(10/25/04) can't karaoke money; don't want to fly

(Entered in paper journal at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in some place in which a set was put up for lighting or filming a rock band. It feels like the lonely corner of some larger area. I was with a couple other guys at first. They now headed off somewhere.

I felt like I hadn't done a great job singing. There was one other guy. He may have been behind a TV camera or film camera, but he also controlled some kind of karaoke-like background music machine.

The guy played a song he thought I'd be really familiar with, "Money," by Pink Floyd. I couldn't remember either the verses or the order of the verses. So the man "had" a computer "turned on" at the back of this little set. I sat down at it, turned on the internet, and searched for the lyrics to "Money."

The screen was always blue and blank, I think. The first "page" I "pulled up" was some kind of prose poem on money that appeared to have been written in Vietnamese, though it was actually, apparently, in English.

I tried to get to the correct web page, but I could hear the song continuing, getting closer to ending. I knew the other guys off in some other area would still think I was an idiot. I may even have been lamely mumbling the tune.

Dream 2

I was in something like an old plane yard with my mom, my grandpa, and a host of older, unidentified people. It was a desert area with brownish tan ground broken by small islands of green grass.

There seemed to be freight cars everywhere, too, as if we were in a maze of freighters. Some freighters were modern. Others were futuristic, grey, smooth, dull, almost plastic. Yet all of them had apparently been abandoned some time ago. Now they were used as storage areas for small, one-person, high-speed jets.

My grandpa was taking us all here so I could "fly the jet once again." I don't know if anybody else would fly.

Now I "remembered" myself having flown the jet, somehow with my brother. We were high above the green, rippled earth. We did some twirls and flips, which I "remembered" as if I were outside of and above the jet, which may have had no wings. We then descended sharply down toward the ground.

I "remembered" having been afraid but also that everything turned out fine (?). But in between "then" and "now" something horrendous happened that made me afraid of flying the jets, as if this very "memory" of my brother and I would be somewhat duplicated, except this time with a tragic ending.

I didn't tell anybody that I was afraid. I just kept hoping that something would go wrong before I had to start flying.

We got to my grandpa's "lot," which looked something like a towering coffee machine made of freighter metal and futuristic plastic. On the "burner" was a greenish, wooden box as large as a freighter. In this box was my grandpa's jet, as well as a box of small items that needed to be applied to the jet to make it work.

My grandpa went into the wooden freighter and brought out the box of small items, sitting it on some pile of wood nearby. The wooden freight car had been neglected. It and the small box were now housing for mice. The small box was full of hay as well as the large, plastic baggies full of small items. There may also have been huge wads of white stuffing or cotton.

Many of the unidentified folks went off to a similar structure across the way from ours. My mom had both wandered off aimlessly and stayed by side. My grandpa had apparently gone back into the wooden freight car to pull out the jet.

I looked through the baggies, hoping something would be missing. Almost everything was clear plastic, like small, plastic, magnifying glasses. There were also black plastic, half-conical magnifiers, like jewelers' eyepieces. All these things were to be applied to the jet.

But at last I found something, or rather it may have been my grandpa who found it, to be missing. A pair of eyeglasses, similar to the ones I wear, were supposedly broken and missing a lens (although, remembering them now, they seem to have been whole, just a little tattered).

My mom now stood behind me. My grandpa was hurrying back into the wooden freight car. He said, "You can't go flying without the glasses. You won't be able to see quickly enough. Dammit. I'll go look for the other lens. But I doubt I'll find it."

I was relieved but also a little regretful.

(9/22/05) i saw her standing there; through a glass darkly

(Entered in paper journal at 8:35 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield Street and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I sat with a small group of folks at a long, wooden table with shelves coming up from its center. We may have been outside. The daylight was like late afternoon.

I stood up at a microphone and sang "I Saw Her Standing There" by the Beatles. I pinched the first couple lines, singing them off key. I continued, doing a little better, but still messing up a couple odd notes. But, apparently, I finished the song well.

I sat down. A couple people had left as I sang. I sat down by a friend. I saw him only slightly, but I heard him clearly in my left hear. He was laughing as he told me I did a good job.

Dream 2

I saw that Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly was going to play on TV.

(6/23/07) the giant fly; what i never saw; two girls in one; lucid in reality

(Entered on Q-train, but don't know when.)

Dream #1

I lay in bed. I opened my eyes and looked at the wall (to my left). An insect, a small roach, I thought, climbed quickly down the wall. I was disappointed to have a roach in my house. I thought I would get up and kill it. But now I saw two on the wall. I thought I might be seeing things.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were lots of insects (flies?) climbing all over my wall. I leaped out of bed, possibly in a straight-bodied roll parallel to the floor and landing in a crouch facing the wall. The wall was full of insects. I wondered what I could do to get rid of the insects. I thought I might have to call an exterminator and leave my house for a little while.

Down on the lower, right section of the wall, or perhaps on the "left foot" corner of my bed, was a fly about the size of my fist. It seemed to call for me, and to control all the other insects so that they, too, would call me. I was afraid, but I got closer. The giant fly made a semi-melodic, buzzing sound, almost like wings beating against a champagne flute. The fly's body was spiny and shine, an orange-green, reflective color. It had orangish wings.

Dream #2

I walked into a nice, big dining room. There might not have been any table. The room was narrow and long. The walls were wood. Some dim, warm daylight came through a yellowish curtain at the other short end of the room. The door I walked in through was at the lower part of the right long wall. A little farther up that wall stood my co-worker and good friend CL. Between us was a chest of drawers.

I walked in and immediately turned to face the chest. CL asked me if I had brought XXXXX (can't remember). I had some green, fleshy-looking sack in my hands. I cut it open and pulled out a "flying saucer." This was something like a silver table ornament or serving tray. It looked like a cake tray with no glass top and with ridges or slots all through it. I put it on the chest.

I thought CL might be trying to hide this object from others, as part of an overall conspiracy. I thought CL might be trying to convince me as well that I hadn't seen the flying saucer. CL very harshly asked me a question insinuating that I had already told my co-worker JB about the flying saucer. I became tense and slightly afraid.

Dream #3

I sat in the front row at some show. The seating was all rows of folding chairs. The floor was white tile. The lights were brightish orange and fluorescent. The place was full of people. The "stage" was level with the floor. On the back wall (a back wall) was a screen against which was projected a karaoke video.

A song started up. The girl to my left, who looked like my co-worker and fellow-Assistant FA, said, "Oh, you should sing this one! You love these guys!" It took me a second before I recognized the song as a Smashing Pumpkins song.

But I couldn't "catch" the words fast enough to begin singing with the music. Plus, the words on the screen weren't the same as the words to the song. And the video would occasionally fade in and out unexpectedly. I  told the girl that I did love this song, but that I didn't know it well enough to keep up.

I began cuddling with the girl. She had nice, dark skin. She wasn't thin, but she had the prettiness of a thin girl.

I was disappointed in myself for being so boring that I couldn't sing a song.

I now sat laying across the girl's chest. The girl now looked like one of my good friends, PD. She was still not thin. She wore a pastel turquoise-green, soft-fabric shirt. Below the collar, squared holes were cut out to look like an Egyptian necklace. The fabric between the holes was also strung in a way to look and feel like beads.

I ran my left finger along this "necklace" collar-piece. I also touched some jewelry on the girl's right upper arm. I felt like a child. I hoped this wouldn't turn the girl off and that we could still have sex. The girl said, "I will miss you very much when I am gone."

Dream #4

I woke up from a dream. I stood out of my bed by the foot of the bed and walked to the wall facing the foot of the bed. There was a wooden ladder folded against the wall. I was going to take it away from the wall, but I hung on one of the steps and looked at my wall. There was a yellowish, chipped substance dirtying the wall.

I didn't remember such messiness. At first I thought, Well, maybe I don't look at this wall well enough to have seen this dirty patch. Then I thought, No. This wall is different in another way: it's missing its little framing decorations: it's just completely smooth.

The discrepancy between this wall and my normal perception of my bedroom wall made me wonder where I was. I told myself, I just woke from a dream. I have to be awake. But I was now getting the strange feeling that life was a dream, and that I could wake into lucidity from waking life just as I would wake into lucidity in dreams.

I did something like what a person would do holding his breath and bracing for a plunge into a swimming pool. I thought, This is exactly what people think can't be done. And I'm trying to do it.

I felt the electric buzz (which, as I'd read in the literature, was a precursor, not for lucid dreams, but for out-of-body experiences). But when lucidity came, I realized that this had all been a dream after all. I wasn't "lucid" in (or ex-) reality. I was only lucid in my dream.

I wanted to explore the lucid dream, but I didn't believe I could imagine anything other than what I was presently seeing: the ladder and the wall. So I told myself, You are going to turn around clockwise. As you complete the turn you will wake back into waking life and you will be back in bed.

But even as I "held my breath, braced," and turned, I thought, Why am I doing this? If I'm lucid I should go exploring. But it was like I couldn't control myself, like I was being controlled by another will and now was in a gravitational spin that I couldn't pull out of.