(2/13-14/05) the highest heaven society; they call that bird the backin

(Entered in paper journal at 11:30 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Can't remember how it began. Left from a church area. Drove back to it or came back to it. But now it was different somehow. And now it was at first all by itself with a small parking lot like at the edge of a small town

and then it was like one of the last filled spaces in a defunct strip mall in a suburb with a huge parking lot.

As I came up to this place I could hear someone denouncing it, saying something like (which then actually became), "In our church if people were to die like that we'd bury them. In your church you'd eat them." (This was to say, "You'd make them die like that and then you'd eat them.") I now saw a photocopied article from some journal like Newsweek entitled something like, "You Eat Them When They Die."

It had been a bright, blue day. Now it was night. My NYC Americorps crew chief SM walked away from the church and into the parking lot, saying something like, "You guys are sick. You act like it's Christianity. But it's just killing people."

There was a very calm voice from somewhere saying, "Well if you really believe that, come check. We're open and in service right now."

I looked into all the windows from my distance, maybe fifty feet away. I could see only dim glimmers of light like fluorescent light behind tinted windows and good blinds or even some kind of poster board or drywall. I stayed that far away, yet I was also right by the entrance door, which I also saw from my distance as boarded off.

I kept feeling a strange protrusion like the lip of a cubicle's trashcan pushing outward from the board of the door. I wondered how people got in and out and where the voice came from. It seemed to me this place was either closed down forever or top secret.

But now I was only right by the door, not fifty feet away. I now felt the protrusion to be something like a portable chest of papers, a cardboard-like box papered over with some nice, floral-like designs. I didn't see or feel the front fully. I just opened the top drawer and looked at the first photocopied article I found, which was a series of self-help "healthy living" style articles trying to promote the idea that this church was more about keeping healthy than anything else. I put it away.

I was now in a dark room. Beside me was a door. There was a fluorescent light next door,. The church service was taking place. This room, empty, dark, thin-carpeted, with one dresser and this strange square of file drawers, was the visitor's room. I could barely see anything, yet I saw everything clearly enough.

I pulled out an article I don't remember. It was strange enough and close enough to cannibalism to scare me.

I flipped the box around to see the titles on each file drawer. I don't think I was supposed to do this. I did it surreptitiously.

Next door the service was all a show, put on to make me feel like what I'd heard about this church being cannibalistic was false. There was always a low undercurrent of voices under a lead voice which smoothly yet angrily spoke against people like me who apparently didn't understand religion and yet were "loved" by the religious, anyway.

I pulled out another article from another drawer whose title frightened me but which I forgot as soon as I read it. The article was in defense of cannibalism as a way of staying healthy. It was written in some self-help style of the previous article, but now with an implication even that people who do not believe will be cruelly murdered as well as eaten.

I realized this was a second- or third-level-initiated reading and that I had looked into a drawer I wasn't supposed to look into. But I couldn't remember the drawer I had opened. I put the article in the "Real-Time Live AV Files" drawer, since that was the only title I remembered. But when I closed the drawer I remembered that the article had actually been from a drawer one or two drawers up.

But when I reopened the drawer the article was no longer there. There were tapes which I could tell had a fat, bald, southern-drawled man yelling that the outsiders no longer had a right to persecute the church. And there was a glossy nine-by-thirteen-inch-thick, glossy-covered book, its cover's top half black with yellow lettering and its bottom half a color photo. The title of the book was something like A Technical Manual for a Happy and Blessed Human Communion.

Once again, despite the happy photo of a WASPish family in the woods as if just walking back home from Sunday service, I felt some menacing conviction (and the voices and voice in the next room continued) that the text would constantly imply that those who read this book would be cruelly murdered as well as cannibalized.

I looked at the spine of the book, to the publisher's name, on the bottom of the spine -- The Highest Heaven Society. I was revolted.

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM on 2/14/05 at home in Harlem.)

Dream 2

I walked along an asphalt path with trees on my right at the top of a thickly treed, short slope down to a creek and on my left a street like in East Denver, probably a side street with a factory or warehouse on the other side. I was probably heading toward work or something like work. I had left my glasses where I had just come from (possibly work -- where I was heading, too).

Now a red-tailed hawk flew toward me. I knew it was a red-tailed hawk but I couldn't see it for certain. I spoke to it, telling it hello and that I was glad it had come to see me again. It landed on a tree branch, then flew across to another that was closer to me.

I wished it could get closer. It sensed that, too, as if it also were getting something out of my clear vision of it. It flew down and almost landed on the ground before deciding that wasn't even a possibility.

Both I and it looked for some branch that was low enough for it to land on and for me still to get close enough to see it clearly without my glasses. But in one second, or maybe a half a second, we discovered nothing, and I lifted out my left hand for the hawk to land on.

The hawk landed on my hand. It wasn't heavy. But as it landed, my vision shifted. I was "lying down" in a bed in the dark. But the bed was upright and in a thick of treetops at the ridge of the creek bank's slope. The hawk had crawled onto my head. I felt its fleshy stomach (?) moving around. I kept waiting for it to shit or piss on my head.

After this there may have been some scene where I was in or around some house with a group of folks, watching some movie.

But now it was daytime again. I stood on a path overlooking a steep slope, a box canyon, down maybe fifty feet to a dry bed on the left wall of which was a grey stone arch tunnel. There was a bridge across the gap and another asphalt path on the other side. Then there was a short strip of grass and a wide road that connected down a way to the side road, beside which was the asphalt path on which I had been before.

I felt I must get back there to take care of what hadn't been taken care of. But a slightly older man, a boss like one of the ecology people in the parks would be a "boss" for my Americorps crew (even though our crew chief would be our actual supervisor), kind of held me here in obligation. I wasn't incredibly worried.

Suddenly a bird flew down the canyon. It had a round, disc-like body, probably of broawn feathers, a long tail, and a long neck with a blue head.

It looked maybe three feet long, pretty big. It soared directly in front of me and the boss.

I saw the bird's head and asked the boss if the bird was a pheasant. He said no. He gave me some garbled science talk.

I continued to watch the bird, which grew huge. Its colors changed to white with red, granite-dot-like stipples on the back and red and white stripes for the tail, and a white neck with a green head. It was maybe ten feet long, with a twenty-food wingspan (whereas before its wingspan was maybe only slightly larger than its body). The bird slowly hovered backwards into the arch tunnel.

The boss was gabbing away this whole time. And finally he said, "They call that bird the Backin."

I was in a car with a bunch of friends, kids, probably. We were looking at Polaroids and/or doing something we weren't supposed to be doing.

(4/12/05) can't go to the show; swimming to my friends

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I sat in something like a waiting room or an airport lobby or some second- or third-floor cafe. It was daytime. Daylight streamed through the window-wall before me. A "familiar"-looking woman sat by me somehow, either at a table or in a close row of chairs. She had puffy, wide pale auburn hair with undertones of black, and a longish, puffy face caked with not-so-smooth makeup. But it was something in her face or in her eyes that made  me think she was familiar.

She asked me if I wanted to go with her to some event or play with which she had something to do, though her going to it had something to do with my friend R and his girlfriend L. I now slowly realized that this person was L, that some kind of trap or practical joke was being laid for me. I didn't let on, though I said I couldn't go.

L's face shifted slowly back to her own as L began telling me all the different good things about this event which had to do with her. She couldn't figure out why this wasn't good enough incentive for me.

Dream 2

I was with a group of folks "my age," which might have been high-school-aged. We were at some kind of wide pond or marsh or wetland of some sort. Two groups were separated by the large body of water, or perhaps one group was not all the way across the water but on an island or bar of land in the middle of the body of water.

Something happened so that I felt obligated, as if against petty jokes about my personal character, to swim across to the island group to make sure they were okay. We were all okay. This was just some fun, day-long project. So I don't exactly know what I meant by "making sure they were okay."

I knew there was an alligator in the water that could swim up and rip my belly open. But I just felt it wouldn't happen.

I reached the island. I now looked back to the shore. I could feel that the first group of people were now making jokes about my personal character because I wasn't swimming over to them "to make sure they were okay."

(10/3/05) tick theather

(Entered in paper journal at the Muddy Cup coffee shop on Staten Island.)

Dream 1

I was in the lobby of a movie theater. I was sad because my friend R and his girlfriend L hadn't come to see a movie with me. But at some point R came in. I had apparently been crying. I was trying to hide my face and act like I didn't care even about the movie.

There was a balcony-like upper-level with black-pole railing and black-pole-framed chairs and tables. I walked up there and noticed out of the corner of my eye as I looked at a poster that I had a tick on my right tricep (my arm was bare). I looked away and thought, This can't be a tick. That would make me sick (i.e. with Lyme disease), and that would be too inconvenient.

I looked back down at my arm. It wasn't a tick, just some kind of beetle. I was relieved. But now it was a tick again. I brushed it off. As it fell away I wondered whether I had brushed it all the way off or if the head was still in my flesh. Then I wondered whether it had been a tick after all.

(6/11/06) wishing my old boss were still around

(Entered in paper journal at 10 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A group of people in front of a forest clearing (?) led by a woman in singing either an anthem or some kind of ritual song like a healing, victory, or requiem song. Everybody looked at each other, wondering if this awful song could have any use.

I was behind the woman leading the song. I wandered off. The woman and people were the people I worked with. The woman was the main leader, like our director JS. I thought back to our old director SS and wished she were still around.

I was walking through a parking lot. I saw a woman who kind of looked like SS -- I was sure it was her. As I kept getting closer, the woman looked more and less like SS. She smiled at me at one point. Her clothing might have changed, too: from a t-shirt and blue jeans to a white dress.

(6/17/06) the metamorphosis of a woman and the decay of my mind

(Entered in paper journal at 11:04 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was outside with some gathering of intelligent people, maybe a museum or a lecture. An older woman with an eye patch stood on the other side of a small bridge over a little, lawn-banked creek. She waved at me through the cheerful crowd of people.

I went -- maybe flew -- to the woman. She was beautiful in a scary way, and she was maybe twenty years older than I. But I was in love with her. I was afraid of what everybody else would say.

I landed on the woman's car. The woman was in her car now. The car had a champagne paint job and pale tan, soft interior. I lay with my back to the windshield. I spoke with the woman as I faded into the passenger seat.

I knew the woman had picked me up because she wanted to have sex with me. But as we drove through and out of the park and into the city she told me she was running late and had to drop me off and take care of some business today. She would pick me up tomorrow. And then... But I knew even then that shouldn't have sex with me.

I seemed to be losing my mental age. Soon the woman was older, heavier, and not pretty. But I still thought she was the pretty, older woman who had wanted to have sex with me.

The woman was quizzing me on the details of ethanol production. I saw (as if we were in a house as well as a car) a page fastened to a wall. An ethanol schematic was very simply drawn in thick lines like a kindergarten-age child's drawing.

I was trying to explain how corn got processed. But I was so unstudied that I made things up as I went along. This soon became obvious to the woman. She said something that made it clear she was no longer interested in me.

(7/22/06) accepting m&m's; downloading van gogh; metamorphosis of a rock star; waiting outside with the dog

(Entered in paper journal at 11:20 AM at Starbucks at 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a dark "living room" with my boss EB. We stood by a door. EB kept handing me M&M's. At first I didn't feel like I should take them, so somehow I kept dropping them accidentally.

The room was dark. EB and I stood in some dim blue light. EB got stern with me. He told me something like, "I'm giving you these things! Don't drop them like you don't deserve them! It's ungrateful!"

Now EB put more (peanut) M&M's in my right hand. Almost all the M&M's were blue, though a couple were green. I ate some. A couple still fell out of m hands and rolled on the floor, through the crack under the door and under the couch.

EB seemed less disappointed now. But now he was drifting back, into the darkness.

Dream 2

I sat before a computer in a busy office space. I was showing somebody something. But I was also loading a painting (reminds me of Picasso's dance crowd painting except with tons of blue and peach) onto my screen via a website like Mark Harden's Artchives.

EB came up behind me and asked me what I was working on. I showed him, but I also showed him the painting, which I thought of as (but didn't call) a van Gogh. EB laughed and said, "Oh, you sure are crazy about van Gogh!"

Dream 3

I was talking with an older man about how a rock group (like Stone Temple Pilots) had gotten too soft over the last couple years.

The man said (as if speaking about a single female rock star), "It's actually a good thing, what you're talking about. She's submerging right now. She's healing a little. But she's also changing. And after she's made her metamorphosis she'll emerge better than ever."

Dream 4

I stood outside with a big, light-chocolate, boxer-like dog while someone (my friend R?) went into a classy Chinese restaurant.

(2/15/08) dog in the maze; lizard on my arm

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

Dream #1

I was off the side of some on a hillside, possibly with my mom and sister. There was something like a maze of concrete or wood walls set up. Somewhere in this maze was a black dog. The grass all around us was tall and thick. It was a warm, bright, blue-white day.

Dream #2

I stood in the doorway of some ground-level apartment with my mother and sister. I was telling them that in this place you see certain animals. Looking across the way I saw a lizard climbing onto the porch of an apartment door. I walked over to it. At first it looked smallish, dry, green, like an anole.

I let it climb up onto me. It might have seemed very weak at first. It climbed up onto my right (?) arm. It now grew grew and became stronger. It was colored black, orange, and yellow. Its scales were sleek, like those of a snake. I showed my mom and sister. There was something else about the situation that I wanted to tell them about. But I just couldn't find the words to express it.

We stood before a TV in the living room. A Latino man, possibly with long hair, glasses, and a backward baseball cap, turned on something like a pay-per-view show for us about lizards. The show was either sixteen minutes long or in 16mm film. The man walked into the hallway and out of our sight. He said, "Now that you've started watching this movie you can't switch to anything else."

(8/7/08) pushed out of unused desk; lingerie roach

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at my desk at work. I was watching something like an earnings presentation on my mini-DVD player. My old boss DO walked around on the floor. I suddenly felt like I wasn't working hard enough. I tried to concentrate on the earnings presentation even harder.

Suddenly the angle I was sitting at was is if I were sitting at my co-worker (on DO's team) MD's desk at the building we'd previously worked at. (In waking life, my company had recently moved from one building to another building.) I wondered if DO might stop by and say hi to me.

I felt someone pushing down on my left elbow. It was MD, wearing a casual, white button-up and some khaki shorts. It was like he was trying to elbow me out of his chair.

Dream #2

I was in "my bedroom." I was pulling some nice dresses out of a bag. One dress was white with pinkish-red designs. I was going to hang it in my closet.

I walked to my closet and noticed how easily I could see up to my top shelf. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was a few inches above the top of my head.) There weren't many articles of clothing there. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was where I horded all of my lingerie and women's clothing -- mostly cheap articles I'd bought from discount stores.) I thought something like, I'm really cleaning up!

But something toward the wall caught my eye as I was looking away. I looked back. The thing was a "roach." It was maybe two inches long, and fat. Its back end was covered in white, as if it were casting off skin or as if it were developing a shell around itself to undergo metamorphosis. I couldn't tell whether the thing was dead or alive.

(10/19/08) the cat in the trap; is my girlfriend a man?

(Entered in paper journal at 4:20 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in an apartment, probably not mine. It was night, and all the windows were uncurtained, exposed to the black sky. The apartment may have had two rooms, though it felt somehow cluttered and cramped, like an overstuffed studio. The light inside was dim, yet warm and soft.I was with a couple other people. My old friend H was either in the room or else we were possibly waiting for him to arrive.

I now noticed that in the room down from me, a window along the shared wall (to my left) was actually open. An animal like a squirrel scurried in. I and a woman (?) ran to the room to try to chase the animal out. The animal had become like a small mouse. It was running toward a corner of the room, to my right. As it did it became larger, like a cat, and began moving slowly, almost leisurely.

I had been happy that the animal was running toward the corner of the room, where I knew there was a mouse trap. But now that I saw the animal was a cat, we tried to hurry and get the animal away from the corner so it wouldn't step in the trap.

But we were too late. The cat stepped in the trap. The cat made a nose like a sucking-in sigh combined with a hiss. It turned toward us and walked toward us with a sorrowful, tortured look on its face. I noticed how the cat's tail looked like a different animal's tail -- maybe like the tail of a ringtail or a raccoon. And the face of the animal now looked like that of a bobcat or lynx.

I knew I'd have to take the trap off the animal's foot (its front right foot?). I hoped the animal wouldn't feel more pain as I removed the trap. I didn't want the animal, in greater pain, to react violently toward me. I resolved to be as quick, and, yet, as gentle, as I could.

The trap was now off the animal's foot. The animal now walked toward the window by which it had entered. It hoped the animal would like us now and want to stay with us, since we had done such a nice thing for it. But, although it seemed to bear us no ill will, it now seemed almost indifferent to us. It walked out the window.

Dream #2

I was in a cluttered but very warm-feeling bedroom with my girlfriend H. The walls of the room may have been of dark wood. H and I were on the bed. The bed may have had richly colored, pink sheets. The bed was also probably cluttered with other things.

H and I had worked out way into a strange sexual position. H was almost standing on her head. I was over her, almost floating over her, apparently perpendicular to her, but almost upside-down myself. I had an enormous penis, which I was slowly lowering into H. I had no other point of contact with H, the bed, or anything.

As I slowly lowered into H, she asked me if I loved her. I said yes. But she continued to ask me. As she did, it seemed to me (not that I could necessarily see) that her face was tightening up, becoming smaller, almost like some weird, shrunken version of a man's face. I wondered if H was actually a man.

(12/21/08) L's sick mother; the land of mutated children

(Entered in paper journal at 12:08 PM at girlfriend H's apartment.)

Dream #1

I was inside an apartment. It was smallish, with grey carpet and pale lighting. It might have been early morning or late afternoon. I might have been all alone in the apartment.

My friend R's wife L walked in. Apparently the apartment belonged to R and L. I might have been in there, trying to get something while neither of them were there. But now L saw me. She went in and sat on her bed, which was (apparently) in the living room. The bed was all messy.

I asked L how she was doing. She seemed very mellow, almost depressed. She said she was fine. I asked her how her mom and dad were doing. She said, "Oh, my mom..."

I saw a picture in my head of a cartoon dad and mom at the very top of a greyish-green screen.

The mom popped out of the picture. I understood that this meant that L's mom was having health problems, or maybe that she had cancer.

I had to leave. L didn't want me to go, but, as bad as I felt for L's mom, I didn't want to have or start anymore contact with L or R.

I walked out the door. I wore both my shoes, but my right foot was also wrapped in a brown, plastic bag. I walked down a long, grey-painted, wooden stairway to a small parking lot/road that was bordered by a slightly wooded area. I knew R would be coming around soon. I wanted to be gone before he got here so I wouldn't have to see him. I may have walked another road.

Dream #2

I got onto a small airplane. The seats of the plane were arranged like a bus. The pilots got in. They sat in a seating area like bus drivers might sit in.

The plane began speeding up. The light outside was greyish like on a cloudy day. We coated past a landscape of full, green trees.

As the plane began taking off, I looked to my right, i.e. toward the front of the plane. The light outside was deep blue, like late afternoon, almost night. I saw through the pilots' windows. I thought, I've never been in a plane where you could actually see through the pilots' windows like this!

We passed through two sets of trees, which were arranged on either side of us like gates. We would scrape against the trees as we passed them. The trees may have been half-barren, not full. The horizon was a band of pale purple.

It was now daytime. The pilot was talking to some passengers in the front row as if he were a bus driver. I looked around. We were flying barely above street level, above a highway, following the highway's source. Then the plane was actually driving along on the highway. Finally, the plane had transformed into a regular bus, driving along the highway.

I thought, Well, maybe this is just for the first leg of our trip. I remembered having taken a bus once from Newark Airport to Allentown, Pennsylvania. I thought, Well, once we get to our next place we can take an actual airplane.

I was now skateboarding down the highway. The highway had a weird appearance, like it was smaller or cleaner than usual. The day was warm and bright. There was also a feeling along the highway like it was passing under bridges or just within range of barriers or enclosures, though there were grass slopes on either side of the road all the time. There were no cars. Instead there were kids, maybe teenagers, playing all through the street.

I tried to keep off to the left shoulder of the road. The shoulder was lined with tan bricks. My skateboard kept moving without any effort from me: I was going down a slope the whole way.

I was trying to avoid the kids because I didn't want to interrupt their fun, but also because I didn't want them to think I was a kid, too, and have them start bothering me. But eventually some kids did start to notice me. I skated over to the right shoulder of the road in hopes of avoiding them. But they followed me.

I got off my skateboard. I walked up onto the grass slope. Here, too, were kids in small groups, like picnic groups, playing here and there under the wide shade of the sparse trees.

I reached the top of the slope. The space was empty of trees, completely open to the clear, blue sky. All around me I saw rolling hills of grass, with small groups of kids playing everywhere.

I was being followed again by a group of kids who walked with a zombie-like slowness and will-lessness. I tried to avoid the kids. I walked to my right, toward a rocky cliff. Three zombie children cornered me at the cliff. They all looked like average, slightly troublemaking, white teenage boys. One wore a brown t-shirt.

I knew if I jumped off the cliff I'd die. I hadn't been afraid of the kids before: I just didn't want to be bothered by them. So I figured there was no use being afraid now. I might as well just see what they were planning to do.

But the kids didn't reach me. They may have stopped. The head of one of the zombie kids suddenly re-shaped. It puffed out into a grotesque circle, like out of a Garbage Pail Kids card. The kid seemed to be doing this in order to make me afraid. But I still wasn't afraid. Another kid expanded his head so that it grew a leg and an arm, both of which had a gross, rubbery appearance. I was trying to figure out what kind of disease these children had that was making their bodies do this.

I was now in a house or an apartment. This place may have been underground. The place was only half-lit, as if a few random lights in unseen rooms were throwing into the main room the only light the room had. The place was sparsely furnished but seemed cluttered nonetheless. There was a lot of activity, maybe from a lot of children running around. The place seemed more like a mental hospital than an apartment or house or even a school building.

At first I was floating, as if I were coming down a stairway and into the main room. I tried not to attract anybody's attention. I thought if anybody saw me and tried to connect with me, they'd give me whatever disease they had.

I floated through the main room (over an air-hockey table?) and into a very small, lit hallway. A couple kids ran out of a doorway to my left. As they ran past me they mutated themselves. One added limbs to his head the way the other had done. Another added bubbling lumps, two or three times the size of his actual head, to the back of his skull. A little girl came out and mutated her head so that it looked like a short body attached to a tall body at the neck, with the tall body in a pink dress and the short body in a blue dress.

Finally a woman came out of the room. She looked like Daryl Hannah's Pris character in the movie Blade Runner. She was very sexy and sleek. She wore a black and white striped tights costume and had spiky, pale blonde, almost white, hair. She herself was a mutation. But she was known as the "mother" of all these children. She had hypnotized them to be mischievous. But she was like a role model to them, so even if they weren't hypnotized, they probably would still be mischievous, if that was how she told them to be.

The woman touched me. I knew that since she touched me, I, too, would probably also start acting mischievously.