(10/5/04) smelly pizza; bell bottom firefighting; standing up for mom; fast food adecco

(Entered in paper journal at 2:30 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

New York (?). Day. With mom and brother. Walk out tall white apartments to go do laundry.

Man in next apartment stops me. Says, "Don't eat any more smelly pizza out on balcony."

I say, "That wasn't me. I'm in 329, not below you but right here."

He then says, "Oh. Well, we're gonna find out who it is. One day my wife and I -- my wife is deaf -- went to Cici's Pizza at 7 PM (?) and stayed there looking at our memories." (He keeps flipping through a book of notebook and color-copied material.) "It got to about 9 PM and some guy came into the store. He was real..."

He trails off at a memory -- "Hey, look! A recipe somewhere for XXXXX!" (It's not on his present page but the present page has a note saying recipe somewhere. Page otherwise blank.) He flips through pages.

I see recipe on next page, tell man so. Man turns to it. I think he'll start story again, but he doesn't. Just says, "Well don't let me catch you eating smelly pizza anymore."

I tell him, "Have a good one."

Look to man's wife and say, "You, too." She makes hissing sound with mouth. She had done this before, too, at some point. She looks like "pretentious" wife in Monsoon Wedding (husband black). (I by the way was always standing outside a screen door. I also "remembered" having been told something about what a creep the guy was and how nice the woman was by my mom.)

I now walked to Cici's/the laundromat. But it was so late. I also now had my laundry in my hands. I thought, Well, I won't do my laundry. But since it was already put in a bag, all mixed together, I had to do it.

I thought about getting quarters. There was a change machine at the end of my block (?) -- strange external/internal block (?). Laundromat like place with washing machines in small room, then bowling alley (?) in huge room.

I thought, What if my mom sees all my panties when my clothes are in the dryer?

All washing machines full. As I look for empty one I pass three or four women, all average-looking (one looks like barista from Barnie's) looking at me, attracted. I can't find laundry machine. I think again about not doing laundry, but I realize again I have to.

Dream 2

I was listening to radio (?) with my mom. Some special on the Beatles. Paul McCartney (nowadays) said, "We've heard the last song, which was written by XXXXX." (Either him or John Lennon.) "You may be getting tired of hearing songs by XXXXX and wondering when you'll hear songs by XXXXX. But did you know this song was written by the both of us?"

Plays song called "Firestarter." (I "see" the title somewhere). (Song is actually "Bell Bottom Blues" I was hearing.) I hear voice, determine it is Paul, so mainly written by Paul (or John?).

My mom says, "Many people think this is a love song. But it's actually a song about fighting fires." I say, "Oh. When I hear the 'walk across the water'" (?) "part, I always think of wildfires." My mom seems put back now, as if I said something too braggingly. I now see an image of firefighters in the night, apparently as I drive past.

***

(Daytime paper journal entry.)

Four dreams remembered from last night. I'll list third and fourth first as they aren't written in the Ghost Book.

Dream 3

I sat in a house which was also like an office. I sat at a big desk about three-quarters toward the back of the living room. I feel like I was partially surrounded either by boxes or filing cabinets. I may have been holding up a high-heel dress shoe.

My mom (?) walked out of the house with someone else, probably a woman. I felt some man somewhere insinuating that I was lazy and worthless. I got up to prove that this wasn't so. I walked out to the front patio. My mother stood with XXXXX in the center of the yard, which was cluttered, with boxes. I think the boxes were empty.

A black man looking all scraggly and with black sunglasses on walked up to my mom with a manipulative grin on his face and began a spiel for money.

I thought, Now's my chance to prove I'm not some lazy coward! I ran down toward the guy and yelled at him, "Get the hell out of my yard!" He quickly backed up, not looking worried. He looked at me as if to say, I'm gonna get you for this.

I watched him as he walked all the way into a house next door to mine. I thought I should go in after him. But I didn't feel I had a right to go into someone else's house. I also didn't think I could beat him in the interior of that house, which was maze-like and unfamiliar to me. So (I think) I went back into my house, feeling lazy, worthless, and cowardly.

Dream 4

I sat in a one-seat-width table-booth at a fast food restaurant. Or, rather, I think I sat above it, floating, behind RN, my boss from my assignment with Adecco, who sat in another table-booth. Across the aisle from him, in another booth, sat A and S, two other workers from my assignment. S said something. R responded like S was an idiot, shutting her up.

I now sunk down into a seat, strangely, as if I sat backwards, though I felt like I sat forwards. I.e. not

or

but

with my legs going though the seat. RN who had sat in the chair-like booth seat directly backing the one I now sat in, i.e.

now sat in the booth seat on the other side of the table. ST sat to his left. ST held some white papers in his hand. I felt like RN had somehow apologized to me (for what???) by being sarcastic toward S.

RN seems to have disappeared. Now I looked at ST. His face became really sick. It was like he was realizing something really bad by looking at me. He suddenly said, "Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm ready to go home."

***

I don't know how much I need to write about my first and second dreams. They seem fully enough written in the Ghost Book. There are just a couple things I might say about the first dream.

Dream 1

The apartment was tallish, white, with a rough surface like painted, spiky concrete.

When I walked out it was like I walked out onto a patio. But when I spoke to the man, it was like I was on a ledge, looking into a window with the glass up and screen down. It was like I had walked out one window and up to another window. But it was also like I had walked onto one vertical balcony, i.e.

across empty space, up to another vertical balcony, to a doorway, the hard door of which was open but the screen door of which was shut.

It was confusing, just like walking away from the apartment, but it was like I was immediately down and walking up some street-width driveway from the apartments. It was like I was outside and inside at the same time.

At the corner of the "street" was a change machine. I was about to put a dollar in it for the laundry change. But I noticed a sign on the machine that said, "THIS MACHINE DOES GIVE OUT DIMES." The lettering was worn and faded, but I could still tell what it said. The machine was a hefty, beige-painted, steel cube.

(12/27/08) a tangle tale; the gravel pit

(Entered in paper journal at 9:23 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood out on an open field by myself on a greyish, warm day. I was flying on a red kite. The kite was really big and seemed to be at a towering height.

At some point I may have seen a tangle of other kites, which were red and blue. I may have tried to avoid the tangle. My kite avoided the tangle, but then a strong wind came up and dissolved the kite. All that was left was the frame, and possibly a clear, gelatinous film where the red plastic (?) had been.

The kite may have crashed, and I may have run out of the way of it. I now looked at the tangle of red and blue kites. It was a bundle of long strips of red and blue kite fabric. The strips reached up to the towering distance my kite had reached, but they touched down to the ground as well.

I saw one of the strips lose its ability to fly. It seemed to disjoin from all the other strips and to slide out of the body of the tangle under its own weight. I was afraid the if one strip fell, the whole mass of strips would fall, and that if they fell on me, they would kill me.

I ran out of the way, though not particularly panicked. It was like as soon as I started running I became less afraid, remembering how lightweight and soft kite material really is.

I may have seen the very barren structure of what would be a tall building like a warehouse or movie theater when it was fully constructed. I now stood under a tarp-tent with a white roof and plastic, white poles.

There were people in line, possibly "to watch" the kites. I got in line, but some old man butted in front of me in a really annoying way. The man was shortish, bald, fattish, with leathery, tan skin and brownish sunglasses. He had a little girl, maybe his daughter, with him.

I at first tried not to show how annoyed I was at him. But I suddenly got uncontrollably angry. I got close to him and made gross noises. Then I actually hit his right ear. This may have caused some kind of stir. The line may have broken up, the people in line may have turned to gather around me, thinking I was crazy.

Dream #2

I walked out onto a strange field with my mom. The day was grey with heavy clouds. The field was dark brown, wet earth with tall clumps of grass.

My mom was leading a group of us on some mission. My mom may have stood on or before something like a small pond that was either frozen over or had solid matter in it that could be walked on. She was taking an instrument like a shovel or jackhammer and either breaking the ice to take something out of the water or taking the solid pieces out of the water.

My mom called and waved to the others of us as if she were a military leader. The others went up to the body of water, which had a dark, grey metallic gleam to it. Somehow the whole atmosphere looked "as if" it were stormy and apocalyptic.

I didn't go with the others, however. I had a bag of bones (?) in my hand. I needed to go bury the bones. My mom yelled after me to come with everybody else. She sounded very threatening. I yelled, "Fuck you! I have to take care of my own things!"

The "bones" were now seeds. Then the seeds were encased in the squares of a chocolate bar. I walked over to a gravely pit. The pit was a burial pit. The pit had a lattice structure, a grid of wood, embedded in it.

I remembered that the bones of John Lennon had been buried here. I didn't want to disturb the bones. I was afraid they would bring John Lennon back as a bad spirit. I also knew I (or others?) had buried other seeds within this pit. The seeds themselves were like bones, and disturbing them, I feared, would also have bad consequences. Nevertheless I tossed in the (now) almonds, which were coated in the melted chocolate of a candy bar (although some were still in full squares), into the burial pit.

But when I pushed my "shovel" -- some weird, metallic instrument like a roto-rooter with a spade tip -- into the gravel, all the gravel in the pit began sinking. In some squares of the grid, the gravel receded entirely, revealing something like a living space below, almost like an ugly, messy version of Bugs Bunny's house, maybe with some skulls lying around.

I thought I would need to find more gravel to fill the pit back up. The pit may have needed to be full for the magic of the seeds to work. But my fear of the consequences of disturbing the bones and the seed-bones may have caused the pit to lose its gravel.

(1/30/09) a portrait of the lennons; screwed and loving it

(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a very grimy and messy, unfinished basement, like the basement of the house my family lived in in my last three years of high school. I was coming out of the basement as if I were coming back from a long trip. I walked through a plastic (?) curtain to get into the stairwell. The stairwell was also grimy, like the basement, but had white walls and white-tiled stairs (with reddish and brownish grime all over the place) and was yellowed with sunlight from a door-window at the top of the stairs.

As I walked up the stairs I said, as if speaking to a camera, "I know I'm being watched, so I'd better behave." I may have turned around to see a small surveillance camera on the wall over the doorway at the foot of the stairwell. I might have been or thought of myself as a pretty girl with dark, tan skin and long, black hair.

I was now somewhere upstairs with my mom. She had gotten me a camera, since I had expressed my frustration over not having been able to take photos of things recently. But, she told me, the camera had only a XXXXX memory, so I could only take (five? ten?) photos at a time. But the medium was also film, not digital memory. So I knew I'd have to get the photos developed. The photos were also only in black and white, although they apparently had the most desirable resolution quality imaginable.

I saw a few photos that had been taken, as if I were holding onto them crookedly, in a disordered pile, as if I couldn't put them in order at all in my hands. The photos looked like crime scene or car crash (or punk rock) photos: very jangled, with people lying or standing in awkward, wild poses, with their mouths wide open, and with objects scattered all over, maybe broken.

I then saw a photo of John Lennon and his family, possibly standing in Central Park. There were a lot of people in the photo. The photo stood before all my vision, as if I were seeing it on a movie or television screen. At first I could only see a small fragment of it, like pant legs, then a section of face. But eventually the whole photo became clear to me.

Julian Lennon, as a boy, caught my attention first. He looked exactly like John Lennon. He wore a pea coat that went down to his knees. He stood just about in the center of the photo, a little to the left. Just to the left of him and behind stood Yoko Ono. Farther to the left and farther back stood John. He and Julian may have been making the same kind of expression: a complacent, but somehow sad, tucking upward of the right corner of the mouth, with a bright, but blank, almost depressed, look in the eyes.

Farther to the left stood people like my brother and sister. To the right of Julian, beside him, stood one or two of his brothers/sisters by John and Yoko. The children were all the same height, and they looked somewhat the same, thought the brothers/sisters may have looked like children who had more "personality."

Behind Julian stood a tallish, blonde, teenage girl. Whereas everybody so far (except John and Yoko?) had a kind of dressed-up casual, late 1960s look, this girl looked like a fashionable casual girl from the 1980s. She wore a patterned sweater and had short, loosely curled, blonde hair. She was looking to the right, to a woman who looked just like her, except that she was more formally dressed, though still in the 1980s style. This was the girl's mother, who was also (i.e. at the same time as Yoko) John's wife.

To the girl's immediate right were a couple of the girl's brothers/sisters, who were slightly shorter than she, and were dressed more in the 1960s style. I may have been in the photo as well, somewhere far to the right.

Dream #2

I was in an office, which actually looked more like a theater or auditorium, talking with my boss BS about my having gotten fired. The place was bright and grey with window light -- probably high windows on a sunny day. The place was also full of young people, mostly men, who were very active and happy. They all looked like business people, but they were dressed in t-shirts and jeans.

One of my friends caught my attention. He had let his seat move back into its upward position. He then sat on its edge and moved back and forth on it. He said something like, "Now I can feel what our company did to us is really like!" This was supposed to mean he felt that we had gotten screwed. But then he said, "It kind of feels good. I can tell by your look that you think it feels good, too. Don't tell me you're one of those guys who likes it up the ass."

I looked away and I thought, It couldn't be. I thought the swaying back and forth on the seat edge was fun. But could that mean I liked anal sex? I then moved away from my chair, not standing, but crouching. I let the seat cushion spring back up, like a normal seat in an auditorium or movie theater might do. I then started scratching my back against the seat edge. Everybody around me said, "Now that's a great idea!"

The guys were all starting to act rowdy. They were all scratching their backs against their seat edges, but they were also standing and joking with each other, having a lot of fun. I had previously felt like they were making fun of me. Now I realized that all their joking had been to make me laugh, and that they were largely looking for my approval.