(6/6/05) office asylum haters; y was back to stay

(Entered in paper journal at 5:55 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I got a text message on "my" cell phone, which was pretty nice. The message was like a news article. A man had jumped off a cliff and into a crowd or some large object and had ruined some big event. He had been attempting suicide. But he was still alive. Somehow the article, as if written by my mom, insinuated that my brother had been the person in question.

I now stood in my mom's living room, before the couch on which she lay resting. The room was dark. My mom, tired, said, "We do things and do things for him. We think he's okay. Then he does something like this. I think it's the pressure of his new living situations."

I said, "You mean, they won't let him live with my great-grandmother A anymore?"

She said, "He has to live in a group home with people like him. But he gets plenty of space. They get their own beds. And they even get their own office desks to perform tasks at."

I now saw, as if it were down a crooked hallway, a room full of office desks. I could sense that a bunch of wiry, muscular, bald, white guys were pressuring my brother to go insane.

Dream 2

I met R and CV somewhere. They had run into Y. They told me something pathetic about Y, like she had a dog in a cage and was getting all fussy over a small thing someone had said about it. They laughed. I tried to laugh. But then, thinking about Y, I was angry.

But then I realized that this was New York and that Y was back, living with R. I tried to speak, to ask if Y was back to stay, but I couldn't. And I really didn't want to hear R and CV say yes.

(6/15/05) roman forum; lucidity in the nuclear bus stop

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

Dream 1

I walked down into an area like a Roman forum or plaza. There was a pond/pool in the center. I faced the pool. Behind me was a wide, stone floor that ended in a short series of stairs sweeping up to a covered and columned area. While down by the pool I shook hands with someone and discussed something I don't remember.

I then walked up to the covered area. There was a chain link fence and some kind of stone banister. I stood there with somebody, possibly my NYC Americorps crew chief SM, possibly discussing a CD.

Dream 2

Nuclear war had been declared. My crew chief SM had a pickup truck. We were exactly at the spot where the bomb was going to land. SM was loading up his truck. I feel like he was talking about going to a shelter that was way too close to the bomb.

I think I told SM to choose a shelter farther away. In my head I could see different layers of color, yellow being the "hottest" and red the "coldest," from the center of the blast (which was in a suburban area). When I saw how far the colors went I was hopeless that any shelter would help.

Now there was another man, who looked like my crewmate BSC, loading up a Subaru station wagon with supplies. I looked in the back of his car. It was full of what looks like pound cake covered with chunks of cream cheese.

BSC said something like he had to go pick up more people. I asked if I could come with him. I sat in the seat behind the front seat. The car had a front seat, a middle seat, a back seat, and then a back area, for loading things.

People were already in the car. I looked behind me. There was a guy who looked like he was a clean-cut Christian with a modern look. At some point we picked up another guy who wore a white button-up shirt and a black tie but had maroon, spiked/waved hair, piercings, and wore makeup.

We stopped and got out and did something I don't remember. When we got back in one person was missing. I said, "Hey, we're driving off without that Christian guy."

I looked behind me and saw the Christian guy. He looked different. I said, "I didn't mean Christian in a bad way," even though I actually had.

He said, "That's okay. I'm not that much of a Christian."

I saw it was the maroon-haired guy who was gone.

But now we were driving through a completely different area of town. The guy driving was both BSC and SM. He was driving to a shelter I knew was worthless. It was shallow and weak. I knew another shelter that was farther away, deeper, and full of supplies. But nobody wanted to listen to me.

We now stopped. Everybody ran into a Greyhound-like bus station. I didn't know why. I followed them. But they ran too fast. The place was full, and the people I was with disappeared behind a group of people.

I stopped. Everybody around me was black. They all looked homeless, insane, thin, and violent. They all wore thick layers of winter clothing. I may have asked one of the folks where my group had gone. But I got no answer.

I regarded one of the people directly. Something about that made me realize I was dreaming. I was lucid. I remained calm to keep my lucid dream stable.

I walked to another person. I knelt beside him and looked at him. I said, "This is a dream. Do you know that you're part of a" (or "my"?) "lucid dream?" The person very uncomfortably shook his head a tiny bit and then squirmed his body away from me in his chair.

So I looked at the person next to him and said, "But you realize it, don't you?" That person squirmed grotesquely away from me as well. It scared me.

I realized that somehow this "bus stop" was an asylum. I stood and walked for a door. The door was guarded by a big, white cop.

I was still happy to be having a lucid dream. In my happiness I tried to fly, doing the "knee-jump" method (a method I'd learned for inducing flight in lucid dreaming from some book I'd read in waking life). But I just skipped. I calmed down and walked a few steps near the cop so he wouldn't think I was insane, too, and try and stop me from leaving.

I walked to the exit, a double set of automatic, sliding glass doors. The sun was bright, golden-tan outside. I was afraid to go out. I felt like my mind (!) wouldn't be good enough to create a reality outside and that I would be in a stupid, featureless, disappointing nowhere, no place better than my closed eyelids.

As I opened the doors I woke up. I wrestled with waking up, telling myself not to be afraid. The sun flooded my eyes. I wanted to continue in my lucid dream. But I was already waking up.

(10/2/07) ship to the mental institution; tying a knot in the sky

(Entered in paper journal at 8 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in some room like a cabin under a deck in a ship. The cabin had white walls, and it felt like a smallish living room. It was busy and full of people. One person in particular was a tall, white man. Somehow the man lured me to him and poked me with a hypodermic needle. I knew I would pass out or be paralyzed and that the man would take me to a mental institution.

I stood above the deck now, looking down the steps into the room. The deck was flat and white and it felt like it could have been a boardwalk or a stone walk over a body of water as easily as it could have been the deck of a ship. The deck was almost as busy as the cabin had been.

I was afraid the man would come up and pull me down below the deck so he could send me to a mental institution. But I was also afraid that the people on deck with me would push me down the steps, which would be as good as sending me to the mental institution.

I stood on a tree-shaded walkway in a park. I stood before three people: two boys and a girl or two girls and a boy. At least one of the three was Asian. I felt like the three people were crazy.

I was being pulled away from the three people as if by an invisible force. The trees became like a corridor. I was pulled through a chain-link fence corridor, over which the corridor of tree-canopy grew dark green. I was pulled backward. I watched the three people fade from my view.

I lay in my bed. It was dark, but I could see a shapeless, purple entity before me. It was like jets of dye in water. It clung to me and made me feel tired and drained. I fought it, trying to keep awareness of the room. The fight intensified until I managed to make the entity disappear.

Dream #2

I stood with a friend. We watched a jet fly straight up into the blue sky. The jet was now only a speck, with white contrail behind it going almost all the way to the ground. Now the jet dove and made a counter-clockwise loop which must have been enormous -- it created a circle the diameter of which was half the upward path of its contrail.

I spoke to my friend about landing the plane. We were now in the plane. We made the loop. we then headed down to a runway. The runway was rough, like the tarmac had been torn up. I mentioned this calmly to my friend. I said we were prepared for this and we would land alright. We did.

Now we were out of the plane. It was like we had landed under an overpass and by some columns. The plane itself was small. It looked maybe only twenty feet long. It looked like it was made out of weak, light plastic, like it could just be kicked around lightly, like it was just a shell.