelves. They spoke with one another either in French or in English with French accents. Their words were palpable, very soothing, as if I were haring them from under a blanket while I had a cold.

The women walked up to the front desk. A very tall man walked up and stood beside them, across the counter from the cashier. The man was possibly overweight, a little pear-shaped, with long, scraggly-curly, grey hair. He may have worn drab, green and black clothing.

The man tried to strike up a conversation with the women, ostensibly about the books they were buying. But the woman asked her fiend, loudly enough to make it understood she wanted the man to hear, but also with an intonation of mock-embarrassment, "Oh, do you think I should tell him about this book?"

The friend said, "Oh --  you mean that it was the book you read with --"

The woman interrupted, "The book I read with my first --"

I knew that the woman would next say, "With my first lesbian lover."

(2/1/10) disaster infection; monument of blood; love takes time

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

Dream #1

I had a view of a field of dense, tall grass in the woods. The view felt very much like grainy television. There may even have been a sage-like scent.

I (or the camera?) moved forward through the field. I may have come upon some clearing, i.e. an area of much shorter grass. The clearing may have been surrounded by short, green shrubs, and there may have been some upside-down vehicle lying in the clearing.

I thought about some place, possibly nearby, where a disaster was occurring. I may have been afraid to go there and be a part of it, as if it were an infection, or I may have known that I needed to go there to stop it.

Dream #2

I rode with my family to a monument. The monument may have been the "Jefferson Memorial." The monument was all by itself in an area wooded around with thick, leafy trees. We arrived after sunset. A band of tan-yellow-orange light rimmed the horizon of the deep blue sky.

The memorial was a stout, wide building of red stone. Floodlights shone onto it at different angles, lighting patches of the structure. The structure looked like a small version of the U.S. Capitol, elongated. The place was open, and there were a number of rooms (maybe three) which could be walked through. The central room, under the cupola, housed a colossal statue of Jefferson, seated.

My family had gotten out of the car. They were wandering around the building in the blue shadows of the evening. There were a few other people around.

I was a little distracted, trying to figure out if this was actually the right monument, the Jefferson monument. I walked away from the monument and looked at the surroundings. The place was secluded, for sure. I remembered that about the monument from previous visits. But I remembered the monument being much different.

Well, I thought, maybe I shouldn't worry about that right now. I was here, after all. I might as well see what this monument, whatever it was, was all about, and not miss out.

I walked toward the monument. My family was seated outside. They may have been afraid to go in. I thought I'd go in and try to figure out why my family were afraid.

As I headed toward the central chamber, I saw that there were a few black boys hanging around the steps in front of the monument. The boys sat on a small staircase opposite a small, concrete walkway from the monument.

The boys obviously wanted to cause trouble. I thought of going into the central room directly, but I felt like the boys wanted me to do that, like it was a trap. So I walked (from the left) to the far right chamber. I knew I could walk into the central chamber, within the building, from the right chamber.

I entered the building. The room had red stone floors and walls. The place was lit by slightly dim track lighting. There were a couple museum exhibits along the wall and on small glass-case podiums throughout the room.

I could hear the boys enter the room. I knew that they were going to follow me and cause trouble. I started walking quickly through the chamber. I walked quickly into and through the central chamber as well, still hearing the boys in pursuit.

This chamber was also dimly lit, with red stone floors and walls. The front of the chamber was a floor, leading up to a few short steps, in a convex half-oval that rose to a short "stage." The statue stood on the stage, against the wall. It was of white stone, not as large as I had expected, maybe twice life-size.

I hurried toward the left chamber. I may have thought my family was outside the chamber, and now that I had been through the chambers, I could take my family safely through them.

(At this point I got off the train. I resumed entering my dream in my paper journal at 9 PM, heading back to Brooklyn via the B-train, after work.)

But I was also still trying to get away from the boys who were following me. Upon entering the left chamber, I found myself in a different space. I was in some place like a mall. The mall's walls seemed black, like the walls of a stage, and the building was enormous, tall, like the "atrium" in the Denver Museum of Natural History (the last time I was there, years ago) or the atrium in the Sony Building.

The atrium seemed to have a balcony running along its walls. The barriers of the balcony were clear, clean glass, railed with chrome rails which gleamed with clean, white light.

I walked onto a downward escalator. The escalator was tall and steep. It was also gleamingly clean. It went toward some kind of exit with which I felt familiar. I was trying desperately to get to that exit, for some reason that I can't remember.

I heard the boys behind me, possibly a couple of stories up from where I had gotten onto the escalator. The boys were taunting me, talking as if they were going to follow me, but also a if I were kind of a doofus and not worth following, because I didn't know where I was going.

The escalator now became more like steps, which became increasingly more difficult to traverse, as if they were getting more and more cluttered with objects like chrome bars and rails.

Eventually there were no stairs. I was jangling almost vertically downward through a frame or three-dimensional lattice of chrome bars. I seemed occasionally to have opened and gone through doors within this 3-D lattice, although much of it seemed to be just empty space, like the skeletal model of a molecule.

I got afraid, wondering whether I would eventually just fall down out of the lattice. But soon I found myself before  door like a fire escape. I opened the door -- just a crack -- it was hard to push in, like there was a strong, elastic, hydraulic resistance on the other side. Pushing in more and more, I managed to be able to stick my head in

The space beyond looked like a fire escape stairwell, with white, fluorescent light and white-painted concrete walls. But something like an IV stand was tipping before my face just beyond the door.

A little plastic item attached to a plastic tube was most plain to my vision. The item was clearish, maybe two inches long, with four cylinders, all draining into (or being drawn from?) the clearish, plastic tube. The device and the tube were filled with blood.

I felt like this was a danger sign, that it meant this area was contaminated. But for some reason I felt like this was where I needed to be. I pushed open the door. Some blood (from the device?) spurted into my face, possibly into my mouth.

I now noticed that there were all kinds of hospital equipment and furnishings strewn about in this stairwell. The majority of them either contained or were dirtied with blood. I walked up the stairs, curving counter-clockwise as I ascended each flight. The walls seemed to have been written on with blood and black markings. More contaminated items lay in my path.

I myself seemed to be dirtied with blood, as well. My mouth was dripping, full of blood, and my skin was smeared with blood.

I finally came to a landing (as large as a large room, I believe) that was overwhelmingly filled with bloody hospital equipment. I myself felt sick, with the contamination of all this blood.

Dream #3

I was in a house which may have been my great grandmother's house. My sister had gone off by herself into a room just off from the living room. She sat with her back against the front of a chest, which seemed to be the "echo" of an easily visible chest (from my vantage point as I stood before my sister) in the living room.

My sister was upset, possibly that nobody believed her about something. It may just have been I who didn't believe her. There were some other people in the living room. The Mariah Carey song "Love Takes Time" came on. I could hear it palpably in my ears. My sister and I began singing along with it.

(2/9/10) flying to the intrepid; long, diseased lives

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM, on B-train to work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked down through a park like Madison Square Park. It was a sunny day. I saw two gardeners working on a ground-level flower bed at the south side of the park. One was a man; the other, a woman. The man stood while he worked on the flowers. The woman lay on her left side, possibly digging in the soil. The soil was dark and rich.

The man told me, "She's here, KB (an old friend of mine) is here." I now saw that the woman working the flower bed was KB. I may have bent over her to wave hello. She sat up and greeted me. We started talking. I had told her at some point that I was going to go to the Intrepid Museum. We walked away from the flower bed and now faced a wide river.

It may have been like I had now come back from the museum. KB spoke as if I had invited her to come with me, though she had declined. She now said she was sorry she hadn't come, since she'd always wanted to go there. I may have said it had been fun. But I didn't want to talk about it too much -- I felt like I was starting to sound obsessed.

As I spoke, I watched the river, which seemed to be moderately active. I now saw the Intrepid, which was partly like an aircraft carrier and partly like a gigantic pier. I pointed it out excitedly to KB, even though I was again afraid that my being so excited would make me sound obsessed, or like a know-it-all (against which KB would react by saying a lot of things she knew).

But KB said, "Oh! How great!" in almost a motherly tone of approval. I pointed out one jet, which looked a little like a Falcon jet. I pointed out how the plane was propped up on a ramp that seemed to lean against the control tower.

I said, "That jet hadn't been that way before." But then I thought about it and said, "Well, maybe it had." KB seemed interested in my statements.

We were now moving across the river, as if we were floating in the river up to our chests, but moving as quickly as if we were flying over the river. We saw the SR-71 Blackbird, which was enormously long, and which I also didn't quite feel was in the right place.

We now stood on a walkway of wooden planks and metal just a couple of feet above the surface of the water. The sides of the aircraft carrier towered (straight up, not curved over) over us. There was some series of metal walkways over us as well. We were alone.

At some point KB may have put her arms around the underside of the nose of an older plane, clapping her hands against the surface for a moment. We spoke a little more. Then KB told me, "I'm broke." She said this as if she were also a little bit panicked about her future.

I said, "Do you need money? If you need money, we can go get you some right now. I'll lend it to you, no problem." KB looked at me with a stunned expression, her pale eyes blank. KB was unable to say anything. Finally she accepted.

Dream #2

I was in a small living room which was dim, with only natural light flowing into it from behind thick curtains. The room was narrow and slightly long. I sat on a couch on the right side of one end of the room. My mom and my aunt B sat on either a couch or chairs on the left side and other end of the room.

My aunt spoke with my mom and me about how people live to a certain age even with certain diseases or health problems. My aunt said something to the effect that my great grandmother lived with her disease until she was 80 years old -- and that was an old age to live to with that specific disease.