(9/27/04) trilobite roaches; cheap and expensive camera; lingerie and hair dryer

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info.)

Dream 1

Enormous insects like roaches ran through my house. They weren't roaches, though I called them roaches. They were shaped like trilobites, though they were smooth like futuristic cars, and a greyish green-beige color. Their eyes were like smooth, blackish windows. They also didn't quite have feet.

Their centers below the "window-eye" ridged up like the cabin of a car. All I could feel was dismay and weariness, as if I lamented having to deal with roaches all over again after not having had to deal with them for so long.

Dream 2

I was on a two-story train. I don't know where we were, but it was like we were in a terminal. The light on the train was dim, just some skylight coming in from the edges of the platform, tinging the floors and surfaces a white-grey blue. Other people must have been on the train, but I couldn't really see them. I stood in between the rows of seats, near a door that was open (on the second story of a train, no less). The aisle was wide, maybe five feet wide.

I had been somewhere before this, possibly an actual place in the dream and now forgotten, but possibly just a "memory." I was getting on the train to go back to this place, even though I had gotten on this train, apparently, from this place. It is possible that at this place my friend R had caused me all kinds of annoyance.

I asked myself, Why are you going back there? Why repeat what's already happened? I was now knelt close to the left row of seats, facing so the seats faced me. I told myself, Well, perhaps I'm going back because that's my "ka-tet." I now stood.

I faced "forward" again. I was close to the open door. I held a book which I dropped when the train lurched forward. The book, I now saw, was of William Blake's poetry. It was like the Viking Portable Blake, with the blue strip at the top in which were classical-modern, beige letters spelling "BLAKE" widely and thinly. But instead of Blake's "Ancient of Days" picture of God kneeling in a circle like the Sun on the cover, there was a black and white photograph "of Blake."

Seeing the book slip away toward the door, I lunged for it. I slapped my hand down on the book before it toppled out. But even though I did this I wasn't quite sure I had done it. I felt like I was doomed to lose the book.

Now I was somewhere "in New York." It was strange feeling. Behind me were tall, tall buildings, in the streets between which were lights and activity and people, like at Times Square. But the buildings were all red brick, all very clean, almost quiet buildings. And they all seemed about eight hundred meters behind me, so that when I looked back they all appeared small. Yet it felt like I was standing right on 8th Avenue, looking west.

In front of me, though, was a huge vacant lot, slightly mounded, full of grass, and behind a six- or seven-foot-tall chain link fence. R stood in front of me and someone else. Behind R, over the field, was a thick, greasy, black-grey cloud of smoke smothering the landscape of the vacant lot and almost blotting out the moon above it.

R, like a parent, said something like, "It looks like we aren't going to be able to go to XXXXX" (New York?) "now, since we have all this trouble going on here in XXXXX." (New York?) "So that means XXXXX." (We'll have to postpone that ice cream?)

R was now gone. It seems now that the plan suddenly became that I and this unknown woman next to me were to meet R for ice cream somewhere. We may also possibly have been told not to move from where we were, as going into XXXXX (the Times Square-like area behind me) would cause us to spend money or not be interested in ice cream anymore.

But I really wanted to go there, to see what was there. so we went down. We were at a glass display case in the middle of the street. There were no cars, just tons of people, and tons and tons of warm lights, making the night like day. The lights were incandescent yellow, with maybe a few reds and oranges. But overall it felt like we were in a dazzling casino with glass display cases instead of gaming tables.

The case this unknown woman and I were at held on its top video cameras. I noticed two cameras in particular. One was quite regular, compact, silvery. Another one, a couple cameras away, was weird. It was grey, silvery, and compact, but with a large lens on the front.

The lens seemed to be coated in some iridescent pink color. It was flat and maybe five inches in diameter. On the top of the camera, behind the stethoscope-shaped lens, was a panel of buttons, a whole lot of buttons, which may even have spilled over onto the sides of the camera.

I saw the prices on the cameras. They were pasted onto the lenses with 1 by 1 3/4 inch (?), pale blue, Post-it notes. The smaller camera was $139. The larger one was $1,329.

The salesman behind the case got very interested when I started looking at the larger camera. But the woman beside me told me something like, "No. Don't lose your grip. This guy wants you to get the expensive one. But you know you don't want it. It won't be as good for you as the cheaper one. But if you keep listening to this guy he'll confuse you into slipping up the prices so you think that $1,329 = $139."

I suddenly felt as if I had very poor control of my perceptions.

Dream 3

I was in a department store at a mall. I may have been in a Mervyn's. I don't remember most of the dream. I was at the register now, though. I either was buying or had bought an article of pink lingerie for $9.99. I now either was buying or had bought a hair dryer that was boxed like some kind of power tool, for $13.99 or $13.29. But, either while purchasing or after having purchased the hair dryer, I calculated the cost. I suddenly realized that I had spent way too much money.

I walked away from the register with the lingerie in a white bag, all crumpled and flattish, airless inside, and the hair dryer box in my right hand (where the bag also was, as if I had two hands there?).

I walked to the doorway where the department store opened to the mall, and I swung the hair dryer box in front of the theft-protection gates. Doing this, I thought, would show exactly how much the hair dryer would cost, in some way that seemed to show me if it would fit into my budget. If it wouldn't fit into my budget, I would have to put it away somewhere near the shoplifting security gates. But if it did fit into my budget, I would go back to the cash register and pay for it.

But when I waved it past the gates, it set off a quiet alarm. A nice store security guard walked up to me. He looked like the Maytag repairman in the TV commercials. He had a small, computer-like device in his hand, in which he was typing things. He asked me if I was trying to steal. I said no, that I was just checking the price. He said, "Well, I'll just walk you back to the register."

But I got a glimpse of the LCD display of  his device to see that the hair dryer cost $XXXXX (either $13.99 or $13.29). That really was too much for me to spend, especially after I had bought the lingerie. So now I wanted to put it away. But I didn't want the security guard to think that I was putting it away only because I got caught trying to steal it. So I just decided to let things be. I'd just get the hair dryer, even though I didn't really want it now.

I now started worrying that the security guard would see the pink babydoll slip and panties I'd bought.

(11/7/04) communion; flying over the parkway; rich guys' party friends; lingerie i'd like to wear

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

Dream 1

I knelt before a small altar of wood, more like the edge of a barrier between steps and the actual altar behind which a priest stood. Some unknown friend knelt beside me. The priest put a communion wafer into my mouth. Before or after this I told him how I didn't know something.

Dream 2

I walked with some unknown friends from a parking lot into a restaurant. The restaurant was like a flashy Asian restaurant, apparently with something like red sequined wallpaper and wood trim everywhere. I walked all through the restaurant, alone, I think, though crowds of people were all around.

I called the Adecco staffing agency. I asked to speak directly with my agent NE. The person who answered said NE was really busy. I said I'd hold. After about a minute NE came on the line. I just started yelling at her for not getting me a job after four weeks. At some point she shrugged me off and hung up.

I was now outside, "flying" through the parking lot to a parkway median like on Eastern Parkway. I now dipped my hands into soil that was part dry and part wet, but increasingly wet. I explained something to someone at this point. I went down steps like into a subway. The steps were increasingly covered with this wet soil. At the bottom was a huge, long, black cave.

Dream 3

I don't know exactly know how I was involved in this dream. A bunch of rich guys had to get some partying friends out of their house before their parents came home. I saw one rich guy all the way back at a friend's house, showing the friend all the way into the house.

Now we were back at the rich guys' house, which was even more full of partiers. We walked down a wooden hallway, like wooden slats all painted turquoise.

Some old men walked out of an adjoining hallway, followed by two young children. They were all in towels, like they had come from a sauna. we walked past a group of old men, whom I stopped by as they said, "He made all these casts-iron signs himself." I knew they were making reference to one of the old men, who, it was now understood, owned the house, but who was also, apparently, one of the young men.

I turned and looked. The wall was brown wood with niches for brown wood benches There were a bunch of thin, wide, badge-shaped signs of steel, painted yellow and cast-iron black, about twelve by twelve inches each.

Dream 4

Some guy walked me into a bedroom to show me some lingerie he'd bought for his girlfriend. He opened the closet. the lingerie was a black, sheer camisole and black, sheer, lacy boy shorts. I thought I, too, would like to wear those. I saw my body and liked the way it looked. By my face and beard looked stupid.

(11/23/04) alien seagull; gangster football lingerie; aliens in chicago or detroit

(NOTE: A lot of my dreams in the earlier notebooks were written immediately as I woke up. Partially because of this, the language in the dreams is sometimes very awkward. In particular, the tenses of my verbs change within the course of my entry. Where clarity is not completely sacrificed, I am going to keep this awkward language.)

(Entered in paper journal at 5 AM, most likely at my friend R's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

Begins like a movie. Girl drives down highway on sunny day in farm-like, hilly country, talks about normal life, how she's an alien.

Then I and some woman are in a strange vehicle in front of a poor-looking house. Daytime. The woman goes up and unlocks the front door even though we're not supposed to.

Something like a seagull with an ostrich head kept poking its head through the tattered door. Now it comes out. The vehicle is like a spaceship. This bird was close to me. It comes up and puts my right arm in its mouth, lifts it up a bit, then walks away, as if to say, Don't move, I'm coming back.

I see in a "spaceship" to my right are two other humanoids. But the way behind me and to my left is a tall, tall spaceship like something eaten out hollow, as if the spaceship had been made of bloody meat.

The seagull walks up a ladder. I feel a sinking in my stomach. I know the gull will find two more dead gulls. She will want to drag them up. I hope the doesn't get diseases.

But when she drags them up they're like stuffed animals. My friend says, "This is all a display for children. It's safe for the gull, too. In fact in the other spaceship," (the one to my right) "all the severed feet and eyeballs are only stuffed."

Now suddenly I was in some huge store, by some crates of powdered cocoa in gold-colored tin, pulling the shrink wrap off it all. Some girl from a group of other folks came up and pulled a few tins up to start stocking shelves to look like she was working.

Dream 2

I went up an escalator to a floor with lingerie and tried to get away from some gangster-like folks so I could try some stuff on. They guys talked about a Broncos or Giants game.

Dream 3

I wanted to wash some dishes for my friends ML and MK, but MK said no, one of the movies is too confusing. He then showed me a cartoon from some video about aliens in which there was a video resembling either Chicago or Detroit.

(1/14/08) injured superhero; submarine library; frozen burrito; lingerie shortcut; domestication; dirty panties; dirty blanket

(Entered in paper journal at 6:07 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a locker room. The scene might have been cartoony. A few people were in with me. There was some kind of narrator talking about a superhero who had been injured. The narrator said something like the hero had been hurt by a trick played on him while he was under the Green Lantern's tutelage.

The narrator then said something having to do with flying jets, like how if you go above nine thousand (???), you either need to prepare to land, prepare to hit fourteen thousand, or know that you're going to crash.

Dream #2

I stood outside, at the top of a hill at night. I may have been on a cobblestone walkway beside or near a building. Below me were openly spaced trees maybe a one-hundred-foot slope, then flat land which became a river to my left (?).

There was a weird, bluish light slightly glowing on the tops of the smaller vegetation. The light seemed to be coming from the left. I walked toward the left to see what was making the light.

Where the river began there was a small submarine, its top part barely sticking out of the water. A blue light glowed at its top. The beam of blue light was very strong directly in front of the submarine. In front of the submarine was a man only visible in silhouette.

There was some weird pipe coming out of the submarine. It seemed to hear people, possibly even their thoughts. Then it would call out mean things to those people, which was a sign you were in trouble. I hoped the pipe wouldn't say anything mean to me.

The blue light was now gone. I saw the submarine in dark shadow. The man seemed to be smoking a cigarette.

I was in a city area, walking down a slight hill to a library. A tallish, young, white man was barreling toward me from the other direction. I rushed toward the library: I felt like the man had wanted to beat me to the door. But after I reached the door, the man kept walking.

I walked down some steps and into the basement of the library. I was looking for a specific book, but I got sidetracked by a shelf full of books by "my favorite author." I was surprised. The library had so many of the author's obscure works, including one book in particular that I din't think anybody had.

The library also had a couple collections of the author's plays. I reflected that I hadn't ever really been a fan of the author's plays. He'd try to be funny in the plays. But the humor would just be kind of flat.

I reminded myself that I needed to focus on the specific book I'd come here for. But now, as I was putting all "my favorite author's" books away, I found a pile of magazines, like People magazine. They were all "special issues" with the weird theme of the top-25 (?) people you don't want to make fun of just because they're dead. A few of the celebrities were familiar to me.

One of the magazines began with Gilda Radner. The second interview about her was with Gene Wilder. For some reason the picture of the interviewee, though, was of a pretty, elegant, blonde woman wearing a black hat and net-like veil.

I thought, I already know what Gene Wilder thought of Gilda Radner. I flipped to the first article about Radner. The theme of this article was that you shouldn't make fun of Gilda Radner, because after she got pregnant she lost a lot of weight.

There were pictures "Radner's" back in successive shots after she'd had her baby.The shots were supposed to show how much weight she'd lost. But the only difference, to my eye, from photo to photo, was that the topless "Radner" wore different skirts.

Dream #3

I was in an SUV with my family. We drove through an area like the foothills on a bright morning. I sat in the front passenger seat. My mom drove. My sister sat somewhere in the back.

I had possibly been cut from my job. Maybe my whole department had been cut. But I still had a company laptop with me. Clients were still requesting market data from me. My mom and I were laughing about how people were still interested in Nielsen market data even when they didn't have jobs anymore.

We stopped at a gas station. My mom told us to pick up something for ourselves to eat. I didn't want anything sugary. I wanted something with protein in it.

The store was maybe three times the size of a normal gas station convenience store. I went to a freezer section. There were frozen burritos. I thought, I've always liked these, and they're cheap. I looked at the price. Seventy-one cents.

I was looking for a spicy beef burrito. But I couldn't find the right box. I began shoveling through all the boxes. I started throwing all sorts of frozen-food pouches on the floor. But I still couldn't find the right burrito.

But now I looked at what I'd thrown on the floor. I found a coupe bagel sandwiches. I thought I might like one of the sausage sandwiches. I thought, Well, that's really what I was looking for all along.

Dream #4

I was in a store in a basement with my mother and sister. A lot of sunlight came in through the window. The store sold lingerie. There were two rooms.

My sister was now gone. My mom was in the other room, talking with the man who ran the store, possibly about buying something for me. I looked at the stuff in the front room. I found a lot of stuff I liked. I wanted to try it on, but not in front of my mom or the man. I didn't want them to know about my lingerie fetish.

In some other area was a small hallway with a door at the end. Mexican workers would come in and out of the door. At one point they left the door open. I saw that beyond the door was a coin-op laundromat.

I thought, I could just come to the laundromat when my mom and the man aren't here. Then while I'm doing my laundry I can come in here and try stuff on. I can use this back door, so nobody will even know I've come in here. They'll all think I'm still in the laundromat!

I walked into the laundromat to make sure it was for the public. It now seemed like the place was a big grocery store. I walked around in the store for a while. But then I started flying around.

At some point I was laying down on the grey, concrete floor. I had blankets and maybe even something like baggage all around me. To my left were a line of people, a metal-detector gate, and an airport terminal sign listing airlines. I realized this area was an extreme shortcut to one of the New York City area airports.

I thought, I could just come here to get to the airport. It's so quick! At first I was pretty sure the shortcut was to the LaGuardia Airport. But now I looked closer at the sign. It said this was a shortcut to JFK Airport.

Dream #5

I was out walking in the woods on a sunny day. I was heading to the head of a trail that went up to the top of a smallish mountain and then along the crests of a range of mountains.

From the opposite end of the trail came a middle-aged man and his son and daughter (?). The man wore a red t-shirt and pale khaki shorts. The kids were probably blonde.

I could tell the man had sped up on seeing me to cut me off a the trailhead so he could slow me down going up the trail. But I hurried to get in front of the family. The area we had been on was a clearing, mostly grassy and shrubby. But once we turned onto the mountain trail, the area was densely covered with pine trees.

The dad was still trying to get ahead of me. But  was walking too fast for him. He finally gave up and told his kids, "Let's turn around and head on back."

I was walking on the ridge of the mountain range. I was a worker at this national park or forest. It was night. There was a lot of snow on the ground. I was thinking about how I would describe my job to people.

I stopped and looked out at a point where the trail edged over the slope at a sharp point. A lot of the landscape below -- probably where the trail headed -- was visible.

When I looked back at my footprints in the snow I saw that for a while I had veered off the trail and down the slop a little way. I was back on the trail now, but I couldn't figure out how I had gotten off the trail in the first place.

I walked down to the footprints then continued backwards, back up to the trail, and then back to a gate-like set of rock walls through fell which a shaft of incandescent light.

I was about to walk back through this gate, as if I were now continuing backward. But when I turned right and into the gate, I started a white wolf. The wolf jumped up and trotted down a path that went straight down the slope from the gate. I noticed that the wolf had small patches of grey fur on its sides.

The wolf stopped trotting away at a certain distance. It turned to look at me. There was no incandescent light. The light was now just moonlight.

I was about to start walking forward instead of backward. But now  saw another white wolf, this one standing and facing me on the trail, except straight and past the gate. It trotted after me a little quickly. I was afraid. But I soon figured there was no reason to be afraid. If the wolf attacked me, there was nothing I could do about it. Now the other wolf came after me, too.

I was moving backward along the trail, along a rock face, as quickly as I could to get some distance between me and the wolves but also to continue facing them. But they overtook me pretty quickly. They started nuzzling me and licking me like domestic dogs would. They seemed happy more than anything else.

I was now probably in an apartment living room or kitchen. I could look out the window and see the snow-covered mountain range in the moonlight.

The wolves, now more like dogs, ran around a kitchen table and toward me. Then they continued licking me and playing with me. The more the dogs licked me and played with me, the more they lost their whiteness and the more they turned into domestic dogs. This upset me, as if I were watching a disease in them progress.

Dream #6

My psychiatrist A was in "my apartment." She was having a session with me. But she was actually or also redecorating my house. As A went to my closet she got a call on her cell phone. She had the closet door open. She was distractedly flipping through some things (books, clothes, etc.) as she spoke on the phone.

I hoped A wouldn't notice the dirty panties in my closet. I wanted even to tell A not to file around in there.

A spoke to some man about getting some stuff for my place. In particular she mentioned some kind of wallpaper. I imagined my walls having a weird wallpaper on them. The wallpaper seemed to be flecked with gem crystals: long, thin, pale blue crystals. I was touched by such a kind through from A.

I lay on "my bed." A was off the phone. She sat in a folding chair and was arranging a wall-wide, single-shelf bookshelf. As A did this she might have been talking to me distractedly about how we needed to deal with the dirty panties in my closet. They just didn't fit in with the rest of the design.

I got a call on my cell phone. It was possibly my brother. We were probably making some kind of arrangement for seeing each other.

Dream #7

I was in a big, dark, indoor area. There were a lot of people around. But there was one group of people in particular focused on me. The people in the group seemed to be Latino. There were maybe ten people in the group. Most of the people in the group were women. In particular there were three really pretty girls.

I had been sleeping under a blanket that may have been thirty feet long. The group of people were helping me fold the blanket. I was trying not to let them help me fold up my blanket. I knew there were semen stains all over the blanket and that the blanket smelled like urine and sweat. I didn't want to let the people know that I was the kind of person who would get a blanket all dirty like that and not do anything about it.

But I couldn't stop the people from folding the blanket. I had to resign myself to the fact that they'd see how dirty my blanket was.

The blanket was now folded. The women were kind of giggling to one another about the stains on my blanket. But they didn't seem to care too much. They might have made a statement about needed to get me a new blanket.