(4/2/06) bracelet and eyeglasses; derailed subway train

(Entered in paper journal at 2:02 PM at Starbucks on Pearl Street and Hanover Square in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

Two images. First, a bracelet, on an arm (right arm?), that changed from one style to a band of "pearls" that were more like small, circular diamonds set or strung closely together. The diamonds were maybe one-tenth of an inch in diameter and were placed ten to the width of the band. Second, eyeglasses, the frames of which were "chains" of dull, silvery metal that was thin but stiff.

Dream 2

I was on a subway train traveling above ground. I was trying to figure out if I was on the right train to get home. I was talking this over with my friend M from the Americorps program I'd done with the New York City Parks.

I figured we were on the right train. But then we made a turn off one set of tracks and onto another that headed away from "the river." I was a little panicked, but more upset that I'd have to backtrack to get back to the right train.

Now the train headed up a bridge. At first the train went on a set of tracks. But then it started traveling on the road. I was afraid. M and I screamed. But I think eventually we started cheering.

(7/31/06) fungeling or yuenlueng; wearing only thong panties to college; tom osborne and lake surfing

(Entered in paper journal at 6:08 AM on 4-train from Utica Avenue in Brooklyn to 59th Street in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a subway station that had something like the look of a stage to it. At the back end was a brown-painted wood wall with four doors. Across the wide way were staircases leading down to subways. I was looking for a certain train, but I couldn't find the right staircase.

I walked back out the doors. I "saw" somewhere, in some room like a security room or control room, maybe three black teenage boys. The boys were laughing at me because they had changed around the trains and tricked me.

I walked back through the doors, to the staircases. I went to a staircase down to my right. It went down a number of stories. A group of black kids came tumbling down toward me, trying to race me and beat me down the stairs. I began jumping over the railings until I even flew down through the openings between the cases and landed on the bottom floor.

I walked into a classroom where a few kids were waiting to be taught. I couldn't stop flying. I jumped from empty desk to empty desk. Eventually I was bounding, ten feet in the air. I made a half-circle around the large classroom and landed by the right wall midway through the classroom, looking up to the front, to a child by the chalkboard.

The child (a girl?) had written on the chalkboard about the technique I had just been practicing. She said the class already knew all about that. The technique was called something like "fungeling" or "yuenlueng."

Dream 2

My grandmother P drove me up to my new college dorm room. The room was at the top of a building, in a complex surrounded by a parking area. Some guys who lived next door to my new room saw me and started making faces with each other like they were plotting to give me trouble. The sky was grey, heavy, and cool.

I was about to get out of the car, but I saw I was only wearing blue thong panties. My grandma was about to drive off to find a parking space. I told her to wait for me and got back in the car, into the backseat.

As I changed my clothes, my grandma drove around the entirely empty lot to find a specific parking space. The space was numbered 35 or 53. I had such a feeling of awe as we pulled into that space.

Dream 3

I was in a room with a woman who was something like a screenwriting teacher to me. The woman was telling me that she didn't treat everybody as special as she treated me.

She said, "Everybody else is pretty normal, except XXXXX." (Tom Osborne?) "He actually has screenplays published."

Now "Tom Osborne" came in, very well dressed, looking a little like a young version of a person, CJ, who was on the board of a parks foundation I volunteered with in Brooklyn in waking life.

"Tom Osborne" shook my hand and asked, "When are you going to let me see your screenplay, Preemie?"

I stood up to get a copy out of my backpack. As I did, Tom disappeared and the room filled up with people, one of whom was my brother. He had bought Tom a lot new David Bowie CDs. When I saw that he'd bought Pin-Ups, I was impressed. But when my brother held the case up for me to see, it changed to a CD I'd never seen before. It looked like Magical Mystery Tour.

I was now outside, by a swampy lake. It was small, but it had big tides, and people were surfing in it. I got in and felt the pull of the tides.

I was now among a lot of people and piles of what eventually became Chex cereal. I was looking for a person or waiting for a person whom I was almost in love with -- he was almost like the "Tom Osborne" character again.

Another guy was waiting for Tom. The guy was black. He may have been a woman at first. He and I started "pretend kissing" -- then I kept trying to "real kiss" him, but I just ended up putting my tongue in his mouth in a lot of weird ways, eventually pulling out Chex with my tongue.

I was now sitting on a pile of Chex and chocolate Teddy Grahams. I stood up, saying I had to go, and that I was sorry I couldn't have seen Tom.

I saw a cemetery. I thought I really needed to go there. There were thick, granite crosses behind an iron fence. I walked toward the cemetery.

I was back to the swampy "beach." There were a lot of people surfing. I found a surfboard and floated it out with a group of girls to where "they thought" the tide was good (?). My surfboard was red, with a white fin, all flimsy like hollow plastic in a big-wheel tricycle.

I stood on the board (in this murky lake water, filled with moss!) and was surprised by how easy it was. Now a wave came. I rode with it into a swampy area full of young, whitish-barked trees. I was disappointed by my inability to direct myself to shore like everybody else.

I turned my surfboard around near an iron fence and was surprised by how easily the tide drifted me back out of the woods. But there were webs full of tiny, white spiders. I didn't want them to bite me or get on me. I drifted back out.

I was on shore. I went somewhere and talked to somebody and then headed toward home. I looked at the lake again -- this time a corner of it. Most of the people here were just standing in the water and enjoying the rushing of the tide. The water was full of moss.

I figured that if everybody else was having so much fun in the lake, I should get in, too. I got in. I was alone. But then XXXXX's wife (kind of like my coworker BK's wife, AK) was with me, teaching me about the tide. We were by a bridge. All the water sucked out under the bridge. XXXXX said she had made a boat.

We were in a room. XXXXX showed me the boat. She was pulling it out of a bag. The boat couldn't have been more than four feet long.

XXXXX said, "I made it out of the bark of an ancestral tree."

At first it was shaped like,

then when she had it all the way pulled out, it was like,

all polished wood and with gold embellishments and ornate designs. I was impressed but also flabbergasted (jealous) that XXXXX could create such such a beautiful piece of art that was also practical.

(9/30/06) where the hell am i?

(Entered in paper journal at 10:20 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a small-town-like area with somebody else. The area was like some of the adobe store areas in Santa Fe, with a lot of shade from trees. There was a bridge over a calm river. There were a lot of people around -- there may have been a fair or an event going on.

I was walking to my car, which was down a hill toward the river on the side of the bridge, possibly down a concrete path. But as I and XXXXX (possibly a Mexican man, a friend of mine?) were walking to the car we were joined by one group of folks and then another group of folks.

The first group seemed like friends. But the second group was a little annoying. They may also have been a Mexican family. They said they were coming because ????? (the boy in the family could be dropped off at school on our way to where we were going. The boy was walking and reading a huge science book.

I tried to explain that we were going to a fair and that if people wanted to come along with us, that was fine. But if everybody was just coming along so I could drop them off here and there, they shouldn't come.

But one of the guys in the groups tried to prove that the fair wasn't happening anyway. I saw strange view, as if we were traveling through the air. We centered in on one location -- a small house with signs on the wall advertising a fair that may have been happening inside. I thought, This isn't what I was looking for. Maybe the guy was right.

We pulled up into the air again. The view was strangely electronic -- only the house, in the center, was clear. Then everything else got clearer resolution as a line swept over it like a counterclockwise radar. The house was in the center of what looked like a circle of farmland. The circle may have been pale tan gold. But all around it changed to bright pinks, golds, greens in patches like squares and circles.

This strangeness didn't strike me. I rather thought, Well, this doesn't look like the location at all. I checked the location (? how?) and saw the man had changed the coordinates to somewhere in N.M. (New Mexico?). That wasn't where the fair was. He had chosen a bad location.

I told the man, "You can't stop me from going to the fair just so I'll drop you off where you want to go. I know where the fair is. It's in N.O.!" (New Orleans?)

I shifted the coordinates (how?) to N.O. The view was almost the exact same. A "farmhouse" (just a house) in the center of a circle, first the only thing in clear resolution, then the fields aroud it clearing and taking on strange colors by the sweep of a counterclockwise "radar" line.

I thought something like, Now I've chosen the wrong location. Where the hell am I?

(11/13/06) that's not above montgomery, is it?; the special dining ware

(Entered in paper journal at 6:31 PM on Brooklyn-bound Q-train from 57th Street and 7th in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was on a suburban street corner. A young, Mexican boy walked up to me and asked where some place was. I pointed in one direction, but that meant I was pointing in the other direction. I believe I was giving directions to Flatbush.

The boy asked, "That's not above Montgomery, is it?"

I said, "No, no. It's below."

Dream 2

A dinner at my friend R's house (?). I was pulling out the plates, maybe washing them. But I had to pull a special plate and a big, green, plastic spoon out of a tote bag (like black rubber, like the material for fishermen's overalls).

(10/14/06) this isn't the brazil you were thinking of; a turbojet panic; snail email

(Entered in paper journal at 9:03 AM at Ozzie's Coffee Shop on Garfield and 5th in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was on a subway. I was trying to get somewhere, but I had gone too far. The few people on the train (mostly Mexican) were telling me so. We stopped at a very wide station with wide, concrete overhangs -- but a very airy place on a grey day -- and like it was in an empty wilderness. I had to take a few stops down to get to a place where I could cross to a train heading in the opposite direction and head back up.

I was in "my bedroom." I may have been living with my mom and everybody else. I was hysterical with grief. I was trying to get to Brazil, but I knew I couldn't get past security the way I was. I had shot myself up with drugs (looked like roach powder from Cronenberg's film of Naked Lunch), either today or in the past couple days, and I knew that would all still be in my system.

But I got even more sorrowful when I recalled that I had actually donated blood after having shot up. Who knew what diseases might be in the blood of someone who shot themselves up with drugs like I had? I hoped the drugs and disease had worked their way out of my system by the time I had donated blood. I felt trapped in my room.

I was on the train. It had been a three hour ride from New York to Brazil. We pulled in by a shore. I walked over to a plaza of wood shop booths. Some mission-style buildings were in the distance.

But someone told me, "This isn't the Brazil you were thinking of. You have to get on a train and go four more hours to get into the main Brazil."

I thought, Do I have time for that? I couldn't remember whether I was here for just one day or for a long time.

Dream 2

I and a friend (unknown/unseen) were in an aviation museum. We came to a small room big enough only to contain a jet like an F-16. It was lit very comfortably and seemed almost like a living room.

My friend showed me a button that could activate the jet from the outside, on the underside. I knew it was there, too: we were both jet experts. But I was surprised it could actually start the jet, which I assumed was decommissioned for the museum.

The friend was now typing at a computer terminal hooked to the button (which was now a flesh-colored, plasticky outlet). The computer was so low he had to sit on the floor with his legs folded under him to type.

As he typed a turbojet beside the man activated. I stood beside it -- I hadn't been aware of its presence on the jet until now. It was bright silver, gnarled with smooth, beautiful pipes. I could see this was actually the strong engine on the jet. I was afraid the friend would get us in trouble for igniting the jet, but I also wanted to see it run. I could feel the intensity of the turbojet.

But a kid who was now with us stood right behind the jet. I pulled him away and held him very close to me. I may have been a woman. I tried to convince the kid, though he wouldn't believe me, that when these jets ignited they would disintegrate him. He had scared the heck out of me by standing right there.

Dream 3

A huge stack of envelopes on a table. They were like emails -- I read them as if off a screen. But I only read their title lines. But somehow a message from my company's sales and research liaison JB made it clear that I needed to read the stack of messages, especially la series of messages sent by him.

I opened one of the messages. It began, "Thank you, first of all, for the good wishes for me and my family. Would you mind..." (at this point he gave me some task to complete).

(3/11/08) fight for your flight; miniskirt women; weird movies and weird sayings

(Entered in paper journal at 5:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a space shuttle which had just launched. But my point of view was from outside the shuttle. I could hear myself talking with a woman who was also in the shuttle. We were talking about how the propulsion tanks appear to drop off the shuttle so quickly when you're watching launches on TV, but how they seem a lot slower when you're actually on the shuttle.

I watched the propulsion tanks drop off the shuttle a couple times, from a couple different angles. Each time they seemed to drop off quickly and, in my opinion, too early. The shuttle itself seemed like a huge propulsion tank coated in big squares of beige tiling.

Now it was like I was coming back down, in the shuttle or in my body (?), over a city. As I descended I thought how I would, according to my memory of this event, land on a building-top in the city. I thought, This time I'll fight for the rights (of astronauts? of workers on the moon?).

Now I was back up in the air, headed down into the sea, which had a dirty, brownish color. The people at ground control who had been directing my flight learned that I was going to fight for people rights. So they misdirected me so I couldn't land in the city and begin fighting directly. I think the people even hoped I would drown.

I dove head-first into the water, did a roll at a considerable depth, and surfaced. I was now  person like David Bowie, or like an alien character that David Bowie might play. I would have to head back toward the city. I stood onto a large square of well-manicured lawn.

Dream #2

I was possibly in a big vehicle (like an RV?) at night with a group of black women. The women all spoke about how they had to lose weight so they could fit into some really small miniskirts. I may have been a woman as well. I sat behind a woman, my legs cradled around her legs, my arms around her waist.

Dream #3

I stood before a thin, plywood wall like scaffolding in an open field or a vacant lot. On the wall were old movie posters. I looked at one in particular. It was supposed to be for a Fellini-esque movie. Depicted on the poster were Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin, and a character/characters who looked like Saraghina from the film 8 1/2.

I tried to remember some of the movie's scenes, which I could feel were very surreal. I heard someone in a group of people behind me say, "Oh, no, not that movie again! It's not even very good!" I may now have felt ashamed for having recognized the movie.

I had wandered down to my left, to a wall of scaffolding behind the first wall. I stopped there to look at a more colorful movie poster that I can't remember. Looking to my right I saw a lot of these "scaffolding walls," like a maze or a small city-street, all with movie posters on them.

I wondered why I should be ashamed to remember the movie from first movie poster I saw. I went back to the poster. I was now carrying "my oldest nephew" on my shoulders. We tried to quote some lines from the movie.

Now we were inside a nice grocery store, like a small version of a Wild Oats store I used to visit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My nephew was saying weird things. A (tall?) thin man with pale skin and red hair stood into my nephew's face and told him not to act in such a weird way.

I told my nephew, "That man didn't say that to be mean. He's really thinking of your own good."

My nephew agreed happily, as if complying with the man's statement, but continued saying weird things.