(10/3/06) the living lives of christ; hurting my brother

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 PM, but no info on where.)

Dream 1

I was in a basement of an art museum. It was a very great museum, and this was a very great room in particular. The building was beautiful, austere, but very angular with a Tudor-style, plaster and wood touch to it. But it was also a little shabby. This room was particularly shabby.

All the paintings, or almost all (though I called it all), had to do with the life of Christ. At first they may have been from all different time periods. But then they were all from around the time of Giotto. but when I looked at them I wasn't exactly convinced they came from that time.

Some were good -- very striking. But they weren't the right style. Others were mediocre, worthless toss-offs which I thought had to have been made recently by second-rate artists. Some looked very old, like cave drawings (authentic), but on canvas, one with a hand print somehow making out Christ's face.

One painting in particular spooked me. It was on the floor, propped against a wall. (And now it seems there were some paintings hung on the walls -- but no paintings in frames.) This particular painting was like Caravaggio's painting of Bacchus, except in a somehow Odilon Redon style, with wild asters everywhere. There might have been another painting only of wild asters.

Somehow I felt there was something alive in the paintings. The "Bacchus" drove that feeling home. I suddenly felt alone among ghosts.

Two women walked into the room. I felt thankful. I didn't know where i was going. I would follow them. I tried not to let on I was following them. I could tell they were lovers and they didn't need some guy spoiling their fun together. The women were kind of dumpy. They wore sweatsuits. They were not fat, but not skinny. They were plain.

The women walked into a room that led to an underground ferry. We got on. It was very dark. There were few people on board. The seats were wide and wooden.

There was plenty of space. But I stayed by the two women. It obviously looked like I was following them. I don't think they minded. I didn't mind it, either, as long as they didn't let on they knew that I was doing it because I was afraid of being alone. The three of us seemed to be reading books, though the girls would also talk back and forth with each other.

Dream 2

I sat in a dim kitchen at a table with my brother. I told my mom how I didn't like being around the family and how I felt so awful around them. It made me never want to see any of them again.

I said, "But I especially never want to see him" (my brother) "anymore!" I said it almost cheerfully, breezily. But then I felt bad when I realized what a hurtful thing I had said.

(10/28/06) start wire head injury; my articulate, angry nephew

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was somewhere like a library. There were a bunch of mean kids around. I didn't want to mess with me with them. The library was wide and spacious. I levitated about as high as I would be off the ground if I were riding a skateboard. Somehow that made the kids notice me less. But some who did made me even more of a target, or were about to.

The library became a wide open plaza, pink cobblestone, with some shops and then a broad, wide walk out to the ocean (or a big river?). I levitated a little higher and lined myself up with the walkway. I landed.

I planned to lift up somewhat high and speed myself all the way down the walkway. For some reason I had only been able to levitate to certain heights, proportional to how much space I had around and before me. But I knew if I wanted to stop being a target for these kids, I had to levitate high and move fast. Plus -- it was just a simple pleasure to feel the height and speed.

But somehow when I blasted myself upward, I hit some wire which I called a "start wire." It was clear and plasticky, possibly somehow glassy. Standing on this wire, I had to put on my clothes.

But I must have been pulling to levitate, too, because the wire was shaking up and down uncontrollably. When I tried to put my pants on, the wire acted so wild that I was tossed around in all directions. I couldn't see or get my bearings. Everything was a jumble.

I knew that either the wire would break or I wouldn't be able to hold onto it sooner or later, and that I would either be thrown in the air or at the ground. Either way, 'd hit the ground. I just hoped I'd get thrown into the air so I might control my spin somewhat and break my fall a little. But that didn't happen. The cord snapped, and I rocketed straight to the ground head-first.

I came to at night. I was by a shop. Some friends (?) were tending to my head wound. My head, the back right portion, I believe, was completely smashed open. My friends had dressed my wound, but my brain was damaged.

There was another person in front of the shop. (The front of the shop was curved inward, as if it faced a circle.)

The other man was on the left side of the curve. I was on the right. The friends divided to tend to each of us, and some would go back and forth between us.

There was some plan to replace brain in each of us using portions of brain from the other. But I didn't want this to happen -- I didn't want to have any of that guy's brain in my head -- I wanted my own kind of intelligence.

Besides, that man seemed to have a horrible head injury, and the same treatment being applied to both of us implied that I also had that kind of injury. I took that to mean that I had been made stupid. I hoped this wasn't true. And so I hoped that it would be discovered my head injury wasn't that bad after all.

Dream 2

A department store like Kmart. I was behind my mom and my second oldest nephew J as they walked don the "aisle," but I wasn't really there. J was speaking surprisingly articulately, but he only spoke one or two words. I could feel the words in my ears.

J was so angry. He was almost to the point of violence. My mom (who may have become my great grandmother A) had to pull him into one of the clothing rack areas. I watched from the "aisle." J had a huge newspaper (the New York Times?) in his arms. The paper almost as big as he. He was tearing the paper apart violently, although my mom's/grandma's move to the move to the rack area had calmed him down enough to stop him from shouting the one or two words.

Finally J chaneled his anger and spoke almost preternaturally articulately. He pointed to another section of the store, a display shelf of jeans (?), to a fat woman. He made it clear that if this woman kept coming at him he would not control his anger -- he would attack!

(6/18/07) fight of the pinky-swears

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

Dream #1

I was in an apartment. It was night and dark. My mom had just left. She may have warned me about some person coming into the house. She might also have gone looking for that person, to stop him from threatening us.

A person unlocked the door and walked in, keeping his (?) back to me (and possibly to my brother or sister, who may also have been in the apartment). The man was really tall at first. But by the time I got to him he was less than waist-height, and he was carrying an umbrella. He looked like the old scientist character in the Satoshi Kon film Paprika.

A voice said, "It's Cecil. You've been had."

I fought in a weird way with the little man. The little man tried to grab me around the waist, mid-way between my hips and the bottom of my rib cage. I kept pushing the little man off by linking my pinkies with his and pushing him away.

(7/17/07) scary music video; red landscape; two museum rooms; lesbians and mother; it all leads to death

(Entered in paper journal at 5:48 AM at Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway.)

Dream #1

A music video by Gloria Estefan. Estefan's was done up like from the 1940s. The scenes would change from Estefan's standing by herself and singing to the camera to standing and singing in a big, "unfinished"-style bedroom with one or two other women. Estefan's outfits changed, but she generally wore pale colored, satiny, shortish dresses. Estefan's song was to the women, about how she and they always fight and think they're going to break up, but how eventually she gets back together with them.

At "the end" of the video, Estefan was in a dim and small, but elegant-looking bedroom. Estefan wore a black dress. She looked a little fat. She sang about how she could never give up loving so many beautiful girls. She gave a weird, "who me?" troublemaker expression that one might see on an old man in a Fellini film. She reclined on the floor with her hands behind her head. She looked very relaxed. She had a black blanket over her.

From behind Estefan's right shoulder, as if out of the ground, came the head of a Hispanic boy who was somewhat attractive, except that his brow was pulled out a few inches, his eyebrows were very thick, and his mouth awas full of disarranged, misshapen teeth. I saw from the woman's view, i.e. lying on the ground, a man standing over the woman with a machine gun pointed at her.

Now I saw, as if watching a movie, army men in a bedroom with a weird, circular, Asian-style (?) window. The room itself seemed to be ancient, made out of solid, crafted stone. The army men ran at a window, as if the woman had escaped out of it.

The room had gone from being full of men to being empty except a constant "drip" of men (like in an old Nintendo game) appearing just to run at the window. But when the men would jump through the window something awful would happen to them. They would dissolve into a bunch of flying pieces of flesh. I was disgusted, but I tried to look harder at what was happening.

I now stood outside the room, in the dark night. A yellow glow came through the window from the room. The window was key-shaped, with a lattice of intricate, wooden designs in shards at its lower, right edge. Some men would jump through it and become creatures like ravens. Some would jump through and become just clumps of fleshy feathers that fluttered through the air for a moment and then fell scattered all over the ground. Some would jump through and seem fine for a step or two before bloating out into mutated "birdmen" and falling down, dead.

One man didn't even make it through. His top half fell over the outside wall, and he hung there, his back coated in grey-black feathers.

A bunch of soldiers jumped through the window. They stood in a loose formation, facing at a wide, relaxed diagonal to the wall. They held their guns ready to shoot something that may have been up a couple stories.

I was the woman. I stood among the soldiers. Somehow the soldiers didn't see me, but I felt like they would son, and that they would then kill me. I guessed I couldn't escape them. I stood among them, in their loose ranks.

The men were all white, not overly muscular, somewhat red-tanned, most of them with close-cut, darkish blonde hair. I kept waiting for the awful thing to happen to them, like it had happened to the others who had gone through the window, so that they would die before noticing and killing me. I thought, Nobody lasts this long after jumping through the window.

Suddenly the soldiers all grabbed their ears as if they were hearing an awful sound. I thought, It's finally happening. But nothing much happened. One or two of the men may have had some slight melting on their faces. But mostly the soldiers were just made angry by the awful sound. They still didn't see me, but I felt like now, because of the infuriating sound, the men would most certainly kill me if they saw me.

Dream #2

An art work named after a Colorado resort town, possibly Vail or Steamboat. It was a painting like a view from space. The paint was laid on so thick that everything was three-dimensional. It was supposed to be completely realistic, but the "snow" depicted was all red, except at the peaks of some high mountains, where it was actually white. The last name of the artist may have been Burroughs.

I thought the work was very good. I didn't think the work was realistic, per se. But I did think that the red produced a lovely kind of "realistic" atmosphere.

Dream #3

I walked down a hallway with someone, possibly a woman, behind me (and to my right?). The hallway was dim and soothing, but with plain, white tiles and white walls. The hallway ended in a T-shape. At this intersection the walls and floor were black.

Both arms of the T were museum exhibits. I (and probably my friend) had a ticket that would get into both exhibits. The exhibit on the right was the one I had come for: either some unique, colorful sculptures or some kind of photography.

The exhibit on my left caught me totally by surprise: I'd had no idea there was a hall on the left. I wanted to see what it was, even though I thought I would wait to go inside until I had been to the exhibit on the right.

An old man in a security-uniform tie and jacket stood by a clear, plexiglass, turnstile gate to the art exhibit. I didn't want to make the old man think I was trying to get into the left exhibit without showing my ticket, and I didn't see a ticket-taker at this exhibit. So I crept only a couple inches into the exhibit, where the old man could still see me, so I could see the exhibit's name and some of the works on display.

The room was dim, with soft, deep-tan walls. The name of the artist whose works were on display was something like Isamu Noguchi. It might have been more like Tomiguchi.

There was some kind of sculpture in the room. But what mainly caught my eye were silhouette profiles, of black overlaid with cutout, white paper (i.e. the cutout, white paper made the profile seen on the underlying black paper). The profiles were framed very nicely and looked like profiles of nineteenth-century people, mostly children.

The old man cleared his throat at me. I looked back. I sheepishly headed his way. I really desired to show the old man that I wasn't a crook, that I had a ticket, and that I wasn't trying to get into the exhibit without a ticket.

I walked up to the plexiglass gate. The ticket had a barcode. The barcode needed to be ran against a scanner. The waist-high gates would then open. I got nervous about whether my ticket would work at all, or if it would show that I didn't have the right to go into the left exhibit.

I looked into the right exhibit. The walls were black. There were a couple metallic staircases leading up to a short second level. Some blue spotlights slightly glowed amid the overall natural-feeling incandescence, lending tiny, indigo-violet twinkles to the metallic and plexiglass surfaces around me. I felt like I was in some areas from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Dream #4

Two Asian girls wearing puffy outfits that looked like exaggerations of towels wrapped around their bodies. One girl wore a yellow outfit. The other girl wore a blue outfit. The girls were in a big bedroom that was in an old, Asian style but also had touches like a modern college dorm room.

A (very tall!) woman dressed like the evil mother in Ivan the Terrible came into the room. I don't know if the old woman was a mother to one of the daughters. I don't feel like she was, even though I seem to have thought of her as a mother. The woman was distraught because the two girls were in love with each other and were even planning to marry each other.

The girls knew how distraught the woman was. So, to tease the old mother, they stood in front of her and faced each other. They said to the mother, not regarding her, almost regarding each other, but looking slightly up as if to acknowledge slightly that they were speaking to the mother, "We have decided that we love each other like sisters. Yes, we've decided that we really are like sisters. We need to accept that and be like sisters to each other." The old mother was relieved.

Now my view closed up on the girls as they spoke more and more erotically and got closer and closer to each other. They kissed each other, then held hands and bounded lightly to the door, saying, "But we're still in love with each other, too, and we're still going to get married!"

The girls seemed, by having bounded to the door, to be ushering the old mother to the door, thus telling the old mother to leave the room. The old mother was upset again. Some part of her seemed like an old, bald man.

Dream #5

I sat eating long strips of roast beef. A man walked past me and to a door to my left, perhaps telling me, as he passed, that he was going hunting.

I said something to ridicule the man. I thought, It all leads to death. Killing leads to death. Eating dead things just tears up your insides and kills you faster.

I wondered why I was saying all this to myself if I was sitting here eating meat right now. The meat wasn't roast beef. It was like strips of deer or elk meat. I ate it off something like a stretched skin, like on a drum. Something felt Native American about it. The strips of meat themselves seemed fringed and tassled.

(7/20/07) a view of the monument

(Entered in paper journal at 5:37 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a house, alone. I lay in a bedroom that was probably a mess. Bright sun came in through the windows. I was happy to be by myself.

I felt a presence. I knew it was my mother. I went into the hallway. My co-worker EB stood in the hallway, possibly with my mom back in the distance, and behind a lot of clutter, possibly bikes. I wondered how I was going to get out of this place with so much stuff in the way.

It was night. I flew over treetops and possibly small rows of shop buildings in a small area of New York City or a small town.

I heard or remembered a conversation I'd had with my boss BS about how I had made the logistics of a date too difficult for the woman to want to do on the date again. First of all, we'd gone out to some restaurant at the outskirts of (this part of?) town. Second we'd had to walk all the way there.

I flew over an open road at night. I then stood beside a steep slope of wall, almost like a huge pane of solar paneling. It was early morning. BS stood beside me. We seemed to be crowded into a narrow trench near the wide wall by trees and a deep cliff behind us. BS asked me why I didn't work hard to improve the way I presented myself to women.

It was a bright day. I stood on a stone walkway that curved around and around a section of a stone building. The walkway and the building were greyish-peach colored. This building was part of an historical park or campus.

I think part of the walkway was blocked by a plywood board standing on its side, maybe with a wide sheet of paper hanging off it. I might have thought I wasn't allowed up. But I saw a few people, two couples, probably, walking down the path from behind the barrier, coming in my direction.

Now I had flown up to the top of this building. I looked down on the park/campus. I was very high up. The land around me must have been tall, rolling hills.

I heard a narrator discussing the old times, when Thomas Jefferson had founded this place. I saw the place alternately in black and white, like an old film, and in color, like my regular view.

The narrator's speech focused on a monument, like the Thomas Jefferson Memorial monument in Washington, DC. I was sure it couldn't be the Jefferson Memorial: I wasn't in the right place. I thought I would fly down to it and see what the monument was. I felt like there was a dark metal (bronze?) figure inside.

I couldn't stop looking at the the monument, even though I kept trying to look in other places. The land around the monument slowly got soggier and soggier, like a barren field, once lawn, after a heavy rain.

I yelled to the film that was being narrated, "Stop looking at the monument! I want to see other things!"

I now heard narration of a documentary which I was actually enacting. I was floating down the side of a building and landing momentarily in columned openings in the building. Eventually I was at the base of the building, possibly at the foot of a tall hill.

The narration had been about a man who had gone insane and thought he could hop down the side of a building. But, I thought, I did just do that!

I looked back up to the top of the building.

(8/7/07) hot dog stand and coffee pot; my sister's birthday

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked under a wooden door-frame and into a plaza or hallway full of nice-looking, but cheap, mall-like storefronts, mostly for restaurants. Most of the places were closed. I knew from this that this area wasn't getting as much business as had been expected for it when it had first been developed.

One place was open. I went inside. It was like an old hot dog stand at Coney Island: all the surfaces of stainless steel, etc. A father and his twelve-year-old son worked there. The father stood behind the counter and the son beside the front door. (To get into the place I probably had, once again, to crouch under a half-door-frame in a "wood" wall like the wood-pattern siding on the outside of a double-wide trailer.)

I was offered breakfast -- some candies like peanut butter cups. I took them, figuring I wouldn't know where else to get food.

I stood outside at night. I was in a suburban neighborhood. The land, even the pavement, was rolling with roughly four-foot-tall mounds like a carpet with stuff hucked underneath it. I stood by a sleek, black SUV. I stood with some other people, my mom probably among them.

I had a cream-white (ceramic?) coffee pot with a polished silver top. Inside the pot was something like liquid nitrogen. I had to pour the substance on or in some pipe in the SUV's engine to get the engine running.

But I had just run out of the substance. Someone, possibly my mom, took the coffee pot to go fill it again. I stood with the other people by the SUV. I told them that somehow it seemed like we shouldn't need that second pot after all.

Dream #2

I stood with my mom before an electronic piece of machinery. I had to twist some knobs or gears to manipulate the quality of metals. There may have been construction workers nearby, watching us. I think I had done something wrong, and that people were now laughing at me.

I was riding in an SUV with my mom and my sister. We drove on a bridge like the Manhattan Bridge. The sides of the bridge were mostly covered by orange, mesh material, making the bridge feel like an interior. I may have been sitting in the front passenger's seat. I didn't see as myself. I saw as my sister and sometimes as my mother. Either I or my sister sat in the backseat on the passenger's side.

My mom told my sister why this day (my sister's birthday?) was so good. My mom gave a lot of flattering reasons. I, as my sister, giggled shyly while looking at the dashboard. My mom (I seeing as her) said, "But I love this day most of all because I knew" (I seeing as my sister again) "that Preemie was not in New York City during the World Trade Center attack."

I stood out on the bridge. My mom and sister were in the SUV, which was stopped and facing me.

I stood on the right side of the road, before some electronic equipment like an old record player. One knob in particular, which looked like a coppery version of the base of a record needle's arm, was my focus. I had to thumb down a tiny switch inside to make a change to copper. I thumbed the switch down. I heard a sound somewhere like distorted church bells.

(8/19/07) i can't live with you guys!; embarrassing pink t-shirt

Dream #1

I woke up in a house I was living in with my family. I realized this first night I had spent with them would be only one of many nights. I didn't know how I had let myself lapse into living with my family again.

In panic I got out of bed and ran into my mom's room. All the rooms in the house were messy and had a half-fashioned feel to them. My mom slept on a low bed, perhaps like one mattress on a floor. Someone else slept on a similar "bed" beside her. The "beds" were at an odd angle to one another.

I yelled at my mom, "This is it! I can't do it! I can't live with you guys! I'm moving out today!"

Dream #2

I was in a car with my mom and my brother. It was night. We were driving around in a white-lit parking lot, possibly just after or at the end of a rainfall. My mom was driving. I may have been sitting in the backseat. I may possibly even have been playing with toys. I was the size of a child. I may have been a child. But I thought and spoke like an adult.

We were trying, by driving, to get into a botanical garden. My brother was getting a little frustrated. He was saying snide things about my mom's sense of direction. I said something like, "Well, she knows what she's doing. We'll be okay." We parked in a pace. We got out and walked toward a big fence that looked like fencing and scaffolding outside a construction area.

In a big, open space of parking lot, a black girl who was maybe about twelve years old was breakdancing. She wore a white t-shirt and pink dancing pants like sweatpants. The girl finished with a long series of barrel-roll bounces off the ground. A mother and another woman, both fat, stood by a car, watching the girl.

We continued our walk toward the gate. My brother and I may both have been adult-sized again. My brother said, "I need to go back to the car. I forgot my XXXXX."

I held my hands close to sternum, like I was cold, or like I was talking cute. I said, "That's a good idea. I need to go, too. I need to take off this shirt." I was wearing a girls' pink t-shirt with tiny sleeves.

My brother said, "It's about time. I was wondering when you were going to take that off. You look embarrassing."

I told my mom (who hadn't been visible this entire time, and still wasn't visible) that my brother and I were going back to the car.

(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.

(9/17/07) can't volunteer; data dormitory; rude waiter; conspiracy redacted; lightning love; snapped cable

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I stood out on some lawn, which was bordered by a pine forest on one side and a large, brick building on the other. Somewhere a video had been playing about certain monkeys in a rain forest. The monkeys had white and black fur. The worry was that these monkeys weren't getting enough rain water in the treetops. I thought I would go work to help them in that situation.

The video may have been playing in the redbrick building, as if the building were a visitors' center for a park. The video must have ended. I called into the building, through one of the windows, for the video to be turned back on.

As the video was beginning again, my co-worker JN, in a corner area of the building, in a kitchen, yelled, "You can't do this stuff here! It's too loud!" I knew my hopes of volunteering in this project were gone.

I lay on the floor of a ratty department store. The shelves of the aisle I lay in were almost barren. The aisle itself was maybe twice as wide as usual. I stared up at the ceiling.

I felt completely hopeless. I had no volunteer work to look forward to, and I had nothing in this place, either. And it was all because nobody wanted me wherever I was! I began heaving sobs. I was then crying so hard that I had to sit up straight to keep from shaking.

Dream #2

I sat to the left of my co-worker JM as he gave a presentation among people at a (square?) table. At one point JM forgot some data. He stuttered, trying to remember it.

I whispered, "Do you need me to get the data out of your room for you?"

JM said, "Yes. Go get me a book called 'Open Fiction.'"

I was in a stairwell. I planned to jump straight down to the center of it. I jumped up and bounced off of two walls, ricocheting down into the center, which may have been no wider than my body. I may have passed some man, possibly a janitor, who looked at me as if I were going to cause some trouble.

I landed in a basement of rooms like college dormitories. The carpet was blue, with designs. I had to get to the other end of this hallway and then go up another staircase. I jumped, and in a couple of "ricochet" bounces of the walls was I was at the next staircase. The center of this well was even narrower, but I managed to jump up straight through it.

There was another hallway dormitories. The second door on the right was JM's. It was inside a corner and beside another door. The door was open and in front of it was a yellow foam bed bad. Weird instructions were written on the pad in different-colored magic marker (mostly purple). There was a little smell of urine. I knew part of the instructions spoke about JM moving. I didn't read any of the instructions. I just went in to get the book.

But now I thought that maybe all of this was a trap, that someone would find me in here and hurt me. I looked all around for books, but there were no books. There were only CDs. I now thought, Perhaps I've gone to the wrong place. Maybe JM has all his books at the new place.

Dream #3

I sat at a round table in a restaurant with my mom and my grandma P. I sat across from my mom and grandma. Behind them was a little railing and landing, and to their right was a three-step staircase leading up to the landing, which was the front of the restaurant. There might have been eight spaces set for the table.

A waiter, a white man, snobbish, though definitely a kid, saw a strip of purple cloth, like a table-runner, running under my plate and reaching down to touch the floor. The kid stuck his foot on the cloth to pull at my plate. He cleared his throat a couple times and tugged at the cloth as he did so.

The waiter walked away. I knew he'd messed with the purple cloth to make me angry. So I stood up and followed after him to confront him. But he hurried away through a busy rush of people. I sat back down.

My grandma said, "He acted the same way to us. He made some rude remark. But when we asked him what he meant he just mumbled and said, 'Well, if you'll excuse me, ladies.' He's a coward." I realized everybody on the restaurant staff was a coward.

Now some fattish, Hispanic man was trying to push me and my family out of the restaurant. He said, "We're closed. We're leaving. You need to leave, too."

My mother, grandmother, and I got up to leave. But as we got to the door, the man exited, closed the door behind him, and locked it. We were locked inside.

Dream #4

"We" (who were we?) were in a classroom that may have been a visitors' center for a national park. There was some conspiracy theory that a male teacher was trying to show us. The man was saying that this conspiracy was plainly stated in the documents, even in displays on the walls of the visitors' center.

The man led us to a display of black squares on the wall. He was going to show us the text. But when we got to it, we saw that all the text the man had told us to look for was gone. The man said, "It's been blacked out! Against the black background, it looks like it's never been there in the first place!"

The man's manager walked into the room. The man suddenly became very secretive and withdrawn. He somehow made it known to all of us that we were supposed to act like he hadn't mentioned the conspiracy at all.

Dream #5

I was walking along a suburban street. There may have been a high school field to my left. I had come up a slope. Now the street was curving to the right. The sky was grey and heavy.

Suddenly, lightning burst on the horizon before me: tremendous orange and white flashes immediately accompanied by thunder. It wasn't stopping. It just kept going.

A tall, strong, mature businessman stood to my left. I said, "Obviously the lightning is close -- the thunder comes right with it. I wonder if I can get home alright."

The man chuckled and said, "I doubt it, considering how far you have to go."

I said, "Well, then, would you mind if I stopped at your house?" I may have secretly hoped that the man would let me stop at his house, and that that would lead for an opportunity for the man to have sex with me.

Dream #6

Some show about a building that had been affected by the 9/11 attacks, but which nobody had really paid attention to. There was footage of the firefighters who had been killed in the events. Firefighters were repelling up the building by a thick, black cable.

Suddenly the cable broke. The firefighters fell four or five stories and onto a small, metal and glass structure like a foyer. Somehow the metal was electrified. The firefighters were electrocuted.

There was now another group of firefighters repelling up and using a black cable. These firefighters were up almost to the window from which the cable was linked. Through the window was the orange-yellow glare of a blazing fire. But, other than the fire in the window, the building looked fine.

The cable snapped. The firefighters fell down onto another glass and metal structure. They fell onto a pile of other firefighters' bodies. The pile of bodies was almost as tall as the glass and metal structure itself -- maybe twelve feet tall. Some of the firefighters were dead as they hit the pile. Others were still in the throes of death, and they died in a few final sharp, painful thrashes.

(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.

(10/7/07) submarine and amusement park ride

(Entered in paper journal at 12:23 PM at Starbucks at Houston Street and Hudson Street in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I looked out a window that was tall and narrow. My mom may have been to my left. I saw a submarine emerge from the water. At first I wasn't sure it was a submarine. I just saw the surface of the vessel. But it drove forward and I saw the central portion (?) of the submarine, which tiered upward.

As I watched, the submarine was revealing itself to be much larger than I had imagined. At the top, or in the top, of the submarine, were two or three cockpits in which pilots sat. I was shouting in happiness finally to have seen such a great vessel.

Somehow my view followed the submarine as it traveled along the surface of the water. We passed some square structures like building-top fan-boxes for air conditioning systems.

I wandered off from the submarine at some point near the shore. I flew (?) through an amusement park, first through something like a maze of mirrors, then through some kind of spinning swing ride, the top of the carousel of which was lined with framed, rectangular mirrors. I descended as if diving into one of the seats.

(10/16/07) where the new building was; emergency party; like a worm made out of brains

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I watched, from the back passenger seat, a car pass a field with trees like cherry trees. Somehow I thought this was where my company's new building would be (in waking life, my company was in the final planning stages for moving into a new building -- we would be fully moved in, if I remember correctly, by about July of 2008 -- only to be moved into another building in January of 2009!)

I thought, This would be a nice area to take runs. There was a path running through the field. We passed along a creek or river at the bottom of a slope of rocks. The creek itself was rocky. An empty boat, with two paddles, clanked along some of the rocks.

I thought, But this is New York City. The roads are bad on (my boss) BS' knees. We really couldn't come up with a running route that would be good for BS. I also thought of asking my co-worker CJ if he wanted to run.

We passed another river, which ran at the bottom of a waterfall. The waterfall gushed over huge, round, coppery rocks and flooded the river.

We passed a building that was built in three sections. I saw it from the back. The two back sections were roundish with green, metallic framing for the windows. The front section rose slightly above the back sections and was octagonal, probably of pink stone, with a shallow, a-frame roof. It was in a field of dry, yellow-tan and orange-tan grass.

Now it was like I sat backwards, looking out the back window, in the backseat and on the driver's side. My mom was driving the car. My brother and sister were also in the car. We drove on a straight road, through slightly rolling stretches of flat plains -- yellowy-tan grass with some hints of green and orange and some glimpses of rich (?), brown soil beneath. There were occasional, thin clumps of trees, the green of their leafs as pale as floating clouds.

Then I saw a white tree. It was de-limbed, so all it was was a white trunk with four limb-stumps coming off of it. It looked like a wild, raging horse to me.

I thought my mom would be impressed by how much I liked looking out the window. I asked my mom some question relating to telling her about the things my siblings and I had done. My mom surprised me by answering something like, "I don't care. Don't tell me anything." I tried to change that statement into something more positive in my mind.

We passed a stand of thin aspen trees that edged before some tall, redbrick buildings like apartment complexes.

Dream #2

I sat in my desk at work. There was an alarm. A man's voice came on over the alarm's intercom speaker. The man announced a party (?) in XXXXX's office.

When the alarm had first come on, I had been afraid, wondering if the announcement would be for an actual emergency. I had worried whether I would do everything alright and help everybody effectively through the emergency. Now I was a little disappointed. It was just a birthday party?

For some reason I wasn't wearing shoes. But my shoes were sitting right next to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to the cubicle in front of the office where the party was. The party was, somehow, both in the office and down the hall.

The party was for one of my co-workers, AR, who was, like myself, an Administrative Assistant. Someone told AR, "You could be head of GM (i.e. Global Markets) one day! You throw parties so well!"

I was disappointed. Hadn't my old co-worker and mentor ES, now herself an Analyst like my (and, before, her) boss BS, said to me once, "You could be CEO of this company one day"? (I'm pretty sure that in waking life ES never told me that, although she has always complimented me on my "abilities" -- whatever those abilities are/were!)

I now reflected, Maybe you just said all that stuff to kind of puff up your assistants, make them feel more important than you really think they are, just so you can keep them working. How else, I thought in my jealousy, could someone make such a kind statement about AR, who, I peevishly thought, scarcely worked as hard as I worked?

I didn't even want to go into the room now. I was too ashamed. I took my time putting on my shoes.

AR called, "Preemie, get in here!"

I said, "I'm coming."

She said, "I've been making decisions to be nice. But pretty soon I'm going to have to stop making decisions!"

I thought, Nobody's going to talk to me that way!

But now both AR and ES were out in the cubicle with me. They were both saying nice things to me.

Dream #3

I sat watching a movie. I walked out and then back in. I walked up to my seat as the movie was ending. There were shots of blue sky and power lines, vistas of plains, and other shots I loved. The narrative of the film ended, a song began playing, and the credits began to roll.

But as the song started, a voice (of some Hispanic boy?) called out, "Hey, uh... The film is pretty much ended, everybody. We would appreciate it if you got up and left."

I was in a front row. I had my stuff sitting against the railing in front of me. I stood to pick it up. I had forgotten that I had brought a coat. I had actually brought a lot more than I had remembered.

I walked out into the hallway, which was like the hallway in a city building, just off from the reception lobby. I stood in a weird junction of hallways and right by a garbage can. I stood talking with two black girls.

The girls mentioned a young man, one of their co-workers (they all worked at this movie-house), who did a lot of other stuff. I wasn't sure what the "other stuff" was. I asked, "Does he work somewhere else, too?"

The girls got upset, like I had insinuated that all the boy could do was work in places like this. One of them said, "No. He goes to school. He's studying to be a scientist."

We talked a little more. Then I had to leave. One of the girls walked with me out into the dark, blue-grey evening. The girl smiled and said, "I've always wanted to see the car you drive."

We stood in a mostly empty shopping mall parking lot. The movie-house was now more like a restaurant. I saw my car in the distance. It was an old, beat-up car, like one I drove in my last year of high school -- except that the paint job on the car was now all new and shiny.

I thought, I can't let the girl see that thing. Besides, this girl wasn't the girl I wanted. Both girls were pretty. But the girl I liked, the other girl I'd been talking with in the movie-house hallway, had rounder eyes, not thin eyes like this girl.

The girl with me stopped to talk with a mother and her kids, who stood by a van. I thought, While the girl's not paying attention I can drive away. That way she won't see my awful car.

I turned to tell the girl goodbye. But I saw her from behind and was too surprised to say anything. The girl was now short, ugly, and poor-looking (???!!! -- I'm sometimes shocked by the things I've said!). She wore a blue t-shirt and tight blue jeans which showed off her big bottom. Her big bottom really turned me off.

A black man who was about my height and a little bigger than I, smart-looking, with thin-rimmed eyeglasses, walked past me. I must have thought this was the friend the two women had been talking about in the movie-house hallway.

I thought, Now's my chance to prove I don't think the girls' friend is capable only of working in a movie theater. I apparently thought I could do this simply by making small talk with the man in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said, "Hey, man, we'll see you later."

The man walked past me without even regarding me. I thought, Okay -- you show kindness and it isn't returned!

I walked toward my car. My mom walked beside me and to my left. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The phone (a regular, old-style flip-phone -- as I remember it from waking life, a black Nokia) was cracked. I thought, Maybe it's just cracked on the surface. But I opened it to see that the crack ran across all its surfaces. I looked at the sides. They were messed up, too.

I almost started crying. I thought, What did I do to make this happen? Can't I take care of anything I own?

It was now more like daytime. The car was by the entrance to the mall. My mom and I were at the end of the parking aisle, maybe twenty feet from the car. We passed a needle-leafed tree in a planting island.

I had been speaking with my mom and barely attending the stout tree. But, reflecting on the tree after we'd passed it, it struck me that the tree had weird, tiered, pink and white flowers on it. I told my mom, "Let's go back. That tree looks weird."

We went back. I looked at the branches. There were strange, but somehow sensible, tan-brown, brittle, cone-shaped things standing atop the thin branches. I thought, Maybe I just mistook these things for flowers.

But then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the pink and white flower. I hadn't seen the flower because it was on the periphery of the tree, not in the center, where I had focused my gaze.

The trunk of the tree seemed to end about two feet up from the ground. From the top of the trunk came an agave-like plant with spiny, yellow, purple, and green leafs. I said, "That's what I thought I saw! Isn't it odd?"

I reached out to touch the plant, to make sure I was seeing leafs and not more cones. The plant felt odd. And when I pulled my hand back, I noticed the top leafs moving, as if of their own volition. I thought, That can't be real. I have to be seeing things.

My mom and I were walking away. But the plant really bugged me. I had to look at it again. I told my mom, "Something else didn't make sense." I didn't want to tell my mom what didn't make sense -- namely, that the plant seemed to be moving on its own.

We went back to the tree. Now I saw that the plant grew out of a hollow in the top of the tree trunk -- although it was a part of the tree. I saw steady, directed movement from within the trunk. I knew the movement wasn't volitional, but that it was growth -- life.

I saw a spiky (like a sea-cucumber), worm-like appendage emerge from beneath the leafs. I shouted to my mom, "See?! I wasn't imagining! This thing is growing quicker than normal!"

The thing emerged, as huge as a boa constrictor, and wove its way through the thin branches of the tree. It was like a worm made out of brains, with a head like a gigantic breast. It hung over a branch above us. I knew if it touched us it would incorporate us.

I told my mom, "Run to the car!" We ran and got in.

The thing was growing. It had taken over the tree and spread toward us through the parking lot. I didn't know if we could get started and drive away quickly enough.

I saw a car coming from an underground parking garage to the left of the tree. Now the parking garage was like a car wash. It sprayed water all over the car. Jets of water flew outside the garage. They hit the plant-thing. As soon as they did, the thing dissolved into yellowy, thickish, soapy-looking water.

I hoped that more cars would come through the garage to get washed. The thing was dissolved now, but I felt like it would regain its consistency. I thought that more water needed to hit the thing before it would lose its ability to re-stabilize.

(10/20/07) woman in the treetops; the sick cat cart

(Entered in paper journal at 4:08 PM at Starbucks on Houston Street and Hudson Street in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I ran through a courtyard like in a stone castle at night. I flew up at some point to move as I needed to go. I flew up into trees. I was amazed that I was flying, but I told myself to remain calm so I would keep flying.

At some point a woman in the treetops reached out at me. I turned as I flew to see who she was. She snuck back into the trees, giggling.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I may have been sitting in a grocery cart. I didn't see too much around me. My mom pushed the cart down a street, possibly down the middle of the street, going down a hill. My mom's best friend T walked beside my mom, possibly to her left.

In the cart with me was a cat. The cat may have lain under a white sheet. My mom and T spoke with each other about the cat, either about how the cat was dead or about how sick it was. I thought, They aren't taking good enough care of it!

I saw the cat. It had orange fur that was pale, as if even the fur were sick. The cat lay as if dead. Then it was standing, walking around limpingly, as if it were very sick. I thought, If my mom and T can get this cat somewhere soon enough, they can save it.

The cat looked at me. It had round eyes that were a milky grey throughout, with no pupils (like cataracts?). The cat then lay again as if dead.

(11/8/07) lesbian kissing joke; bowling green jacket; the shortest bio; brother's suffocation

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A movie preview. Two women kissing in dim light, outdoors, possibly in a courtyard or near a pool. One woman was blonde; the other, brunette. The blonde woman eventually started up a relationship with some big man, whom I dont think I ever saw directly.

The kissing scene started over, except now this was where the man first met the blonde woman. The blonde woman was kissing the brunette and then waved over the brunette's shoulder (still holding the brunette's hands -- they seemed to be kneeling and holding hands while kissing.)

In another scene the blonde woman was in a swimming pool with the brunette, convincing the brunette that the relationship with the man would soon be revealed as a joke.

I sat (on a trunk or a box?) in a bedroom filled with grey natural light. Against the wall facing me was a desk. On the right wall, the near the wall facing me, was a doorway to a big movie theater full of people.

I could hear the music for the preview for the movie Walk Hard. I thought a point would be coming up soon where everybody would laugh. But only a few people laughed. I thought, Oh -- well, the big laugh must be coming soon.

Dream #2

I walked out of some place like a subway stop and into a grey, cold day. There were people rushing all over. The area was all torn up, like the construction area around Bowling Green.

I was cold. I pulled a black jacket out of the back pocket of my book bag. It suddenly occurred to me that I had had my jacket in there for a long time. I was afraid to put on the jacket -- I didn't want my boss BS to think I was a wimp for wearing a jacket so early in the cold season.

I walked along torn up sidewalk and a wall (to my right) of scaffolding. People even seemed to be walking in the street. Two people walked past me -- first, a woman on crutches missing her left leg; second, a man on crutches, possibly using both of his legs to walk.

Dream #3

I sat at a pale, wood table. I sat across from my boss BS. He sat a little to my left. I was resting my head on the surface of the table. The wood was thick but not very dense. It was polished, but there seemed to be little, grey nicks all over the surface.

I was explaining to BS that I had actually lived alright while I was in the Americorps volunteer programs I had been in, regardless of having made around six dollars an hour at the most recent position and -- (I tried to mention the position I'd had in New Mexico, but I got sidetracked somehow).

BS decided that he and I should have a contest of who could write the shortest bio.

Dream #4

I was in an empty room with my psychiatrist A. The room was white with pale wood floors. A sat against a wall. I sat just right and forward of the center of the room. We both probably sat in folding chairs. A may also have been my mother. We were discussing some day-to-day activities.

My brother lay before A now and pulled a big, clear, plastic bag over himself. He stuck it up like a tent. Even though he said very little, he made it clear he would try to suffocate himself. He was seriously trying to get our attention. I could feel my brother dying at points, but I simply hoped he would be alright. A/my mom seemed also to be doing a good job of ignoring my brother.

We stood up and walked out the door, now plainly talking about day-to-day activities, as if to show my brother we weren't worried about him at all. We walked down the hall. A/my mom lay on a couch. I headed toward the front door.

I saw my brother had now laid himself on a basket full of used, white towels. The basket was small, so my brother, fitting in the basket, must have been small as well. My brother held the plastic bag over himself again, as if he were going to suffocate himself.

(11/25/07) the one-bedroom two-bedroom; my mom's law

(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was bright day. I stood on the roof of a tall, white apartment building. The roof was a little tiered and covered with gravel or small stones. I walked down a little tiered area to meet my real estate agent, CH. CH was going to show me a new apartment.

As I approached CH, my psychiatrist A came from my right. A called, "I need to go to the bathroom! I need to go pee!" To my right was now another apartment, the door opening directly to a toilet. I thought, Well, if A isn't using the one I'm looking at, I may as well go in.

The apartment I was going to be moving into was a two-room, I had been told. I was going to find a roommate. I wondered if A was supposed to be my roommate. The place was more expensive, but I almost thought I could still afford to live here by myself.

The first room I walked into was a bathroom. The second was a kitchen. The third was a bedroom. The fourth and fifth were another bathroom and kitchen. All five rooms were in a straight line with each other. I wondered where the second bedroom was.

I walked back into the bedroom. When I got there, something made me think I had walked through the second bedroom without having paid attention. I turned around and walked back. But all there were were the second kitchen and second bathroom again.

At the end of the second kitchen (the last room) was another door. It was a thin, fake wood door. There were little stickers on it, showing words in different "cool-girl" styles and colors. One word may have been the name "Tony" in a thick, pink cursive. The door had a tiny slide-lock on it. The door was unlocked.

I opened the door. It looked like another apartment, probably with a family of a mother and children living there. The place was littered slightly with papers and things.

I closed the door. I wanted to believe that this place was also mine, but I knew it wasn't. These were my neighbors. I thought I had escaped having neighbors like these people, who would probably make me miserable with all their noise. And I still had only one bedroom!

I couldn't insulate myself from the noise of these neighbors. It struck me as odd that the door was unlocked from my side. That meant the people in the next apartment had probably been running around in this apartment. Since the new place was practically mine, I locked the door.

I walked to the front door. As I got to the front door I was once again certain that I had seen a second bedroom, or perhaps a living room, without having paid attention to it.

Dream #2

I lay in a living room with my mom and my brother. My mom sat on a couch and my brother lay somewhere beyond my bed. To my right was a buffet, on top of which was a TV, probably turned on. The room was dim.

My brother asked my mom, "Don't we have to get to XXXXX?" (This place was something like a city council meeting.)

My mom said, "Oh, no. I don't feel like going."

My brother said, "But they're going to propose your law today!"

We now stood out on a familiar road near the house where my family lived during my last years of high school. To our right, along the road, was a blocks-long bake sale.

My brother said, "You made all that fuss to get them to put the law in. Now you don't want to go support it up to the next level?"

I stood looking at a bunch of weirdly frosted cupcakes -- they all had white frosting on the centers, but other frosting (like chocolate) on the outsides. They looked like they would be disappointing.

I got mad at my mom. She had made the law? And now she was too lazy to care if it failed? I told my mom, "You are an idiot! I've been able to hold it in for a long time. But this is so stupid, what you're doing now."

I stood in a courtyard. The ground was redbrick. The walls and columns were redbrick. The place had a spacious but intimate feel. I was apologizing to a woman my age, as i what I had said to my mom had been said to this woman instead. I wasn't physically speaking. It was like I was walking around by myself in the courtyard, remembering the apology while also letting bad thoughts about my mother work through my head.

I now embraced a woman who looked like MH, a colleague from New York Cares. I held MH close and realized how good it felt. Now it was like I had said all the bad things about a nearby friend of MH. MH's friend was very severe. MH and I were standing, arms around each other, saying apologies as MH's friend approached us from a distance, as if we were preparing what we should say to MH.

(12/9/07) deadly friends; las vegas descent

(Entered in paper journal at 9:25 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood on a subway platform with my old friend R and his fiancee L. The platform was very busy, but it was wide, with tall ceilings. I was waiting for a Q-train. As one train pulled up, R started talking about how he and L did something really cool that I could have been a part of if I hadn't stopped being friends with him.

The train that pulled up was an N-train. It was heading in my direction. But I needed a Q-train. Through the windows of the train I saw that my train was coming, but on the other platform. I ran off from R and L, kind of happy not to have to listen to R's talking anymore.

I didn't know if I could make my train. The stairwell up, which I would need to take to cross and get down to the other platform, was full, mostly of Hispanic people, mainly Mexican. Somehow, though I managed to jump about three-quarters of the way up the stairways side and grab the handrails.

I waited until a group of people made an opening for me. Then I flipped myself onto the stairs. The handrails were a softish-feeling aluminum.

I quickly ran to the other stairway and jumped down over its side. I got into the train (which appeared to be packed with people) right as the doors were closing.

I walked through the car. It was almost completely empty. It was filthy, and it had a weird smell, as if a homeless person were in it.

Three little Hispanic kids ran around in the train. I thought they were chasing around me, trying to taunt me in the guise of playing an innocent game with one another.

The kids' mother lay on one of the long benches (grey benches). She was covered entirely by a (pink?) blanket. Somewhere near her was a dried patch of blood. I probably stepped in the blood. It was sticky. I headed quickly into the next car, more out of a sense of indignant disgust than fear.

I was in a very dark room. My mom was somewhere, possibly even just talking to me by cell phone. I may have stood by a desk, kicking little cubes of safety glass out of the ridges of a green car-floor-mat.

My mom told me about the last time she'd seen my brother. My brother's friends had done something bad to him. My mom told my brother something like he shouldn't be surprised that these things happen if he keeps making friends with people like that. My mom said that my brother agreed and didn't seem too violently upset.

But my brother ended up found (?) in some place like an area by the side of a road or in a field. His mouth had been taped, my mom said. I could "see"/"feel" my brother's mouth and eyes taped over with silver duct tape.

My mom said it had later been determined that my brother had conspired to have himself killed by a friend. He had gone to a friend's house and had a drug mixture called a "coke XXXXX" ("coke set"?). He passed out. He then had his mouth taped by his friend so that he couldn't breathe -- as if the drug mixture impaired my brother's ability to breathe through his nose. His friend then took him and dumped him somewhere (roadside or field) to die.

Dream #2

I was in a commercial airplane. We seemed to be landing. I could see a lot, as if the windows on the plane were enormous. Suddenly we pulled up steeply. We ascended quickly, to a level where the blue sky became dark indigo. Big chunks of snow flew all around us. I laughed with glee. It was like I could feel the snow.

We now descended in Las Vegas. Somehow we landed on the road heading to the toll booth for cars. We pulled into the toll booth as far as we could.

A van in the toll booth pulled backwards and crashed into us. Its whole back end was smashed. I worried that the driver would sue us. But I realized he couldn't: he couldn't blame us for such a stupid action of his own. He must have realized that. He drove off to our side and away from us without even going into the airport.

I was at my dad's house. My stepmother was there and was somehow also my mom. I was trying to get out of the house and go somewhere. But my mom/stepmother kept threatening me, saying that if I left, she would make me very sorry. She also tried to convince me that, for now, this was where I wanted to be.

(1/5/08) sonic boom stadium; pregnant little girl

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I walked through a sports stadium the diameter of which was maybe four times greater than normal. The bleachers may even have rolled up and down like hills. The field was minuscule compared to the bleachers. I walked with a man who was somewhat unseen. He was probably taller than I, white, with tanned skin, long, brown-blonde hair, and a beard.

We had been walking toward the edge of the gigantic stadium. Now we stopped and turned back, toward its center. I looked along the edge, counterclockwise, and almost mentioned that sometimes over this area I had seen B-2 bombers. Bu then I thought not to mention it, hat that was a special occurrence I should keep to myself. Instead I mentioned that we might see jets in this area.

Suddenly two jets flew over us. They flew low before us, over us, and behind us. They each made a "sonic boom," which was a kind of mellow sound. The jets looked like F-86s with stubby, X-15-like wings. The bodies were silver. The wings were a shimmery blue and purple.

A group of jets passed over our heads again, this time from behind us. They made the sonic booms. Then it seemed like a lot of jets flew overhead. As the sonic booms continued, my vision went out. The sonic booms became like a constant, soundless, brittle spasm in my ears.

Dream #2

I was with my brother at a picnic table at the end of a gravel driveway for a big, wood house in the middle of a foresty area. My brother had possibly been coming here to see a doctor or to get some medicine. I had been waiting for him out at the table. I might have had a bunch of random stuff with me, some of it in plastic bags.

My brother had come back to tell me he couldn't find the doctor. I went to the house. There was a side entrance leading down to the basement. I walked down the cement-walled stairwell and into the threshold of the basement.

I stood staring into the room. It was filthy. I didn't even want to step inside. In the opposite corner of the room from me was a TV, which was on. I stared at it, as if hypnotized.

A young, black man walked down the stairs. I got a little out of his way and asked him how he was doing. He nodded his head, as if being polite, but he gave me a smirky kind of look, as if he wondered why I was here.

It was now like I had taken my brother here because he was looking at a place to live. It would be a shared room in this basement. I thought, There's no way he's living here. If he lives here it will just be trouble with this guy.

I had already resolved that my brother shouldn't live here. But the way the guy had looked at me, s if he already suspected me of something, made me call out, "I don't think I'll take the room here. This was just a visit. I think I'll look at other places."

I went back to the picnic table. I told my brother we were ready to go. I pulled out my phone to call my mom and let her know we were coming back. But my phone was somehow broken. The screen on its back was blue, as if some bluish liquid had made up the electric screen but was no completely de-activated. The blue liquid had sloshed down to the bottom half.

I had somehow dialed a random number from my phone book. A woman answered. I tried to explain that I had called her accidentally. I was just sending out some signal to determine whether I could reach anybody.

I was in a room like a waiting room in a doctor's office. I might have been leaving. I was speaking with a nurse.

A black man walked in. He looked familiar. I thought perhaps we had been part of some group hospital thing. But I also felt like he was here just to follow me, as part of a group of people who suspected me of something.

The nurse asked the man, "Do I know you from somewhere?" The man didn't say much. It was the man's turn to be treated now. But I couldn't let the man go without knowing for sure that he wasn't following me.

The man and the nurse were down in some nice basement with tall ceilings, talking and laughing. I asked the man, "Where are you from? You didn't start coming here until I did. Are you following me?"

The man looked at me blankly, as if he thought I was a piece of trash who had no right to ask him a question. He then stood close to me, as if to scare me with the threat of fighting. He started telling me about his line of work. He sounded something like a manager for music groups. I told him so. He was kind of surprised. He seemed less angry at me.

I was getting reading to leave this place. My mom had dropped me off here. She had gotten back a while ago to pick me back up. But my appointment had been delayed, and now I needed to take a shower to wash off something like radioactive material. I felt bad that I had made my mom wait so long. I wished I could hurry.

I was now flying all over the room wherever I was. It was like the last basement, except it faced at a different angle. It was also more like a ski lodge. It was night. My nephews sat on some ledge by the stairway, waiting for me.

I descended and picked up my youngest nephew. He said, "I saw a snowman! I saw a snowman!" I was surprised to hear my nephew speak at all, let alone speak so well: he was only six months old. I asked my nephew about the snowman. In my mind I saw a plastic snowman figure.

The scene shifted to the backseat of a vehicle like a van. My "nephew" was now a little girl like my cousin B had been. She wore a pink dress and a pink sweater. She was telling me how she wished she could have kids. She was straddling me as I lay back, my head against the back of the driver's seat.

The girl said, "The only thing I'm worried about is people finding out I'm pregnant. If I get sick, I'll give myself away." But now she was getting sick. She tried to hold it in, but she unintentionally leaned over my right shoulder and threw up.

My aunt M, who had been driving, got mad and yelled, "My ex-husband sucks! My ex-husband sucks! My husband sucks! My husband sucks!"

My aunt's three daughters were now all in the car. I understood that my aunt was angry at the little girl for having gotten pregnant. But, instead of getting mad and yelling at the girl, was yelling about how bad their dads were, to make the girls feel bad.

(1/10/08) gathering from the aisles; the donnell library closes

(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I stood in front of a church with my mom. The church must have been enormous, but it felt like a small-town, white-sided church. My mom and I were supposed to be heading somewhere. But my mom wanted to stop to do one last thing. She said she wanted to gather soda cans out of the garbage basket at church.

The door of the church was now open. There were people inside sitting at desks, like they were studying in a library. Three older women stood before the door. My mom was telling them loudly what she was going to do. Some people inside looked up from their "studies." I got ashamed and told my mom, "Control your voice!"

My mom now leaned to each woman one by one and whispered to them very exaggeratedly, either as if she were afraid of disappointing me or as if she were making fun of me. Eventually she lost control and started yelling again.

We were now in the sanctuary. There were all different configurations of aisles. The aisles were probably all filled with people. A service might have been taking place.

My mom and I and possibly my brother were going to garbage baskets near the ends of the aisles and collecting soda cans. My mom had a "map" like a board game, which was guiding us around. We had the "map" placed on a beam at the end of an aisle.

My mom also had latex "gloves" for picking up the cans. The "gloves" were just for individual fingers. The "gloves" all seemed to be in weird animal shapes. I searched through the piles and boxes of "gloves" stacked up on the beam. But I couldn't find an animal shape I liked. Eventually I found something. But they were gloves for all five fingers. I thought, If I wear these, my mom and brother will laugh at me.

We were now on a train. The light flowing in was very bright and gold. The seats were arranged along the sides and in the center of the train, so we sat perpendicular to the forward motion of the train. I sat in a seat along a wall. My mom sat in a center seat, across from me and to my right.

My mom looked very depressed. I could tell I had made her sad by being ashamed of her gathering cans from the trash baskets. My mom's hair was disheveled, like it had been in dread locks but was now not taken care of at all. My mom may have been wrapped up in blankets.

I felt awful for making my mom feel bad. She seemed to wake up a little. She looked over at me. I smiled as much and as gently as I could. My mom smiled back. I knew she now understood that I loved her.

My brother sat to my right. Beside him was a woman, maybe a Hispanic woman, with a baby. My brother took the baby by the hair and held it out at arm's length. My mom looked at me as if to say, "Stop him!" I thought, Well, if I'm going to be tough with my mom, I should be tough with my brother, too.

I think I managed to get the baby out of my brother's hands. I told my brother to stop acting this way. Somehow he continued acting violent. So I threw him off the train. The train was at a dead stop. My brother rolled down a short, dusty slope.

I watched my brother walk up a street to my left, where the path of the train would have been. He seemed to be wearing my clothes: my brown slacks and blue, grid-style dress shirt. It was like late afternoon. Now it was like night.

I was in a car outside a house (but as if my position/time had not changed). My mom had gone in. I followed after her, hoping she would take care of what she needed and not get distracted.

I walked to a half-open side-door by a covered driveway. Inside were a few fat, old women. The door opened to the kitchen.

One woman stood over a machine on the counter. She spoke like she thought an infomercial person would, about how healthy eating was hard for her. She said, "That was before I found the Brrr-ito!" The product the woman made reference to was the machine she was standing over. But I could barely see the machine through the half-opened door. From what I could see, the machine looked like a salad shooter filled entirely with fruit glop.

I was disgusted and embarrassed. I thought, How does she think this machine or that food is doing anything except clogging up her life even more?

Another woman now asked, "What do we need to make this?"

A regular-looking woman, about my age, was now before me, walking toward the door. She held a few fruit-like objects in her arms. The objects were colored like cantaloupe skin, and their shape was something like cantaloupe and starfruit mixed. The regular-looking woman said, "You need this: the aorta."

Somehow I got into the house. The goal had been to retrieve a little girl from the house and take her to live with us. I managed to do this.

I saw a black and white photo of the girl. She was maybe nine years old at the most, very thin, with  long, stringy, blonde hair. The girl's eyes were different-colored, so that in the photo one eye looked black, and the other, grey. The girl was sitting at a table and putting a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

I thought, How did I manage to get the girl past the women?

Dream #2

I was in a living room (which might also have been an office) with a bunch of people who were my co-workers. A woman who looked like Nancy Reagan asked me if I had watched the presidential presentations last night, to see how "that senile Nancy Reagan gave a whole speech about 'pops' concerts." I laughed to think of that, but I hoped nobody would think I was an idiot for not having watched the presentations on TV.

Everybody started talking about some corporation, like U.S. Gypsum, that sponsored a lot of the presentation and controlled a lot of it but was masking its presence by denoting a lot of its influence to "public groups" whose acronyms were much like their own. Everybody spoke about what a dirty trick that was. But I had always liked that company. I hoped nobody knew that about me.

Somebody then mentioned that on some email system every email was sent with a signature-footer that made it look like it came directly from the corporation that controlled the email system (like Microsoft for Hotmail). I could see an image of this in my head, at the bottom of a long email.

I was now sitting at a computer by the window. To my left was another computer. Someone, a woman, possibly my mom, sat at the left computer. We were both going onto the computer to test whether the signature-footer rumor were true.

But instead of testing the rumor, I went onto a website where some guy was talking about things you should and shouldn't do in certain social situations. The guy was dark, Asian, big, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap.

I was in a bathroom. A man and woman stood in the shower. The man was making love to the woman from behind. The "social situations" internet guy called from the other side of the shower curtain, "Stop! That's not something you do in the shower!" I had thought it was nice to see a man and woman in love. But now I was ashamed.

I stood before the sink and medicine cabinet. I was wondering what kind of toiletries it was correct to use, what kind the internet man would approve of.

I walked from outside (on a sunny day) into a library, possibly the "Donnell Library." I had stopped here for only a second, after having finished up some job like a volunteer event. The library was almost empty of books. The library was closing down permanently, and most of the books had been sold. There were small piles of books on occasional shelves. The library itself was very small, only one room, with a dark backroom. There were a few different types of bookshelves.

I knew the library workers were eager to wrap up and get out of here for the day and for good, even though it probably wasn't the end of the day quite yet. I knew exactly what I wanted, though, so I told myself I would be quick.

I was looking for a big magazine, like W magazine's size, that was a fashion, or fashionable, magazine from the 1970s. But now I couldn't find it. I knew all the copies had probably been sold already.

I was heading out the door. I thought I would try to be friendly with the librarian, to show her that I hadn't come in here for no purpose. I didn't want her to think I was just some jerk trying to waste her time. I told the woman, "Sheesh! This place really --"

"-- Cleared out pretty quick?" the librarian interrupted. "I know. Everybody's been saying that."

I walked over to the counter. In the dark backroom there was another librarian moving stuff around. I told the librarian, "It's hard to believe this place is closing. This place means a lot to me. I've come in here pretty much ever since I moved to New York. I wonder what the first book was that I checked out here."

I searched my mind for a second, trying to remember the first book I'd checked out from the Donnell Library. But the librarian stopped me. She said, "Don't go there. You might give me a heart attack." I knew she meant that if I got nostalgic she might start crying. But I thought "heart attack" was a weird expression to use in this instance.

(1/12/08) lesbian doll sex; seduced by old friends; steamhippie

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a helicopter or watching a man in a helicopter. He was talking about how he was flying a plane. The helicopter was very small, maybe the size of a VW Beetle. When the man got to a certain height he said he would now make his descent.

I now saw from the man's point of view. I had wondered how something was filming (or taping) him from the air. Now I "saw" (where?) a jet of some sort, which I assumed was the vehicle on which the camera was positioned.

I now saw as if I were piloting the helicopter. I was descending much more quickly than I thought a helicopter should descend. I descended over a green field which seemed also to have some construction activity on it. I knew I was going to crash. The helicopter crashed.

I stood before a bus bench on a gritty city sidewalk. The helicopter was crashed, lodged between the bench and a small tree. The helicopter was like an oversize toy, maybe a couple feet wide and a few feet long. Its blades were stubby. They were still spinning around, stutteringly. The helicopter, which had been white, was now charcoaled over with smoke and burns.

My family stood behind me, talking. It was my grandfather, my mother, my great grandmother, and a couple other people. I knelt before a reddish-pink, velvety armchair that stood out on the sidewalk.

There were two dolls. They were crudely made, like third-rate Barbie dolls with almost Raggedy-Ann type heads.They had no clothes on. The doll on the left had no limbs.

I wanted to imagine the dolls as lesbians. I wanted to see them having a lesbian relationship. Bu I didn't want to move them with my own hands -- it seemed like that would make them "not really lesbians."

But then I noticed that the doll with limbs was geared. It could make simple movements if switched on or wound up. I may possibly have wound the doll up by spinning a white, toothed wheel which stuck out of its back, saw-wheel-style. It now rolled its head right and forward, as well as possibly shifting its whole body onto its right side and then back onto its back.

I sat the limbed doll right next to the limbless doll and propped the limbless doll on its left side. In this way, it looked like the limbed doll was purposely kissing the limbless doll and then moving its body up against the limbless doll's body. I was turned on by this.

My family was all heading into a building just off from the sidewalk. They got my attention so I could leave, too. My nephews were there, too. I realized these toys might have belonged to one of my nephews. I felt bad for having played such an obscene game with the toys.

As my grandfather walked past me he saw the toys in their movement. He suspected I had made the toys make these movements, but he wasn't sure. He looked at me with a slight disgust. I felt even worse than I had before. I tried to think how I could cover my act.

I walked toward the doorway. It was like a doorless entry, very small, like for a bedroom doorway. It was set in a kind of rundown building. The inside was, by my view from the outside, very dark. I could hardly see my family members once they entered.

Dream #2

I was in a large, dim bedroom with my old friend R and his fiancee L. We might have finished watching a movie on TV. I lay on one bed and R and L lay on another.

We were now getting ready for bed. I felt very tired and grainy-eyed. R got out of bed to turn something (the TV?) off at the other end of the room.

L sat up, kneeling in a way so her knees faced me. She wore a red, shimmery camisole or dress that looked too dressy for being pajamas. She had it pulled up enough on her legs so I could see the crotch of her panties, which were lavender and satiny. She looked at me to let me know she had let me see her panties on purpose.

When that didn't turn me on enough to make me go for her, L lay stomach-down on the bed, facing away from me and toward R. She pulled her "dress" up so that her whole bottom was exposed to me.

I knew L was trying to seduce me, and I was turned on. But I didn't really want to be with L. I also knew that if I was with L, I'd have to be with R, too. I didn't want that.

It was now like we all lay on the same bed. This is the way it had to be when I spent the night. The lights were probably all off. I lay on the left side of the bed, my head to the head of the bed. R and L lay with their heads to the foot of the bed, to my right. R lay next to me, and L to R.

I could tell that R was trying to seduce me. R thought that if I lay in the same bed as he, he still had a chance at seducing me. But I did my best to stay laying opposite R and L and to avoid touching them as much as possible.

Now I lay with my body entirely against the headboard. Something seemed very strange about the bed. It was like R and L were coiled around each other in an elliptical hollow on the bottom half of the bed. (The image in my head now reminds me texturally of the "Thou affrightest me with dreams" drawing in Blake's Job series.)

Dream #3

I sat near a booth-like shop on a small chunk of sidewalk (like Astor Place) in a downtown-like area. It was a sunny, but possibly cold, day. I sat on a bunch of blankets. I may possibly also have been covered in blankets. I was very bleary-eyed.

The shop-booth, to my right, was hung with random (motley) fabrics, which gave it a rundown, but very warm, look. There might have been steam coming from outside the shop, which made sitting outside it very pleasant in the cold weather.

I was, or was suspected of being, either a crackhead bum or an undercover cop posing as a crackhead bum. I may alternately have been myself and a young, black man. To my left, in the sunny street, was a big van, which might have been a police van. I tried not to appear to be associated with the van. I looked back behind my head. There was a tall building of green, reflective glass.

At first there was some shady activity going on between two black people in front of the motley shop. I tried not to pay attention to it. Now a black man, kind of strange-looking, like a hippie wearing a biker jacket, was asking something to the people in the shop, who were Chinese. The man produced a camera from his pocket. I understood the man just wanted someone to take a photo of him in front of this shop.

The man turned first to hand his camera to an Asian man or woman, who sat, like me, in front of the shop, covered in blankets. The Asian person was fattish, slightly worn out, with thickly scraggly hair. He/she wore a black biker jacket. But he/she could hardly hold the camera, let alone snap a photo: his/her fingernails were long and curled so that his/her hands were pretty much useless.

The man handed the camera to someone else, maybe to me. The person took a digital photo of the man bending over some kind of product, behind strips of curtain-fabric hung with globes. Steam might have been coming up around his face. The man wore a bandanna which I thought was mystical. He posed as if he were smelling and enjoying the steam.

The picture had been taken. I saw the image on the camera-back's screen. Seeing the photos, and how the man obviously took this experience to be so mystical and important, I really liked the man. I didn't want to get too close to the man, still, because I was pretty sure if I showed too much of my personality. I maintained a servile attitude toward the man.

I now saw one of my nephews, possibly my oldest nephew, but maybe from when he was five years old. He sat on the blanket by me. I thought, I need to act stronger in front of my nephew. I need to make him feel secure. So I did my best to act as cheerful and confident as possible.