(10/8/05) showing my brother my work; the strange thing about elvis presley's asshole; haewan

(Entered in paper journal at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was with my little brother. It was night. we were in a clearing in a wooded area with a few trailer homes or cabins and some picnic tables. I had a thick book which I had written by hand.

My brother asked me to show him some of the stuff in the book. I didn't want to show him any of what I had written, but I thought of a drawing I could show him. I told him about it as I saw it in my head. A woman had been pursued by some creepy people. Now they had lured her to their place, where they would kill her. But the were even going to kill her in a manipulative, unsuspecting way.

I flipped through the pages but couldn't find the picture. My brother walked away to take care of some business. Finally I found the page. There were actually four panels of drawings, like it was a black and white comic book page.

I hadn't realized how fine and professional my drawing style had been for these panels. They looked like Aubrey Beardsley, even  though my own subject matter was trite and over-sexualized, pretty much falling in line with the contemporary comic book style.

The woman had been lured by other women, to whom she was attracted, to an orgy in the dining hall of a mansion. She was aroused when she watched the orgy's participants killing each other.

I myself felt hands pressing into my spine. I though, Oh -- that's how they killed me! They actually bit my spine out!

The last panel, the one I wanted to show my brother, was of the orgiasts pulling the girl down into the orgy. Now she didn't want to go.

I got all of this in an instant -- almost as soon as I found the page I had unintentionally -- automatically -- flipped past it, to the end of the book.

The last pages were all beautifully designed crosses, mostly ornamented, with pagan symbols, and all drawn in pen, much finer than how I usually draw. One cross was grey with black stripes going up it. Another was white, with wrappings around its lower extension like the snakes around the medical symbol. They were all set against beautifully cross-hatched black backgrounds.

I was so excited by all the drawings I saw that I ran after my brother to show him. I met him coming out of a cabin. He said, "If you don't want to show me the stuff you make, just say so. I'd like to see it, but itn's not a big deal."

I said, "No, no. I do want to show you."

We walked past a cabin with the lights on. It looked like a workshop inside. There were two black girls inside, flirting with each other. They looked over at us, somehow implying in their expression that we were perverts for looking at them while they were flirting.

My brother said, "Why is their hair all huge like that? That's a stupid style."

We were now back at the table. I tried to show my brother the drawings I liked, but, flipping backwards from the very end of the book, I couldn't find them: not the crosses, not the comic book page. I was trying to remember where I had seen the drawings. But I couldn't.

Dream 2

I was watching some special about Elvis Presley. Elvis wore a black leather jacket and tight, black jeans. He turned around and pulled down his pants to show people the strange thing about his asshole. The jeans stuffed against his buttocks as he pulled his pants down. Finally he got to his asshole, which was some strange, fleshy trunk, like a piece of intestine had been pulled out his ass. It was milky, filmy, slimy, and translucent.

Elvis now changed somehow, like he was some average guy in prison as well as Elvis. He said, "I always tell people, don't take the grate off the toilet, because my asshole is so weird that if the grate is off the toilet I can't get the correct angle."

I saw the "grate," a patch of chain link fence. I knew that Elvis had to shit so that his shit could come out parallel to the ground and then go into the toilet. I didn't know how the fence would make the angle of a toilet perpendicular to its usual angle.

Elvis now stood with his back to a fence and began shitting through the fence.

Dream 3

I was on an Ancient Egyptian temple with a group of soldiers. This was Ancient Egypt, but it was all indoors. Sunlight came in through clerestory windows.

We were combating an enemy that far outnumbered us. But this temple held a secret that would give us invincibility. The temple had three levels, each constructed at different periods in Ancient Egypt's history.

One level's door had to be entered in order to start an avalanche on another level, blocking that level's door and releasing the key to the secret on the remaining level. The first choice, if incorrect, would lead to death.

We had to find the secret before the enemy approached. They could come straight to us and kill us. But they could approach as we opened the secret and hurry into the door and take the invincibility for themselves.

I had a paper (it looked like from Renaissance Italy) that was written in a symbolic riddle-language. Its writing corresponded with "writing" on a fan-shaped store over the second door. The door was actually drawn on the paper.

Comparing the "writing" patterns and the riddle-language, I figured out the correct door to enter. I called the men to enter the top level door first. It was right above us, somehow easily accessible, but for some reason we were running.

Now we were running toward the temple, as if we hadn't just been there. We ran over huge, randomly stacked, limestone cubes. As we ran, the indoor "Ancient Egypt" landscape became ore and more what I called a museum, though it was actually more like a department store's clothing section full of almost barren racks and clothing display tables and spaced with cubic limestone structures and ancient relics.

As I ran I called to the men, "Go! Go! We're almost there!" But soon I was passed up by the men, and a huge man, wearing Egyptian costume but looking more like a Viking, took my place and role of shouting to the men.

I was quickly losing my breath. I wore modern clothes. I had a shoulder-strap briefcase-bag which bounced against my stomach and was full of small, limestone cubes. The men kept passing me. We, but especially they, went at a furious pace.

I broke down. My lungs were burning. Yet I kept calling, in a progressively meeker tone, "Go! Go!" as if I were still the leader.

They were now all so far ahead of me that I wondered why they'd let me come with them and why they'd tolerated my pretending like I was the boss. I could barely even climb the limestone blocks.

The soldiers had vanished now. I got to the "temple," which was just a mock-up of the temple we'd been at before. It stood on an island of green carpet and faced a stand of almost barren clothes racks and tables. There was a tile walkway and then another island of deep jade carpet.

A group of thirty or so high school kids walked past. A boy stopped with his girl at a little square formed by the back end of the "temple" and a few other tall walls or divides. The place was still a "museum."

The boy, black, with a light complexion, showed his black girlfriend the only thing in this square: a board on the back wall. It was maybe ten feet up and was maybe ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide. it was black plastic and faced with a shiny sheet of clear plastic. it was like a sign filled with light-up numbers to let you know when your turn has come up, like at the DMV. But the board had a statement on it. The statement was obscured. almost none of the words were lit, and the shiny, wavy plastic front obscured the letters.

The boy said, "Everything else in this place is bullshit. This is the only thing that matters."

I was so weak by the time I had arrived here that I was heaving, barely breathing. I knelt down beside the kids. I remembered the boy now. He had once punched me in the face. It hadn't been while I was drunk. It had been while I was sober. I couldn't remember the exact event. But I knew now that it had happened. Throughout the rest of the dream I struggled to remember this event.

Now my main focus was on reading the sign. But I couldn't get it.

The boy was annoyed by my presence. He was being a loud asshole to get me to leave.

All I could decipher from the sign was toward the end of the long statement. It went: "The country of XXXXX is the only place where a black man can say the word 'Haewan,' his own word for God..."

Now the boy was so furious about my presence that he swung his arms violently around my head. Finally, unintentionally, he hit me just forward of my left temple, just about the bony corner above my left eye.

I had been trying to place the statement with Malcolm X when the boy hit me. I was more annoyed than angry, but I wanted the kids to leave. I stood and pushed the kid away and snapped, "Leave me alone!"

The kid was a lot smaller than I'd thought he'd be. I couldn't remember him and he couldn't remember me. But something about me startled him. He took his girl and ran off.

I knelt again to read the sign. I may have been copying it in a notepad. The place was by now almost entirely an almost barren clothing section in a department store.

I thought the sign would say that only in XXXXX was a black man allowed to worship the god of his own personal heritage, and that black men should be free to worship in their own way all over the world, especially in America, where the black heritage was so hideously erased from the slaves' lives.

But instead the sign said something like, "Black men have no god. They never had one. They never had a god or a conception of Heaven. They were always about themselves, about getting theirs, and having more than anybody else had. God and Heaven were the conceptions of the white man. But each black man naturally grows up selfish and spiteful, as he should.

"The country of XXXXX is the only country where a black man can say the word 'Haewan,' his own word for God and Heaven, and where the men there will tell him he is a fool for believing in such things."

I went from thinking this was a beautiful statement by Malcolm X to wondering who on earth would write this strange statement and why on earth a black man would think it was a good statement, the only statement worth appreciating in (what used to be) a great museum.

My mom was now to my right. I was telling her all this.

I looked below the sign. There were three plaques, grey, coppery metal, each with the name of a person who had created this statement. The top plaque had a name like Alexander. The man's profession, drug-dealer, was written below the name. The plaque below that had a name and a profession like drug-dealer/pimp. I didn't read the lowest plaque.

I told my mom, "These people only want money. They want to destroy everything, even themselves. It's a sickness they infect humanity with. They want people to become stupid savages. To forget God. And something in the universe is letting them win."

(9/29/07) prisoner of the lake

(Entered in paper journal at 9:50 AM at Starbucks at Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I killed a man. I threw the gun I'd used into a lake. I may also have thrown the man's body into the lake. Now the police were searching the lake for evidence. I was hoping I wouldn't get caught.

The lake was brown and dirty. I saw, as if I floated over the water, a black suit-jacket sinking into the water. I seemed to be drifting out on the water but not getting any farther from the shore.

To my right I saw a white egret (or crane) sinking into the water. Now to my right, on the shore, an owl-like bird landed on a barren, black tree. The bird faced away from me. Its closed wings were like a shell or a shield on its back. The shell was glittery, silver, red, and blue, in a design like that of the Cuban flag.

I saw a man walking in a prison. The prison had stone walls and glowed a warm, purplish color. The man was looking for a prisoner whom he would let out to perform a certain task. I thought the prisoner was me. I was afraid to see what I would look like, after having been dead in the lake (?) for so long.

The man opened one of the big, old, wooden prison-doors. The cell was crammed full of men. But none of the men looked really unhealthy.

(1/3/09) murder exam; asset classes; room 256; finally in trouble

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car in a parking lot at night. The car may have had a dirty windshield. I was also taking a test, which may have "produced" the imagery I was experiencing, or which I may have been going over in my head while driving in the parking lot.

I may have done very well on the previous questions. The current question may have been the last question. I was worried whether I would do well. The question was something about a man who had killed a woman, possibly by poisoning her. The man was known as dangerous.

As the situation was being explained I drove up before the left side of a parked car. The car was black, styled like an old hearse (?) or Rolls Royce.

The question was now asked: "What would you do" (implying "in a professional position") "if you knew this information?" A list of choices may have been stated.

As the choices were being stated, I saw the speedometer of the black car, as if I were looking at it from a hunched or low position just to the right of the driver's seat -- which may have been the middle seat. I saw the "70" very clearly.

I chose the option of letting things be as they are and not telling anybody anything. In this way I would avoid all possible violence. The test answered that I had made the right choice.

I was now trying to drive out of the parking lot. I either couldn't find a way out of the parking lot or I was afraid to use all the exits I saw because I was afraid there were cops waiting for me at all the exits, ready to arrest me on any possible excuse they could give.

Dream #2

I was in a room like a classroom laboratory. A few wide, rectangular tables filled the room. A partition of tall bookshelves stood just a few feet before the doorway to the hallway. There might also have been a doorway to another classroom to my left as I sat facing the hallway doorway. The atmosphere was very nice and relaxed. The only light in the room was gentle, goldish-yellowish light coming from the windows, which may have been behind me. The whole feeling was very warm.

I sat with a few people from the institutional sales department and my boss BS. It was like a meeting we had just had was slowly breaking up. A salesperson (who actually looked like an assistant, AP) knelt down to talk to BS about a strategy idea BS had hinted at.

The salesperson discussed (in a voice so vivid I could feel it in my ears) how certain asset classes were becoming less attractive while others were becoming more attractive. In particular the man mentioned municipal bonds. He was giving numbers like three hundred or four hundred, which I can no longer remember.

Dream #3

I was walking through a high school hallway. I was there as part of a New York Cares project. The hallway was very busy. I didn't want to be mistaken for a student.

I knew what room number (256?) I needed to get to, but I couldn't find it. I may have walked through a number of hallways or classrooms as classes were getting settled in. I walked through a large area like a cafeteria that was full of kids and activity. There seemed to be bookshelves standing up at random intervals.

I looked at my watch. I seemed to be ten minutes early to my event. I thought I would have plenty of time, although I also felt like I was already late.

A female teacher, tall, young, and beautiful, asked me where I was trying to go. I may have showed her my New York Cares directions. The teacher pointed me to a doorway to another hallway.

I walked into the hallway. I was all alone. The setup was more like for an elementary school, with small bookshelves everywhere.

I came to an area of the hallway with a few doorways. The doorways were almost all cluttered together. The doorways seemed to open directly to classrooms. But I could tell just by looking into them that at least some of them only led into even more confusing hallways. Nevertheless, I thought room 256 was definitely reached through one of those doorways.

Dream #4

I was at work. The office was bright white and full of people and activity. All of the cubicles may have been scattered over with piles and piles of paper. People were all rushing, as if they were quickly getting all their things prepared for a move from one building to another.

I sat in my cubicle, listening over the phone to my co-worker and teammate DE talking to one of our clients about a stock. At some point, the client started criticizing DE's argument, showing that DE's outlook was too positive. The client started asking DE very specific questions, which DE couldn't answer.

Finally the client asked a very difficult question. But DE didn't answer at all. It was like he wasn't there. Suddenly even the client seemed to fade out.

I stood up to see what was going on. I looked to my left. DE's cubicle was a few down from mine, maybe thirty feet away. Through all the rushing of people I saw a group of three shortish, oldish men who looked like movers escorting DE out of his cubicle.

I may have hard someone explain that DE had been talking about things he shouldn't have been talking about in a period of time when we were expressly prohibited from contacting clients at all. I hoped the people would also be taking my boss BS away.

I was walking toward DE's cubicle. I saw BS' office. There were also a large group of people like movers in BS' office. I thought, Finally he's gotten in trouble for doing things he wasn't supposed to do.

I walked back to my desk. I thought, But I was listening in on the whole thing. Doesn't that mean I'll get in trouble, too? I tried to convince myself I wouldn't get in trouble. But I couldn't.

(2/18/09) airplane flight and murder; walking on hands

(Entered in paper journal at 8:58 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I needed to get somewhere. I was pretty sure I'd be late. I would have to take an airplane. But I'd heard the airplanes weren't flying, for some reason. But now I was on a private jet. It lifted off very quickly. It was as if it lifted off by tilting its left side upward. We were high in the air. I found this hard to believe -- I really thought that all airplanes weren't allowed to take off.

I sat on the left side of the jet. I sat near the back. There were just a few other passengers on the plane. The interior of the passenger area was grey and dim.

I looked out the window. A gigantic passenger jet was right beside us. We steered under the jet as if it were just a normal part of flight. Another huge passenger jet flew past us, either going straight up or straight down. It was an American Airlines jet. Its underside was gleaming, polished, mirror-like steel. I knew this plane was going to crash.

We were over an ocean. It was now like we were flying low. I could see down to the water. A plane like a gigantic military prop plane floated with its top part out of the water. The only thing I could see were the wings each of which had three propellers. It looked like a blue whale being pulled out of the water.

We had now landed. I owned this jet, apparently. I walked to the front and down a couple of steps. I turned to face some man, with whom I was here to do business. To my left, at the top of the steps, was the pilot, who looked a little rough, grizzled, overweight. I discussed the details of the day with the man and then asked the pilot if he could find a suitable time for us to leave.

I now stood in front of a shack. It was a sunny and hot day. The shack looked yellowish and in decent shape, though the porch may have been greyish and dumpy. The front yard was all barren. I stood in a muddy circle with a shallow layer of something like water or sugar-crystal-like slush.

My brother stood in front of me. A couple messy-looking white men stood off behind my brother and to my left, probably by a pickup truck. My brother was crying to me. He had a very sad face, like he was apologizing, as if he thought he'd disappointed me all his life.

My brother said (holding up his right hand, back-side to me, sideways, in front of his forehead, with his last three fingers extended and his forefinger and thumb bending and touching to form a circle), "There were two of them. But I only killed one. One, two three."

I knew I'd have to turn my brother in for murder. But I also wanted to show him that I loved him despite what I had to do.

Dream #2

I was in a dim kitchen, facing a refrigerator. There were a couple small children aimlessly, quietly walking around. A woman stood to my right. She may have been "my mom." She opened the refrigerator door. The fridge was full of garbagey stuff wrapped in brown, plastic shopping bags.

The woman apologized to me for something. I looked at her. She was tall, tan, blonde, with long hair and pale blue eyes. She looked like a girl who used to be skinny but was now quickly getting fat. Her arms looked skinny, but from her rib cage to her hips she looked distorted -- not fat, but widened, as if her body were widening out before it rounded out. She wore a top that wrapped around her breasts and then behind her neck. It might have been attractive when she was skinny, but not now.

I sat out on a field on a hillside. Behind me, upslope, was a large vegetable garden. All around the garden the hillside had pale green grass, golden with light dew and pale morning sunlight. Beside me sat a couple of women. One of them may have been my mom as a younger woman -- less overweight, with short, dark hair. She reminded me of my somehow of my mother's mother. The other woman was very beautiful. One of the women was talking about how she was becoming a lesbian and how she was becoming attracted to the other woman.

I was now "walking" around by propping myself up with my hands while I was in a asitting position with my legs straight out.

I was acting like I was "walking normally," which was supposed to show I was unaffected by what the woman had told me. But I really couldn't walk normally. I "walked" along the bottom of the vegetable path to the right side, then up to the top and over to the top left corner.

There was a chain-link fence around the area with the vegetable patch. The fence was maybe ten feet high. My mother (more like at present) stood there. A few of "my nephews" were playing around her. Some were outside the fence. My mom was letting them in. One of them, maybe my second oldest nephew, showed me or gave me a toy like an action figure.

Something about the situation was very upsetting to me -- perhaps everything seemed dirty and sticky, and I didn't like it. I started climbing the fence (which my have had barbed wire at the top), oping I could jump over and escape for good.

(1/27/10) guggenheim wilderness; aunt's dead head; friends on a ledge

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a tall building like a museum. I floated (or walked?) upward alongside a ramp-like walkway (like the spiral walkway at the Guggenheim). The building was dim, with the only light coming from windows somewhere. The place felt unfinished somehow, as if there were a lot of bare concrete all over the place. The handrail-barriers of the ramps were painted traffic-sign yellow.

As I floated upward, floor by floor, with the ramp to my left, I may have noticed doorways into the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I was looking all the way up the flights of ramp.

At the top, my old friend R stood behind the handrail, looking down. He was talking to me (I could hear him like I was right beside him) about things he'd eaten. He was making it sound like he was leading up to saying he'd eaten human flesh, but like he was afraid to admit it.

I tried to listen passively, without any reaction, so he'd say whatever he felt like saying, so I'd know for sure what he was talking about. But he paused and instead something like, "I'm a lesbian vampire, and I've drunk blood."

I was now standing before one of the doorways to the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I walked in. I walked along a waist-high shelf of books (to my right) the top of which was possibly cluttered with papers. The light was brightish white fluorescent.

I thought of myself (saying to R?) that I didn't think vampirism was so bad. I was now trying to get "back" to somewhere from this place. The place was now something like an empty warehouse or workshop. It was very dim inside, almost black, with the only light coming from a large doorway (for tractors, etc.?) at the front.

I walked through that doorway and into a field. The sky was grey, and the wind was breezy and warm, as before a big storm. I had to cross the field to get "back" to wherever I was going. But the field (somehow) seemed harder and harder to cross.

Finally I was plowing through waist-high, dense vegetation like dormant, tan grass, which smelled like sage. Something had made me decide I needed to get down low and plow though it, like I was swimming through it. I was afraid of getting messy from it -- it was so dense and fragrant.

My left side brushed along the underside of a thick evergreen's broad, minutely-branched canopy. I thought it might be a good idea to hide under the tree. But I decided against it, thinking the tree would get me as dirty as the "grass" was getting me, and that, under the tree, I'd probably also get bugs on me.

It was now dark and raining outside. I was in the middle of a camp. Large, multi-person tents stood around me. But now the area was being flooded. The water rose to about six feet. Some of the tents were swept away. Some of the tents had had their doors open, and were collecting water all the way to their tops.

I heard R talk about how he had come here to work on his (Masters degree?) research project on water, but how things had gotten out of hand and turned out this way.

(Stopped writing here and headed into work. Back on B-train, heading home, at 8:20 PM, I started writing again.)

I thought that possibly things would still be alright. I wondered if people could perhaps get into the tents and zip them up, to keep the water out. But it occurred to me that the water would just lift the tents up and carry them away. I thought of all of this (and saw it in my mind's eye?) as I saw water rise around me, as if I were standing in the water, though I actually wasn't quite there. I saw everything as if stage lights were being shone on it all.

Dream #2

I walked along a balcony-like area on a high-up floor in a building that may have been something like a museum. I ended up in a small room that may have resembled a bedroom or living room in a cheapish apartment. I looked through the doorway, out to the balcony (hallway?). I may have seen my aunt, possibly in a wedding dress.

I was now fully in the room, the door closed, with a few relatives, possibly including my cousin P. We all lounged around in the space, on a few couches, etc. At some point my aunt came into the room. She was being a real bully. She may have been wearing a wedding dress.

Later, I held my aunt's face in my hands. It may just have been the skin of her face. The eyes were closed, and trails of blood came from the eyes and other orifices. The head/face had been wrapped in something like a wedding veil, which I had unwrapped around the face. I thought I had killed my aunt. I may have thought that I needed to do a more complete job -- possibly by smashing the face, even crushing it somehow.

Dream #3

I stood out with a group of friends on the ledge of the roof of a building. I looked down to the street far below. The day was grey and rainy. The ledge was a grey stone, veined like marble. I was a little afraid of the height and of the possible slickness of the wet stone. My friends and I spoke about a number of things. We were all relaxed and having a good time. Our conversation was calm and serious.

At some point I got overwhelmed with being at the ledge. I had to step back. I did so calmly, as if I were simply through with seeing things from the ledge. I stood against a white-painted concrete (?) barrier. It went up to just above my waist. I went around some kind of glass-walled part of the building.

Looking down into the space between the barrier and the glass wall, I could see metal, slotted sheets, like sheets for fans. I knew that these sheets went down into the building, which was something like a museum, so that if I fell, I'd fall a long way through the museum and probably die when I landed.

The ledge was now something like a two-foot-tall, concrete step. I knelt against it. I back away from it and looked to my left. My friends were sitting by the step, all talking with each other. The grey of the day was now a little brighter and paler.

I joined my friends. We were all talking about a dinner we'd had just downstairs, maybe two floors below. It was good, very classy. But it was a little less than perfect. I said, "Yeah. If only they hadn't started out with that beef custard." (In my mind's eye I saw a small ice cream dish with yellow custard topped with a brown powder, which was probably something like powdered beef.) My remark had somehow shocked everybody. They stopped talking and had a slow, unsure attitude.

I looked off to my right. It was now a clear, blue, warm day. My friends and I sat in a concrete and pebble path in a small garden, still on the roof of the building. There were a moderate amount of people all around. In the distance to my right was a shallow pool of crystal blue water. The pool was a long rectangle with a white stone lip around it that stepped maybe six inches above the ground.

A beautiful woman stood in the pool, wearing only a loose, pure white overshirt which sagged off her right (?) shoulder and, possibly, a white swimsuit. She was tanned and blonde. Her hair was dark, pulled back in a ponytail. The water came up to just above her ankles.

The woman had her legs held together and she bend down at the waist by about twenty degrees to look down at something in the pool. When she did so, the shirt-bottom came up just enough for the curve of the woman's bottom to be seen. I and a couple of my friends looked on in solemn amazement.

But now an old, Japanese man, thin, but broad-faced, with scraggly, white hair pulled back in a fraying ponytail, with black glasses and a big, loose tank-top, came up to the group of friends, towered over us, and yelled that looking at little children was wrong, that it was pedophilia, and that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I looked around and saw a shopping center to my right. It was kind of set up like Lincoln Center, with porous, which stone and a lot of diagonal ramps and walkways, low ceilinged tiers, etc. I told my friends that I thought I would go shopping here before we had to leave. My friends may have said they thought they'd come with me.