(2/3/05) peanut butter turmoil; police training; power surge in the matrix

(Entered in paper journal at 4:10 PM at a library -- not sure which.)

Dream 1

I was in a kitchen that was dark blue with night. It feels like a spacious kitchen in a nice, two-story house. I opened the fridge and pulled out a Pop-Tart with "peanut butter and jelly" frosting on top. I thought it would be good to put peanut butter on top of that.

I looked at a couple different containers of peanut butter. Suddenly I felt ashamed -- this food wasn't mine. But would the people I was taking the food from mind? They had possibly told me I could eat whatever I wanted.

I felt like my friend CV owned one of the "jars" of peanut butter -- a green, paper, hex-cylinder with white polka dots and cartoon bees all over, the bees possibly wearing eyeglasses. This was some sort of organic peanut butter. There might have been a tall, thin jar inside, like a jar of fine jelly.

I felt bad and uncertain about whether I was entitled to the food. Then I was suddenly angry. This was just the turmoil planned for me to endure by the people who owned this house.

Dream 2

I was outside on a warm, sunny day. I may have been part of some police training. The training was given by a tall, strong, attractive, man who was a jerk. At some point I realized just what a jerk this man was.

It seems now like this place was something like a summer camp. Against the wooden entry-road-arch, toward the inside, not the outside (i.e. not greeting the guests) were enormous bull horns

maybe twelve feet long. I think I guessed this meant danger.

Dream 3

Something like The Matrix. There were a good "Neo" and a bad "Neo." In the beginning it was like I was watching the "movie," as the good searched for the bad. But now I was the good "Neo" and I was face to face with the bad "Neo."

We each seem to have had some special power directly implanted into our heads. I don't know what "mine" was. I don't know what the bad "Neo's" was. But the bad "Neo" had had some metallic device over his ead to stop him from using the power. Now the metallic device was off.

We stood in the dark, possibly by some jungle-wired spaceship in the depths of a vast or ruined town. At first the bad "Neo" wasn't aware of his power. But now he even said something like, "I am slowly becoming aware of a new force surging up through me."

His head was bald except in back, in a half shaven-way. His head glowed brighter and brighter as if lit from above and as if machinery or some technology were burning up in his head. I knew I had to stop him before he got too powerful. But in a way I was still watching all this as if it were only a movie.

Suddenly it was more like a movie, though I was still involved as if I were living in this situation. I saw a chrome, circular plate with three red, glassy beads along it.

It was in a comic book-style, blue-grey darkness.

Some voice gave a warning that the Matrix was experiencing something like a power surge. Everybody was out of consciousness for the time being.

I realized, floating before this main power control, that if the program restarted too late, I might lose all my memory. I wouldn't be able even to remember the bad "Neo," let alone defeat him. But I was more worried about losing "myself" altogether. I wasn't sure that I'd remember "myself" even if they did get the power back on immediately.

Now the power came back on. But I wasn't in the same place as before. I was in "my room," as "Preemie." But my room was more like a bedroom in the basement of a house in the suburbs. It was dark -- almost totally black, with just a bit of grey vision. I was shirtless, wearing jeans.

I seemed to be getting yanked all around by my legs, my legs yanked up into the air by some invisible agency. In my head I heard, as if it were a memory, someone telling me that I knew about some people's or group's (like the Falun Dafa) meditation practices, and that the more I knew and the less I spoke, the more I would be tortured, starting now.

I was going to be fed some stuff that was like poison. It would burn my mouth like a concentrated chili pepper, but would eventually also dissolve my mouth and guts.

Now I was walking up into a church, the balcony of a huge, contemporary Charismatic Christian church. Although I was in modern times, the attitude was much more like an ancient ceremony overrun with corruption. People were here whom everybody had to bow to as if these people were gods themselves.

I stated my dislike for these people as I ascended to the balcony. At the doorway to the seats were two greeters: Jesus and his wife (?) Mary. Jesus's shirt was spattered with blood. It was a white "shirtfront" or "robe-front" -- I don't know which.

Jesus and Mary both wore robes of white, blue, and purple. Jesus looked very noble, striking, and kind. I thought, This is before he had been crucified. Yet look how well he accepts his future.

I sensed (?) that the corrupt had heard I (or the people around me, with whom I sympathized?) had disapproved of them and the corrupt ceremonies. I thought I would be quiet so as to blend in and not draw attention to myself too early.

I saw a woman/man (a eunuch if it was a man) in a blue and purple robe with a black, squarish, lacework headdress that looked Asian and clung to the fat, round, fleshy, peach face grossly yet regally.

I sat in a seat in the steeply-rowed, tightly packed audience. Someone much like the headdress person began "preaching." My view was obscured by a tier-railing. I tried to look below it, to a space between the railing and the half-wall barrier where I could almost see the speaker, who was also in the audience, like the headdress person.

The speaker said something like, "I can tell you aren't listening, and out of defiance. Would you like to be punished?"

I slowly looked more closely at him. I felt like my spirit had been broken a bit just because of that.

(1/1/06) on the bus; the mystical bookshelf

(Entered in paper journal at 10:03 AM at Starbucks at Astor Place.)

Dream 1

It was early morning, deep blue, and I was on a bus that was also an office. There were a lot of seats per row, like on an big airplane. We were waiting for the bus to pull out of the parking lot. I may have thought the bus driver was lazy and didn't want to leave because he didn't want any of us to have to work. I may have been a temp. Some new permanent person "moved in" to the seat beside mine. He looked like my senior coworker DH. He sat to my left.

I had been slouched in my chair. The seat back in front of me had its tray down and a computer screen in the seat back. I had a couple envelopes in my hand. I opened one. It had what looked like a check in it. The check looked like it was for a lot money. I was happy at first, but I realized I didn't any money coming to me.

I lifted the check up from down by my waist into a beam of incandescent light coming from my own or someone's ceiling light near me. The check changed before my eyes to a check-like promotion from some bank, telling me that for just $170.24 (I think) I could start up a professional bank account with them. Something about the check felt old, like a magazine ad from the 1970s.

I put the "check" down and thought, Well, obviously they don't know me, or they wouldn't have sent me an invitation like this. I was sad when I realized I also still owed a ton of money.

The new person to my left seemed to be looking at me. I sat straight up in my seat and tried to look motivated. I thought he could get me, maybe all of us, fired by telling the boss none of us worked. But then I thought, All of us are at the mercy of the bus driver.

I "saw out" of the bus to a building with a couple people in the doorway. They were the higher bosses. I knew the bus driver may have been stopping us from doing work, but that the higher bosses were also not giving us anything to do. I now felt less ashamed of sitting there doing nothing.

Dream 2

I was in some place like the outdoors. I followed a few people, mostly women. They may even have been holding my hand and leading me.

We walked past a short bookcase. I caught sight of a copy of William James's Principles of Psychology. I broke off from everybody else. I wanted to look at the book I figured I could catch up with everybody else later.

The book was on a shelf of similarly bound books. The binding/cover was a cheap, fake leather, marbleized pattern, in red, blue, or green. Principles of  Psychology was bound in red. The volumes were all thin at the binding edge, but tall, and with wide pages. I thought about what a pain it would be to carry this copy of the PoP all over the place with me. I was ashamed to look directly at the bookshelf because I didn't want anybody nearby to know I was so interested in such books.

But looking at the bookshelf as I was about to grab the Principles of Psychology, I noticed a very obscure book, bound in blue, by an author with a name like Epictetus. The book was about some strange religious question, some dark, symbolic treatise on Jesus. This book was very attractive to me, even though I felt the quality of the writing might not be as high or challenging as James's writing. I was frightened by the book, and more ashamed of looking at it and being seen.

A man and woman sat on a couch to the right of the bookcase. The man and woman were thin, a little like hippies, cocky, and good humored. I wanted to take one of the books. But I didn't want to carry around such bulk with me, to weigh myself down and take on more clutter than I was already bearing.

But now I looked below the tall volumes and saw a whole collection of small, thin books, half in red binding and half in green binding -- the same kind of cheap, fake leather, marbleized binding as was covering the taller volumes.

There were a lot of incredible titles, all mystical. I figured I could take one of these. They were so small that it wouldn't add much at all to my heavy load. And they were all so ancient and deep -- I was sure I could find what I needed in them.

But as I grabbed for one I looked to my left and saw some stacked containers full of old, pulpy books, all on mysticism. One in particular, a bulky one but with poor quality, newsprint-like paper had a photo on the front of an ancient Middle Eastern city with a purple-maroon afternoon sky behind it and before it a cheesy,touched-up group of two modern people and one "ancient" person (I think) standing close together like in a family portrait.

The title and subtitle of this book again had, like the book by "Epictetus," something to do with Jesus, but in a dark and spooky way, In this case, the book was about some very old, spooky ritual that was directly connected to the powers Jesus had.

The book appealed to me on so many levels. I loved its cheesy look. I loved its cheap bulkiness. And there's always something I love about the 1960s and 1970s style of getting into the deep, scary issues of mysticism -- the way the vapid, blunt American speech wraps itself around that ancient complexity and terror -- or, rather, the way I always wish it would do that.

I picked up the book and flipped it around. The photo on the back was of a green hillside and blue sky in the background before which stood "Jesus" and two modern people, maybe two children, maybe a black boy and a white girl. The back caption once again spoke of the secrets of Jesus's power, though this time much less obscurely and intellectually frightening and more self-help-focused and more obviously centered, not around "the ancient magician" but around Jesus.

I knew if the man and the woman saw the back this book, they'd laugh at me for thinking Jesus was cool. I flipped the book around so the front cover would be visible while I carried it. But I noticed then that even the title on the front was obviously about Jesus being cool and magic. I hesitated over taking the book. I may even have put it away.

To mask my taking the book I walked over to the right of the couch (now inside), where there was a makeshift "book"shelf against the wall. It was full of CDs, DVDs, and videotapes all in security casings. I think there were books behind the lowest level (which was the floor) at first. But as I flipped through the CDs the "books" behind them became videotapes.

There was a theme to all the videotapes, which all had cheesy, cheap, solid-colored boxes. The theme weas that one seriously had to question whether one should work in the mainstream at all, since to do that work would mean to succumb to the evils of the industries. The videos were all stories of these industry evils, how the industries were set to hook people on consumption, and how this consumption resulted in the murder and destruction of many people.

I hadn't been looking for any of that. I just wanted something plain and easy and big enough to cover up the title of the mystical book I wanted to take.

The couple on the couch addressed me. "Remember the old days, Preemie? You sure did a lot of silly things back then." I now pulled out a CD with a picture of me on the cover. I was dressed like I dressed in college. I was knelt down over dusty ground, throwing up.

The couple said something like, "When are you going to give us that CD you promised to give us as a present?"

I pulled out another CD. The cover showed me in the same position, still throwing up. But this time I wore green Nomex pants and a navy blue t-shirt -- the firefighting outfit I'd had while working at an Americorps program near Los Alamos, New Mexico.

I felt a little lost as I looked at this photo. I thought I should feel disappointed. But from the fact that, other than any puking, I looked so good and healthy, I couldn't tell why I should feel so disappointed.

(11/7/06) my brother's keeper

(Entered in paper journal at 6 AM at Starbucks on 56th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

My family all sat in some dark room like a theater in front of the stage, not on it. We were praying. But my brother, who was murderous and hung on a cross, kept screaming. He was trying to pull himself off the cross, which was on the right side of the proscenium (?), behind us as we prayed. He was trying to free himself so he could kill us.

I was outside, somewhere like a balcony, talking to an official. The official said certain pieces of mail my brother would receive would give him power to kill. These had been sent when my brother was sane. But now they had to be intercepted.

I was back inside the theater-like room. I held the pieces of mail in my hand. They were from the Air Force. It took some mental skill to force back the feeling that I should hand these pieces of mail to my brother. I walked past my brother. His hair was long and black and he wore a loincloth and a crown of thorns. The cross he hung on was dull, pine green trimmed in gold.

Somewhere nearby, on a small corner wall, perhaps, was a clearish, plastic cross with the top half of a wooden Jesus. Maybe even the top half of the cross was wooden. The  bottom half  looked like a mix between a dildo and a keychain and had a saying on it. The saying was very crude, making fun of Jesus.

My friend R and I had made this cross. I thought, It's because irreverence toward the spiritual that my brother has been cursed with murderous demons.