(2/2/05) the final showdown; myself in the mirror; indigo bunting; the big store

(No date/time info for paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I was in my room in the dark. My bed seems to have been a futon, like my friend R's girlfriend L's bed. I walked to it, knowing it but not seeing it. I was on the phone with either my friend ML or BMC. My friend was making light of, trying to be cheerful about, my living situation. Apparently things were coming to blows tonight.

My friend said, "So it looks like it's the final showdown." I lay down in the bed, trying to figure out the "correct" way to say "the final showdown" -- I was actually thinking of "the final countdown."

Now there were a few strong knocks on my door. I saw some shadows in the light at the crack under my door. The person knocked again. I no longer had the phone. I walked to the door. I opened it without turning my light on.

One of my flatmates, the darker, heavier one, stood at my door in reflective sunglasses, boxer briefs, and no shirt.

I said, "Hello."

He said, "Hi." He lifted a gun straight up to my face. I ducked and grabbed his arm. We struggled.

Dream 2

I looked at my face in the mirror. I was expecting to look really bad. In fact, when I first looked at my face I thought it did look bad. But then I noticed that my face was smooth except for one or two tiny bumps. I had a few kind of dark, but almost completely faded, blemishes.

Dream 3

I was in something like a parking lot for a bank at the edge of a parking lot for a mall or strip mall. Against the building was a juniper tree or some other small, shrubby tree. I watched an "indigo bunting" land in the tree. It was like a long-bodied version of an eastern bluebird with a blue chest and a bright, deep green tail, very long. Even its beak might have been bright, deep blue.

I said, "Oh! It's an indigo bunting. I thought I'd never see one!"

I slowly walked to the tree to make sure the bird was an indigo bunting. I was afraid of scaring the bird away. But I also lifted up my hand to see if the bird would land on it.

The bird landed. But when I moved my hand the bird slipped off violently and rolled somersaults backwards for about fifteen feet.

Either I walked up to the bird or it flew back toward me. It had lost some of its color as soon as it landed on my hand the first time. But now it was a pale blue with sweeps of pinkish and brick red scalloped along its body. It looked like a paint-scraped building-side.

I thought something like, See? You're already messing things up.

Dream 4

I was watching a movie that was supposed to be The Big Sleep. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie again because I could understand Faulkner a little better nowadays. The color of the film was monochrome, yellow-grey.

The scene was of "Joan Crawford" and "Humphrey Bogart." They were, by this point in the movie, playing each other's roles. "Bogart" wore "Crawford's" clothes, and "Crawford" wore "Bogart's." They each had their voices switched, too, and their heads, at one point, so that the body-head configurations looked really strange. They gave these weird, Eugene O'Neill-esque soliloquies, which preceded some kind of final confrontation between the two characters.

Now it was the confrontation. I was there. The scene was in color. We were at the side, shaded (?), of a tall, wide building like a mall in the middle of nowhere. I remarked how great it was to put all the movie except the end in black and white and the end in color.

The woman ran around the far corner of the building. Now the man ran up, into an enclosed-looking concrete area like a loading dock, which was actually an entrance to the building. I thought I should run after him and tell him where the woman had run. But I was frozen.

Now it was I and my brother, as two little kids, waiting here like we were waiting for our father to come back out. We stood there for a while.

An old man came out and told us, "Didn't you guys know the mall is open now? Why are you just waiting out here?" My brother and I felt stupid for waiting. We went in. I don't know whether my brother stayed there with me.

I was (or we were) looking for a library where I could get a specific book, probably about the paranormal. But for the longest time we just kept walking through what seems to have been a department store like a Dillard's.

We went through rooms and rooms. The rooms were huge, tall, but more like rooms displaying living fashions in museums or historic mansions than like divisions of a department store. rooms were filled with beautiful, classical, wooden furniture and crystal chandeliers and were papered in golden, green, and other colored wallpaper with all kinds of beautifully, classical-French designs.

Finally we came to a "store" that was like the bed and bedding section of a department store with shelves interspersed throughout of books and magazines. The lighting and space were just like at a big Barnes & Noble. I found some magazines and a book that looked interesting. But they weren't what I'd been looking for.

I walked into another room, a wood-walled, small room with a few thick, tall beds. A sales attendant came in. I put the magazines and book down on the bed. I told the sales attendant I was looking for a library, not a bookstore. She told me where it was. Suddenly it was like had forgotten what I had been looking for and she had told me. I wondered why I had ever picked up the book and magazines in the first place.

My brother and I headed to the library. But now we were back outside. We saw how beside and in front of the building was a tall, arch-shaped, deep, copper-bricked entrance that was the only thing that remained standing of a now-ruined building. The building had been destroyed.

The place was very frightening to me at first -- its long depth and shadow and the ghostliness surrounding its destruction. but I lessened the fear by telling myself something I've now forgotten.

(3/16/05) legend of the recorder

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I stood up in "my room," which I don't remember, mainly because it was very dark. I walked out into the hallway and saw that it resembled the stairway in my old landlady UG's house. I thought it was the stairway in UG's house -- just like I really thought it was my room. But it was a much wider, taller space, and open, not closed and walled off, with a dining table and a single, dim, incandescent bulb.

I walked hesitantly out to the stairway because it didn't make sense that I should be here coming out of my room.

I told myself I was dreaming. Excited now by my lucidity I walked more steadily. I jumped over the railing to float down to the table. And part of my self actually did float down to that area, but "it" slowly dissolved as "it" thought, Why didn't I ever eat at this table?

The more coherent "me" actually slid over the front of a seat back for a chair like in my great-grandmother A's living room. In fact, the place even somewhat resembled that living room, except that there was dim, incandescent light like a jewelry display case, and all over were tall-legged coffee tables of the darkest, most lustrous wood. On one of those tables was a recorder (the musical instrument) of brass or gold.

I may have been shocked by the incongruousness of the balcony and my sudden slumping down into a chair -- I know I did need to tell myself to keep a hold on my lucidity. I told myself, oddly, to act like this was the normal world as much as possible so as not to overload my mind with all the apparent absurdities of dream-life.

I stood up and walked to the recorder. I had something in my hand that would play music. I sat that down and took up the recorder. I blew into it. I hesitated because I knew this was like a flute in a video game -- it would take me somewhere else.

I didn't press any holes or blow with any rhythm. I just heaved a breath into the recorder and it seemed to play itself. It played a broken, untuned melody that got more and more raucous until it sounded like a hurricane of cheap, screaming notes. The world broke. The last thing I saw was the recorder.

I was in a dark bedroom again. I looked over at a wide mirror and saw a figure

on a wide bed's edge. I flew toward what I actually thought was the figure. He looked like Buddha. He seemed to be staring sentient at me. I thought it was my teacher -- my dream-teacher. I thought I would get as close as possible, though I was very afraid. But when I got there I hit nothing. Nobody was there. I was looking into the mirror. I couldn't see myself, though I didn't realize or fully appreciate that fact.

I turned around. The bedroom was now like the apartment I'd lived in in Albuquerque in 2004. I flew from in front of the mirror to the bed. I may have seen a faded image of someone sitting on the bed. but now the world fragmented slightly and I lay on the bed. I told myself, Keep the lucidity. Don't move so crazy.

I rolled over and grabbed a book titled Politics in lettering like might be seen on novels about the Old West. I thought, Here's my book, then, that I was reading before I went to sleep. I'm back here. I'm going to go exploring out-of-body.

I broke through some window and into a blue morning. I was on slope-side like the slope at Jackie Robinson Park. I told myself I would be this high in the air because my apartment was seven floors up. I flew over maybe six apartment buildings that were white brick, hexagonal, and columnar.

I told myself, Go slow and remember this stuff. You're having an OOBE that you need to verify upon awakening. For instance, pay attention to what's on the roofs of these buildings, since you never really see the roofs.

But I ended up flying, as if pulled, over to some walkway like the walkway at the top of the slope at Jackie Robinson Park, except that it was lined with makeshift, booth-like shops and some hole-in-the-wall shops like you see in the older areas along Saint Mark's Place.

(Continued entering dream in paper journal at 12 PM at Riverside Park in Manhattan.)

There were a lot of people along the walkway. It was now implicitly early evening, though it was still early morning, i.e. just at sunrise. I flew, but with my body upright and just high enough that my feet hovered just above the ground, almost like I was walking. I also flew through people -- I only felt I had my body: I was projected.

But at some point three bullying guys all clamored into a tight crowd, blocking a path I was going to take. I had seen them moving in this direction, and I had tried to beat them. But though I don't think they could see me, they hustled faster to get in my way.

Somehow my speed and the force stop changed my direction. I turned into a building like a library. The walls of the hallway I was in were wood. The hallway was long, with a good number of doorways on each side. There was plenty of light. I moved through with a lot of speed, intensely interested in my location, telling myself to remember, but not exactly sure what the heck this place could be.

At the end of the hallway was the main library area. Near the entrance were some folding tabbles and small chairs. A couple people in the hallway had noticed me. Now a kid came up to me. This unsettled me in some way. I woke up.

(10/12/05) shitting at the breakfast table in the library

(Entered in paper journal at 7:51 AM at Starbucks at 98th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood on a roof with a group of people like actors in a color movie from the late 1950s about New York City, except that the actors also seem to have changed to how they'd look nowadays. The building stood below a modern building something like a mix between  60 Wall Street and the Woolworth Building (which is what someone in the dream actually called the building), but with rich, red bricks bordered with rusticated, rich, tan blocks. The day was sunny and free, and yet it felt like everything surrounding us was on stage

An old/young lady to my right said, "Now you'll have to watch this part in the movie again, really to understand how we should feel as we give our performance." But I didn't want to see it again, especially this close.

A plane flew down low and then nosed up or down so as to hit the Woolworth building with either its belly or its back. The building had a hole smashed in it, but there was no fire or explosion. Yet it was like the building had been completely destroyed. The plane flipped over, away from the building, and headed nose-down toward our building before dipping steeply down and crashing into the street below. We could hear the explosion and feel the shaking.

The lady said, "Now we have to practice living in our building." We or I went down into a series of very nice apartments and offices. We were supposed to be sorrowful about what happened, but we were also supposed to be unaware, as if nothing happened, as if it were going to happen to us.

At one point I stood by a sort of opaque window that was almost wall-sized and divided by a modernistic iron design. It may have been in a corner. I cried, with and without feeling.

Somehow the events had receded into the background. I was more interested in the building, and I may have gone around exploring it with my brother.

Now I was by myself. I was in a huge room like a library in a mansion. There were thin windows that went almost from floor to ceiling. There were a few desks. The place was ornate but also a bit ruffled and unkempt. I found a toilet just inside this room. It felt like this toilet had invisible walls around it, a whole feeling of being a restroom unto itself.

A man in a beige bathrobe walked into the "library." There was a dining table. The man set a glass of juice on it, then looked at me and chuckled and walked away. I knew that soon the whole family would be coming in for breakfast.

Now the wife came in. She wore a red bathrobe. She, like her husband, looked young and attractive in a late-1980s, upper-class, and fashionable, but not gaudy, sort of way. Now a little son and daughter came in, both in red bathrobes.

I felt silly for having decided to use this toilet and not looking for the other, more private one, which a sensible person might have found. But the little girl, who had silvery-blonde hair, said something to me that made me feel like less of an idiot.

I defecated. I could tell my feces was sticky. I finished. I finished. I flushed the toilet, but I watched as a particularly nasty, nutty piece of shit stuck in some weird, tray-like compartment of the toilet bowl. I tried to flush it away again, hoping the family wouldn't see me acting so weird, but pretty sure they would.

Now I was in another library, by myself. The room was much smaller, maybe twenty feet by ten feet, and it was filled with a clutter of old paperbacks: classics and pulps. I was looking for a particular classical science book. I didn't find it. I found a patch of other interesting science paperbacks, maybe by Sir Isaac Newton.

I walked farther and saw on one of the lower shelves, which were stuffed full of paper backs, some plays by Shakespeare, one of which may have been The Merchant of Venice. The spine of this book had a contemporary and popular look to it, like the No Fear Shakespeare series books, mixed with the style of a children's horror novel.

I sat down with my back to the shelves. I may have picked out a couple books to read.

(10/7/06) violent or tragic history; this house is enormous!; attractive edition

(Entered in dream journal at 8:59 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

Some group with one acronym had a short history that ended violently or tragically. Another group with a similar acronym had a much longer history and may have destroyed or absorbed the first group.

Dream 2

I saw as a rich man chased after somebody through a building, a house. the hallways were very complex and led into enormous rooms. The man may have been with a group of people. He stopped at one point, amazed, and said, "This house is enormous!"

Dream 3

I sat on the floor in a library like a nice college library. I was in a spacious but not very well-known or often-used (or often-cleaned!) room. I had a pile of books. I read from one book, then switched somewhere along the way.

A woman sat to my right, in a wooden chair. She read the same book (but in a different edition?) that I was reading. I saw the book was like a Penguin Classics with a photo on front of a colorful, early Italian Renaissance painting -- almost like an illuminated page with lots of people in red and green and blue clothing.

The book was about some very obscure aspect of art, particularly drawing on the personal experience of someone from medieval (Italy? or Greece?), who had written the book. But, I thought, the book had been written by an American, hadn't it?

I looked at the front of the woman's edition -- it looked like a Dover book. The cover was pale vanilla yellow. It ldelineated the translation of the book. Somehow the book had passed through a number of translators (who were really the authors of the book) -- two of the most recent being Japanese writers whom I admired very much. Finally the book had been written by either the American or the medieval Italian.

I looked at the girl. She was so beautiful. I was happy she, too, was reading this book. I embraced her, cuddled up against her. She stayed still. I couldn't tell whether she liked it. I slumped back down onto the floor. I thought, The last thing someone wants is to be accosted in a library.

I was sure the girl would get up and walk away. But she sat in the chair in a comfortable way, pointing toward me, maybe sitting cradled in the chair with her legs over the arms of the chair and pointing toward me. I knew she had actually liked what I had done.

(6/29/07) cupcake party; old eyes in the new times

(Entered in paper journal at 4 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a cubicle before an office. I sat like I was in a chair directly before the doorway to the office. A woman was in the office. she was darkly tanned, a little thick-bodied, with long, wavy, soft brown, and dark blonde hair. She wore a sleeveless, black shirt.

The woman told me, "I like you. You're smart and interesting and amazing." She then began singing to the effect of, "But no matter how I try, I just can't get myself to love you. It's no offense to you. I just can't feel anything for you." I thought it was a beautiful and charming song.

As the woman was partly through, a man walked up to us. He may have been my co-worker MW. The woman stopped singing, as if she thought she would get scolded for saying she didn't love me.

We were all heading downstairs for a celebration. I thought the celebration was for me, because I was doing such a great job. We went down a long escalator in a wide room with one or two other escalators in it. I was not interested in going to this thing, but I thinking of nice things to say.

We got down to a basement that looked like a school cafeteria built into a huge basement laundry room. There were only a couple long bench-tables in the whole space.

In now learned that this celebration was all about a group of people who had put together a really interesting project. They sat at a bench-table.

People were passing around cupcakes. They wanted me to have a plate with three large, frosted cupcakes on it all to myself. But I couldn't eat that much. I took one that looked like German chocolate cake. There was another one that was chocolate on chocolate, and another that was chocolate with blue frosting.

I stood up. Another group of people walked in. I gave them the two cupcakes. I told the group I couldn't possibly eat these cupcakes.

Dream #2

I was in a car with a long-haired, pale-skinned, young man. He kept sucking his mouth around and then away from his teeth, like he had a nervous disorder. He was very thin-faced. I saw him as if I were a camera filming him in the driver's seat. But I was myself, somewhere.

We drove through "New York," around "Central Park." The man told me, "People walk down routes they wouldn't have thought of walking down years ago. This city is different. You simply couldn't walk down those routes a few years ago: you'd get killed.

"We found safer routes in those days. The easiest way was by staying close to the libraries." As we passed gates into the park, the man said, ""You definitely didn't go into the park."

We passed a big library on a triangular corner. A lovely couple walked out. The man said, "Those two right there. That's a sign of the times. They would have gotten beaten up for sure. Now they walk around here shopping for groceries."

I stood out on the corner now, on a little plaza area before the library. There were a few Asian guys in suits handing out Christian literature. I was still seeing everything as if I were a movie camera. I thought this was a movie. I wondered how they got everybody to act so natural.

(9/11/07) my dad the murderer; gnear thalk; we really want to talk

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

Dream #1

My dad may have been accused of a murder. He was now coming to take me, my brother, and my sister to dinner. I lived in my own house, so they would pick me up. I sat in a room of my house, which was empty except a little clutter, a box of which I sat on.

I spoke on the cell phone with my mom. I told my mom, "I can't sit in a restaurant with that guy! Everybody'll be staring at us and asking us questions the whole time!" I imagined big, fat faces crowding all around my dad, my brother, my sister, and I at the restaurant. The faces all looked like obese versions of a mid-twentieth-century, cruel stereotype of Chinese faces.

I pulled the phone away from my left ear. The display was so colorful and bright. The main colors were blue.

My mom (or sister?) asked through the phone, "Your phone hasn't worked in all this time. Why is it working now that you need to tell us you don't want to see your dad?"

I thought to myself, Wow. They're right. How did my phone start working again?

Dream #2

A woman had gone missing, and two men had found that she had killed herself. They found her in a vacant lot of pale tan soil on a clear, blue day. She was a black girl, tall, thin, with brown skin and shortish, spiky, dark-blonde hair. she had slit her throat and lay in a big pool of blood. She lay in a fetal position on her right side.

The men now stood before a camera (still in the lot, still on a blue day) talking about how it was to find the body. The men were both oldish, a little dumpy, white, with big, round eyes.

The scene of discovery happened again, like for the first time. This time the woman was completely decapitated, her head lying three or four feet from her body. The view panned back up to the two men, who said, "Imagine our shock. Even if she had survived, what kind of life would that have been? Her arms were chopped to the elbows, her legs were gone..."

I now crouched in a library, in between a shelf and a wall. The space was narrow, about three feet wide at most. I had a big book held directly in front of my face. I crouched, relaxed, with my knees against my chest. My sister sat to my left, leaning against my legs.

My oldest nephew came walking from right to left along the aisle and stomped on my sister's legs. It hurt my sister.

I felt helpless to retaliate on behalf of my sister. But I didn't want it to happen to her again. So I told her to sit a special way. She sat pretty much the same way as before, but now she was naked.

I heard a weird story narrated now, by my sister -- not voiced from her physical body, but from a narration in my head. My sister said, "I wouldn't let anybody kiss my boobs before him. But this was very important to him." I had a feeling that the "him" was me. I thought, How could that be? Why would I do something like that to my sister?

My view floated all around the library, slowly, as if some disembodied I were walking around the library.

I heard myself and a friend, like my old friend R, speaking in my head. We were trying to decipher a phrase: "gnear talk." It was in a series of new phrases young kids were using nowadays. I saw the list of new colloquialisms before my mind's eye for a moment.

I thought, Well, "thalk" is a hot walk -- so hot it thaws you. And "gnear" is what you say when a girl is so close you can feel her loveliness. It's as if you were saying, "Gee, she's near," or "g-near," to make "gnear" (except that the "g" was pronounced hard, not soft).

Dream #3

I had a dinner or a breakfast at a place that was supposed to be the apartment of my old friend R and his fiancee L. We sat at a huge table that was littered with items like vases. Everything seemed very disordered. I was surprised to have been here. I thought, These guys aren't mad at me anymore! I felt relieved.

L said, "Come back soon. We really want to talk with you again."

I couldn't tell whether that were true. I looked at R. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see me here. I could tell he was already trying to find a way to keep me from coming back.

(9/18/07) the expansion of central park

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I rode through a suburban street at night with my mom and sister. As we passed one intersection one man walked diagonally through a corner yard to our left. We continued on. My mom drove. I sat in the passenger's seat. My sister sat in the back seat, on the driver's side.

I said, "That's why I like being out at night: nobody ever comes out."

My mom said, "I wish nobody even had to live in these houses. That way no lights would even be on."

I thought, Why would you want no lights to be on? You wouldn't be able to see the different kinds of houses.

The houses were lit brightly, as if there were lights pointed all over the houses and yards. For some reason this reminded me of Christmas.

At the end of the block the road curved left. Facing the curve was a tall, wide house. It had a wide, triangular, solid roof with a longer slope on the left than on the right. The wood of the house seemed to be as polished as in a Greene & Greene interior. The front of the building had some grid design in the wood. One vertical strip of the house-front was rough like the trunk of an enormous tree, but it was colored red and blue.

We drove into a massive tunnel or "garage" on the left side of the house. The tunnel also, like the house-front, had polished wood walls with grid designs. The tunnel turned left. At the turn was an enormous bench, maybe twenty feet tall, built into the wall, with seat and back cushions proportional to the height of the bench. (I think the only thing the bench could fit would be the statue of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.)

We continued, as if floating along, though perhaps no longer in a car (my vision was a lot more mobile), through a room full of books. I told my mom that this was a library I knew. The room was intimate. The walls were lined with books, and there were books all over the tables.

We continued floating/driving into a much bigger room which was just as full of books. Both rooms were very nice and comfortable, but they were both simply piled and piled with books.

I lay on a couch. My mom and sister sat in two chairs behind me. They were reading. My mom had a wide but thinnish book which, I thought, was probably an interesting picture book.

I turned forward. In front of me was a big, thick, dark, rectangular, wooden table piled with books. I pulled a large, pale blue-covered book off a pile. I was slightly disappointed to find that I had chosen a picture book on the history of Central Park. I had wanted something with subject matter a little "weightier."

I looked through pictures about how (some time in the 1950s?) the park had been expanded. There was a map of the park "as it is today." The park was long, oval-shaped with uneven edges. The parts of the park that existed before the expansion were in color. The parts of the park that came into being after the expansion were in black and white.

But if this book was right, then before the expansion the park was in two sections which, given the size of the park, were quite separated. I thought, How could people have called these separate sections one park? What's more, how could they have called these sections "Central Park" if the sections were so far apart?

I then saw that the two parks had been connected by a walkway, at the midpoint of which was an oval-shaped rest area. For some reason this made things a little more sensible.

(I imagined that, before the expansion, the area between the two parks was really like vacant dirt lots,, just barren, pale, dry soil, not streets, buildings, or anything implying a city. There may even have been patches of trees out on these vacant lots.)

As I justified the name of Central Park to myself, my psychiatrist A stomped into the room from a doorway to my right and beyond my feet (i.e. beyond the direction of my feet as I lay on the couch). A shouted, "What in the hell are you doing in my place? You don't just come into people's places like this!"

I was caught off guard by A's surprise, shocked by how mean A could be. I stammered to say A's name, but I couldn't. I looked at a page in the book. There was a photo of a Hindu snake woman from Erich Neumann's The Great Mother. Below the photograph were three numbered paragraphs, each of which described a title. The first two were titled "Snake" and "Religion." The third was a word I didn't understand.

I tried again to call out A's name. But all I could think to say, as if it wanted to burst out as a revelatory speech, was, "Snake!"

A looked pale and worn-out. She wore big, smoky-lensed sunglasses which made her face look like that of a classic grey alien. At some point A stood half-straddling me, so her right leg knelt by my left side while her left leg stood, on the floor to my right, before the couch.

I muttered, "B-but w-we, we weren't saying a single word."

A said, "I don't give a damn what you were saying. You don't go into places when you aren't invited."

I said, "But I was invited. I have it in writing." I felt like this was true. But I also felt like A wouldn't care about that. She was too mad.

(12/28/08) library v. work; looking for a rat

(Entered in paper journal at 10:37 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a library which may have been in a basement. I wandered around through the aisles of shelves. the place had a very drab, grey look to it, like an auto shop or a tech supply shop. Some of the books were piled up at the ends of the aisles, possibly on tables or chairs. All the books looked clean and well cared for, though they all seemed like very old editions of the classics.

I saw a computer somewhere. The computer was linked up to my work. I heard a woman (a senior co-worker KK?), as if she were talking to me on a phone or through the computer, which I wasn't always near, telling me that everything I did was fine, that I was on a list of people who were going to be kept at my job.

I thought, Then I'd better not do anything stupid. I wondered if I was doing something stupid by being in this library instead of being at work.

Dream #2

I was at my mom's house, which looked like the house we lived in from about the time I was in sixth grade to about the time I was in ninth grade. The room was alternately dim, as if it were lit from another room, and light, as if lit with a warm, incandescent bulb.

I was floating through the air, probably backwards, tipping my head backwards. I may have been landing on and bouncing off of furniture in the living room.

 My mom (?) had at some point said there was a rat in the living room. I was trying to find it, but I was also afraid to find it. I thought even seeing it would drive me crazy or poison me physically. But I was also trying to convince myself that the rat was actually just a mouse, and that it was actually very small.