(12/13/04) fragment in a musuem

(Entered in paper journal at 5 PM at some Starbucks.)

Dream 1

FRAGMENT --

I was in a museum, taking care of a mammoth skull that had some deformities. I worked under some nice woman whom I could never see too clearly. The museum was long, dim, with nice wood floors and softly white walls that were wide apart. The mammoth skull was tall and narrow, with enormous tusks protruding. It was very elongated, almost like it was melted. Many edges seem to have been broken open -- they exposed the rough porousness beneath the smooth surface of bone.

I was doing something like removing blemishes from the skull, not patching up these exposed portions of bone. But now I did something wrong. I backed away from the skull, both embarrassed that I had messed up in front of the public, who were walking almost inattentively back and forth through the exhibit hall, and worried that my boss would spot me and criticize me for my mistake.

The skull was only a couple feet above the ground. The legs were lowered so they spread out in front of the skull like a dog's when it lays on the floor.

I felt like I should combat my feeling of embarrassment and get back to working on the mammoth skull.

I walked back up to the mammoth skull with more of a sense of being self-assured. But then something else happened that did one of two things; 1) the work on the skull had to be stopped for technical reasons; 2) I was filled with a sudden dread of the skull and was compelled to back away from it so I could see the whole thing, including the tusks.

As I backed farther and farther away I realized how large this animal must have been. Its tusks were almost as long as its legs, which, I realized, reached about thirty feet. The legs ended in tiger paws. I no longer wanted to be in between these legs or in front of this ghostly, deformed, anamorphic skull.

My dread increased. I could feel the mammoth coming back to life, struggling to stand back up. I got away from it. It did now seem to be standing. Behind it was another mammoth skeleton. I rushed now to get away. I could feel both these animals coming to life. I knew these two animals in particular could kill me.

I now saw a dinosaur just down and a ways to the right, past a few other fossil skeletons. There may have been a skeleton of this dinosaur, but also, under a spotlight and in a huge, glass case, was either a model of the fleshed out and scaled dinosaur or else the actual dinosaur, which had grown flesh and life back back onto his skeleton. It seemed at once enormous, maybe eight feet tall and fifteen feet long, round-backed as a turtle, with a long, brush-shaped spiked tail and a short, flat head; and small, maybe like a three-foot-long model posted vertically sideways on a glass wall. I knew if I could get to that dinosaur everything would be fine.

(4/16/05) this seat taken

(Entered in paper journal at 5:20 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in some lobby area or an exhibit area for some museum. The room was wide, tall, polygonal, with window ceilings. To my back and left were a group of children in seats looking up to a cashier's desk or a podium, all so incongruous (even dim, where the rest of this lobby area was lit by window light) with the lobby area that it itself seemed like a museum exhibit or a movie set.

In the rest of the lobby area were black and white photographs blown up and printed on thick pieces of display board ranging from three to ten feet tall. Each photo had a state name titled into its side. These photos were from some book remembering a certain important area from the viewpoint of all these states. The only picture I remember at all is Arizona's. It looked like a model of an atom or molecule mixed with a cell dividing or the early processes of the human life cycle.

I saw somewhere a yellowed newspaper photo of a speaker who had become extremely successful at something. He was a short man, rather plain, with a Gerardo hairstyle and mustache and in a suit and tie that looked about twenty years out of date.

Now I was in the audience of one of his lectures. The auditorium was huge and packed. The stage was some kind of white, polished material, barren except for the guy. I was in some seat a few rows from the front.

Now I was at the back of the stage, as if seats went all around the stage and the stage was circular, with steps down all the way around, all of that white, shiny material. I sat on one of the steps and folded my arms on the stage and my chin on my arms. There was some technical gear back her, as well as a makeshift aluminum stand for lights.

Some woman near me and to my right remarked jokingly how the speaker stuttered so awfully, as if that was a mark of his true character, and not all the stuff he lectured about. Some guy up on front stage and to my left and the lecturer's left said, "Don't talk about our respectable lecturer that way! Don't you know the power he has?"

But the lecturer turned back to the woman and said, "Don't worry about making jokes. I think it's kind of funny, too." I thought, Of course he'd say something like that. He's so kind and generous.

Now, for some reason, I felt ashamed to be this close to the stage, like I was hogging the stage. So I found a seat in the back area abut four or five rows from the stage and all the way on the right.

But one of the NYC Park Rangers, GR (who in the dream looked like a grizzled, pale, white mountain man with boiled blue eyeballs), and MS (who was also a little unshaven and crazy-looking) walked up to me and said that I was in their seats. They walked right up to me, almost against me, like they were planning to sit even while I was still sitting in the seat.

Trying to be polite, I said, "Oh, I didn't realize these seats were reserved for you. Here. Let me move. But I was so intimidated that I actually fell out of the chair (tipping the chair) and stood and walked away even as I said all this stuff.

I was now in the front row, which was all a bunch of high, backed wooden stools. I turned around and almost sat in one. Then I realized there was something in it. I stood, turned, and looked. It was a purplish piece of something like wax paper with a scrawled message like, "THIS SEAT TaKeN."

So I got up and looked for another stool in the front row, walking from right to left. I thought maybe I'd just sit up by the stage, stage left this time. But I thought again how rude that was.

Every chair in the front row had that same wax paper. and at the top of the wax paper was some iridescent, rainbow colored, piece of plastic, like a charm for girls, and maybe a pencil with colorful painting around its barrel.

(5/21/05) my id and fifteen dollars; racist boss and bully girl

(Entered in paper journal at 11:35 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was leaving some house or job. I had been told it was okay to leave, as I had done what I had come to do. But as I was leaving I realized I had left my ID and fifteen dollars in a car.

I went to where the car was, along a suburban street (?). The car had been moved, and a few other cars put in its place. The car was now on a lawn or driveway in a yard that sloped up to a house.

The people who were moving the cars were all Mexican. I thought they had stolen my stuff. I looked where I had put my stuff. It wasn't there.

I found the ID. A couple guys stood around the car. I didn't want to act worried, like I suspected them. Then I found the ten-dollar bill and then the five-dollar bill in different places, moved and separated, apparently for safe-keeping.

Dream 2

I was at some meeting or ceremony in an office building, a lobby up on a high floor full of windows. The atmosphere was almost like after a decorative party for children. I feel like there was a lot of pink and yellow everywhere.

Some bigwig-looking guy stood by a window, surrounded by an admiring throng of businessmen. He gave some speech which increasingly included jokes using stereotypes about different racial groups. It started with black people. Then there was some joke about how Mexican people live on food stamps. Then possibly some joke about how Asian people speak funny and look like monsters.

I looked around and saw myself surrounded by young, male minorities dressed to look hood-like. As the bigwig (bald) continued, I loudly whispered to the young men, "Didn't you hear? He just made jokes about you! And he's making a joke about you right now! Don't just go along with it! Make him stop!"

Now I was being carried out the door by two or three tall, young, strong, white businessmen, all of whom assumed I was drunk. They carried me past some couch that faced the lobby windows. I saw a board game on the couch. I assumed the board game was mine. I was pretty sure I wasn't drunk. But I clowned around more and more as the men carried me away, figuring if they wanted to assume I would drunk, I would just act drunk.

Now (I think) I was riding in an SUV with my friends R and CV. We drove on some balconies in what feels now like a tall parking garage surrounding a skyscraper full of malls. I was going somewhere specific with R.

We drove past a doorway to a mall which I recognized as having been the office space I had just been thrown out of. I told CV and R I needed to go back in there and get my Operation board game. R slowed down and stopped in front of the door. But he wouldn't get out. He said, "Go in if you need to go in. But please don't embarrass yourself. That'll embarrass me, too. They really don't want you back in there. You got too drunk last time."

I was still pretty sure I hadn't been drunk that time. I went (in?), to the couch and picked up my Operation game box, which was tattered and had a lot of the graphics layer of the paper stripped off to show only fuzzy swatches of tan cardboard.

I walked past a mafia-like group of three or four oldish, white-haired, heavy guys in polo shirts. The guys spoke quietly but toughly with each other. Then one of them turned to me and asked, "Why did you come back? Did you want to defy us? Did you want to disrespect us?"

I think I justified myself by showing him my board game. He seems to have been satisfied, though he still seems to have told me to leave and not come back.

I was (now?) walking down a hallway that looked like a mix between a back hallway in a museum and a wide hallway in a hospital. But this place was like a mall and a museum mixed together. I was now at the other end, walking "back" out "the way I had come in."

I walked past some girl who was distressed by another girl who was bullying her. The bully girl kept bouncing the distressed girl's basketball at and past the distressed girl in such a way that the distressed girl could never catch the ball. (I don't know how, but the basketball kept reappearing in the bully girl's hand, like a barrel in the video game Donkey Kong.) The distressed girl began crying.

I stepped in front of the distressed girl to catch the basketball. I walked quickly toward the bully girl. For some reason I had to catch the basketball at least once or I couldn't approach the bully girl. I managed to catch the basketball about three times. Each time I caught it it would disappear, with a satisfying feeling, almost exactly like I was racking up points in a video game.

When I realized what I was going I began failing. I would nick the ball with the tips of the fingers on my left hand and the ball would bounce off in a more and more dissatisfying way.

But now I was right in front of the bully girl, who was about nineteen or twenty years old, thin, with a pretty face, long, pale, blonde hair, a wholesome smile, and purple-blue eyes. The girl made a comment I can't remember and then said something like, "Let's get out of here."

I felt a "strong" sexual desire for the bully girl and told her her eyes were incredible. She said something like, "You can't bet me in bed by talking about my eyes. Every guy I know has tried that. If I'd wanted to go to be with you I'd already have been in bed with you."

We had walked out of the hallway and into the "office," which was now something more like a well-lit, classic, wooden bar, turned right, and headed down a hallway that looked like an airport concourse hallway that opened out into a large department store.

The bully girl was now my crew mate and friend KB. we were just hanging out and having fun. We walked to a setup like two big dressers placed across from and slightly caddy-corner to each other, i.e.

and surrounded (possibly) by sets displaying beds and bed sets. On the dressers were items for sale: jewelry or knickknack-like items, some of glass, some of crystal, some of gold, some of valueless material. Many had twisty, strange shapes, like modern-art decorative desk pieces.

KB said, "I'm looking for a good library toy." She grabbed something and walked off.

I turned around and looked at the items on the other dresser. The items on the first dresser seemed completely useless. For some reason (I don't know what now) these items looked useful, especially for a library job. I think KB came back and that I tried to tell her about these items.

(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."

(1/29/06) drug dealer in flight school; wrong way, brother; ravenous ants; i just wanted him to die; go ahead and kill the guy; seal tank; why the fuck am i here

(Entered in paper journal at 11:24 AM at Starbucks near 77th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a basement hallway or elevator bank. Maybe a few people were waiting for the elevator, and maybe some got on and let the doors close before the rest of us could get on.

Now it was me and two women. We were talking about how slow the elevator here is, especially when we have to go up fifty floors.

The elevator opened. It was really small. The two women got in first. I stepped in. I felt like it was too small. I was about to get out, but the two women told me to stay inside, that we'd all be fine together.

It was like the elevator went on the outside of the building, in some pipe, and went around all four walls. First we went past the parking lot. We got up to the eleventh floor. There was something like a lawn and buildings "up there." A bunch of kids, maybe college age, were all getting ready for some kind of orientation.

I got off the elevator. One of the women said, "Why don't I pick you up here in my car every day?"

I said, "Oh, no. That's too much trouble."

The other woman was a little annoyed. She said, "She doesn't mean it that way. It's just that she goes this way every day. So why not pick you up along the way?" I agreed.

I went toward people sitting at picnic tables. It was a grey day. I thought, Why did I let them leave me here? This is the eleventh floor, and I'm looking for the fiftieth.

I jumped in the air and flew a little bit. I landed. But I didn't really believe I could fly like that.

I walked toward the college kids. I thought, Oh, I don't want to go through this crap again with mean kids. I'm not a kid anymore! I figured I'd fly out of their field of vision. I did.

A couple guys noticed me. They looked annoyed like they were scheming to pull me down. I wanted to look more normal, but I didn't want to stop flying. I didn't know if I could start again once I'd stopped. So I flew really low, almost so my belly touched the ground.

I flew low behind a guy who was sitting at the picnic tables. The guy was talking on a cell phone. He said, "Yeah. That kid" (he meant me) "is a drug dealer. I'm sure of it. Keep an eye on him."

I got freaked out. I tried to fly upward again, but I was stuck. I lifted only high enough so I could put my feet on the ground. I walked toward a little fountain and lawn area with some marble benches and gates and a marble statue of a man in the center of the fountain.

I was upset that I had been accused of being something I would never be. I thought, Isn't this flight school? How do people like that asshole get in here? And why do people get mad at me for flying?

I wasn't quite to the fountain. I was already feeling really defensive. But then a bunch of white kids sitting by the fountain all turned and glared at me like I was a pussy. So I "showed I could fight." I jumped way high, maybe ten feet in the air, and did back flips with my arms stretched out.

I kept tight while I did them. I wondered why this would show I could fight. I even lost track of the people I was trying to prove myself to. I wondered how long I could keep up these back flips and whether they were going to get me flying again.

I jumped again. This time in the middle of the flip I felt extra energized. I felt like I was being pulled through an electric tunnel. I was still where I was though. I thought, Here comes the fight again. I can feel it. It's the power!

But now I opened my eyes and I was in bed, naked except a pair of panties. I thought, In some way I knew it was all a dream. But now that I have the power from the dream I can bring it here.

It was lightning and thundering outside. My room and my bed were very large. I only had a sheet over my body. I was rolled in a ball on my right side (?).

I closed my eyes and told myself to levitate. I thought, If you can't levitate, at least pull yourself back into a dream where you can levitate. I closed my eyes and concentrated wildly, like I was driven by the lightning. At some point I felt my body levitating, my back and bottom, just like I was rolling forward.

I thought, I must be entering into a dream again. I got too excited. All the closed-eye-focus dropped. My eyes opened. My body dropped to the mattress. I thought, I can't prove my body lifted at all. I may only have been dreaming the whole thing.

I tried to sit up. But I could only get so far. I didn't have a sheeet on me, either: just a long, silver band or string, like a thin chain of a necklace, noded with very occasional, thin, silvery beads and silvery rings, the rings certainly not more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter.

The band went the whole length of my body. In one way it felt good -- sensuous. But in another way it felt like a trap.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I stood outside an American-Victorian-style (?) building at the top of a sort of steep slope of grass (maybe a park lawn) that was littered with yellow leafs. The building was stately, short, with a nice, pale portico, and a body of red brick. This was where I worked.

I had stepped out for lunch. Now, heading back, I got a call from my brother on my cell phone. My brother said, "Why not take a car ride with me? I'll take you back to work."

Now my brother was walking beside me, on my right side. Now we were in my brother's vehicle, an SUV-type vehicle, tan, with a pale cream interior. I'm pretty sure I was on the driver's side. But my brother was driving.

My brother drove us really fast down a suburban road with a median, like Louisiana above Montgomery in Albuquerque, except a lot sunnier and happier. There was something very lovely about it: undertones everywhere of baked orange and tan, like on cliff walls in New Mexico.

As we drove toward a downward slope of road, I told my brother, "What are you doing? This isn't the way to my work! Where are we going?"

My brother said, "Oh, Don't worry. You aren't going back to work today."

I thought, He knew all along he was going to do this to me! Even if I got out of the car right now, I couldn't get to work even close to on time.

My brother said, "We're going somewhere I need to go. Why does it always need to be about work for you?"

I thought, It's not. But right now I've just started with work. I need to make a good impression.

My mom called me. She asked where I was. I said, "I'm with my brother. He picked me up in his car and now he won't take me to work."

My brother had turned the car around and was taking me back to work. I could tell he was both angry. I felt bad. I wanted him to understand, I wasn't doing this because I didn't like him or want him around. But I had to do my work for now.

Dream 3

It was night. I was on a sandy shore. The moon was enormous. The ocean or sea seemed more abundant than usual. I "remembered" I had been here before and seen seals. The "ocean" wouldn't wave: it would swell and sink. The water was a slimy, slightly glowing, dull-fluorescent green, like the brightness on a TV turned down to 1 or 2.

I walked out to something like a handicap ramp with rusty guardrails right at the edge of the water. Now it was like I was at the top of the wall overhanging the water. As the water swelled again I saw three seals' heads skimming above the slimy surface of the water.

I thought, See? You can see them without having to get into the water like you did before.

But the water swelled more. First it just lapped up onto the concrete. Now I was floating in it. The water felt great. It was as viscous as regular water, but a bit warmer.

There were a bunch of seals swimming around me now. "Remembering" again, I thought, As long as they don't get face to face with me I'm fine. I felt a couple of seals swimming up against the soles of my feet. It was so magnificent to be around all this.

But now my "memory" came back. I "remembered what had happened to me. It had driven me completely mad. I knew I had to get out of here before I went mad again.

I swam toward a stone wall, like I was in a canal. I was thrown out onto the beach. Looking out (it was now daylight), I thought the ocean looked like a "bog" (marsh?) at low tide, with muddy pools of water everywhere.

I thought, Something about the water? Was it that I don't have enough power to be in the water yet? I hoped that wasn't it.

Even though it was daylight, it was still night, and some of the things I saw were like I saw them only by the light of a flashlight.

I knelt down. The ocean was "back to normal." The beach was pebbly. I saw a fiddler crab. It climbed up on my knee and pinched me so that I bled. It ran off. A drop of blood dripped onto the sand.

It was daylight again. Ants from a nearby anthill came out, maybe fifty to one hundred of them, and devoured my blood in a fraction of a second, creating in their ravenous frenzy a little, square-like ring around a pile of sand.

I was amazed: the ants had just fizzled over the blood and erased it from existence. I thought, If I bleed more, they'll eat right from my wound. They might even consume me.

I thought of walking away. But I didn't know whether I could get away now.

Dream 4

I sat by a window on a hospital bed. I was a doctor. I was naked except for a pair of panties. I was knelt so I leaned against the window.

I was waiting for a black man my friend R had treated nicely and I had treated mean. I didn't really like the man. But I didn't want to be known for having treated him mean. People could think of me as a racist for having treated a black person mean.

As we waited -- there were a few other people in the "hospital," and this was probably the emergency room, I started quoting out facts about how much things had progressed for black people and how black people were working in good places more than ever now, but how it still wasn't enough. By this I meant that black people were still being treated unfairly and that there was still a lot of inequality.

Now the black man lay on a bed. He was thin and dark. he was unconscious. But he still looked angry and defiant. He had tubes sticking out of his mouth. I was pounding his chest like I was trying to resuscitate him, even though I couldn't care less whether he died.

I called to him, mostly to appease him by flattery if he were even only half-conscious, "Please! Please, get up! Don't give up so soon! We need you here!"

But, really, I just wanted him to die.

Dream 5

A tall, white man who looked like a skinhead had done something bad to me. Now he had come to "my house." He wasn't wearing a shirt. He may actually have been completely naked.

I enticed him into the place. I somehow lured him into the kitchen, which looked like my aunt P's kitchen. I started beating the shit out of him. Eventually I had him so subdued that I hung him back-down, into a garbage can, so from his waste to his head he hung downward into the can. I then began pouring all kinds of liquor onto the man, mostly sweet, reddish stuff like Campari. I also kept throwing liquor bottles at the man. I got angrier and tossed more stuff at the man.

The man was now totally pummeled. I stuffed him into some small space.

Now my friend R came in. we both walked out of the kitchen and into the dumpy but empty living room. I looked at some frail shelves that stood on the floor.

R's girlfriend L came in. R said, "Well, we're heading out for a date."

I, trying to be discreet, said, "Oh, um... Should I, with the guy, I was thinking of finishing up." By this I meant that I was going to dismember and kill the guy.

R said, "No. Just keep him in there a while. And when we get back, you can let him go. I figure that ought to teach him enough of a lesson."

I was disappointed. I figured that as soon as R left I'd just go ahead and kill the guy.

Dream 6

I was walking around in a nice place that reminded me of Denver in "the old days." It was all so nice, and I had never been aware that everything good about Denver had all been so closely located.

I walked up to an exhibit of seals. I wondered why I hadn't realized this was here before. I could see the seals right here!

There were two or three seals. Their pool was upside-down "T" shaped with a small island in the middle and a couple anthill-like "columns" on the sides. The concrete sloped up to brick and then to iron fence.

I was afraid at first as I came to the exhibit fence. I knew there had always been a sign on the fence of a dead seal's stomach that had been cut open to reveal that it was filled with pennies. The sign had always disgusted and saddened me (in waking life) whenever I went to the zoo as a child. It was so sad to think of an innocent seal dying because of the pennies it had naively eaten. But it was also so disgusting and unsettling to see a sliced-open stomach.

But when I got up to the fence, I didn't see the sign. Without having to look at the sign, I simply triumphed in watching the seals play around. They were coppery brown and happy. Again I thought to myself, This place is so close! I never knew!

But now I saw how small the pool was. I thought, These seals can't be happy. They must be miserable. The seals seemed to swim into hiding.I scanned the pool for them. I then noticed how shallow the pool was. And in the corners of the pool was human debris -- things like cigarette butts, etc. The more I looked at this place, the more I realized this was an awful place for seals to live.

I saw one seal dart out from a corner. I looked toward that corner. Under a ledge of sorts were maybe three other seals, maybe more. One adult lay with her back against the wall. Two smaller seals were up by her. There may have been another adult seal.

At first I thought the baby seals were suckling. I did and didn't want to see that. Then I saw they weren't suckling. They were trying to get the seal back to life. The seal's stomach was split wide open. I can't say whether the seal was alive or dead. I was afraid to look.

Dream 7

I stood outside a beautiful building Then I went inside. It was a library/museum. It was so wonderful. The exhibits were busts of famous people. At first I saw a bust of George Bernard Shaw, like the one by Rodin. I was excited to see it. I walked up to it.

In a moment I was somewhere else, like everything had started all over again. I tried to find the bust again. I couldn't find it in this room. So I walked into another room off to the right. I saw a "bust" of Shaw, which actually looked like strips of Shaw's face abstractly, or in an almost skeletal way, brushed together. I was excited, but skeptical. I couldn't believe this was the bust I had seen previously.

I looked back into the first room. There was a "bust" that was made out of some cheap-looking, plastic-like material. But once again I was excited to see it. I walked up to it. It looked like some computer-cartoon version of Shaw. I was a little disgusted, but I tried to act impressed, just to lift my own spirits.

I walked along a strange series of strips that went in a huge oval. They were like shelves with nothing on them but pictures and displays attached to their tangents. Each cluster of displays was devoted to a different celebrity. None of the celebrities was too impressive.

I stopped at the display devoted to some black female model. I wasn't interested. She looked completely average and unprofessional in her photos, which were like photo's of any girl's cheap prom. There was some typewritten stuff about the model's "big day(s)" being a model and how she was afraid it wouldn't work out, but then it did, and "how fun!" and "I always knew it!"

I looked behind the weird race-track-like or Saturn-ring-like shelves, to an oval of desk/counter space. The woman whose display I had just reviewed sat at the desk. She was now kind of overweight and average-looking. Some woman stood by her, talking to her about how "excellent" it was that the woman had been a model.

The ex-model said, "I've gotten so fat! I can't believe it! I need to pay more attention to what I eat."

The ex-model had a bunch of desserts by her. The woman (white, blonde, middle-aged, somewhat in good shape) was fingering one. The ex-model said, "Don't be shy! If you want a dessert, that means your body needs it. That's what I say! Don't be afraid to take it."

I stood there staring at this scene and wondering why the fuck I was here.

(3/27/06) my stuffed dad; brother electrocutes himself; high chair dad; my work ID

(Entered in paper journal at 6:09 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

It was night. I was outside an official-looking building with a bustling group of people. Some police were bringing "my dad" -- a tallish, grey-haired businessman -- into the building for a trial. He was being investigated for doing two bad things. One was murder. The other was something political and sinister. I didn't want to believe he could do either thing, though the murder didn't bother me as much.

I called after him, but he never turned to me. (I never saw his face through the whole dream.) I ran up to him and grabbed his beige sport jacket. I pulled him back toward me, thinking, I know the cops will be made. But they'll just have to wait. I want to hear my dad tell me the truth.

But quickly and seamlessly my dad became a stuffed figure. I was running through the halls of the official building with "my dad" in my arms like a big musical instrument. the halls were dark with lights coming from "the classrooms." I ran into one and saw a friend there. I ran out.

I was now pushing "my dad" up steps like in a fire escape stairwell. He was a little more alive now -- at least alive enough to stand up as I pushed him.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I was with my brother in an urban plaza. We worked together and were here to count something about some buildings that stood at a distance, maybe across a river, from the plaza. We walked to the barrier of the plaza. I got the feeling my brother was angry at me for not doing my fair share of the work.

I looked out at the buildings -- it was night now -- and began counting, hoping I was doing the hard work to make up for what my brother thought of as my cheating him. But as things went along I felt like I was still cheating him.

My brother now stood on the other side of the barrier. He was in something like a small rail yard or a tight grid of steel rails and power lines. He said he was going to grab one of these lines for sure, to prove something to me. I screamed at him not to. But I couldn't stop him. I plugged my ears and closed my eyes.

I was in a stand of bleachers behind the barrier. I lay down with my face on the ground as if I were expecting a bomb blast. I knew that when my brother touched a wire, I'd feel his pain, too. Even closing myself off completely wouldn't stop it.

My brother grabbed a wire. I could feel him dying.

Dream 3

I was with "my siblings" and my dad and some other man. We were in a room like a thin hall lined with chairs. The "hall" was actually part of a larger room like an airplane hangar made to look like a living room and breakfast bar. The chairs stood about four and a half feet high, with long legs. They were pale wood. The chairs faced each other and were about eight feet apart.

My dad sat in a chair to my right. The other man sat a couple of chairs off to my dad's right. There were at least fifty chairs per row. My sister and brother (?) were running around and sitting in chairs.

I asked my dad if I could sit in the chair he was sitting in. It seemed to me like he had chosen to sit in this chair just because he knew I'd wanted to sit there. I knew he'd move around anywhere to sit in any chair I'd indicated wanting to sit in. I asked my dad if he could move. He just laughed at me and said something snide to me about the other man.

I'd had enough. I wasn't going to let my dad upset me anymore, especially when his friend was around. So I left the house.

Now my brother and sister were with me. Then my mom was driving a car away from "my dad's house." But they forgot me. I ran  after them. They stopped in a driveway not too far away. I reached the driveway as my mom and my sister spoke with some boy (maybe twelve years old) about how good a job he'd do.

Now some younger kids came out of the house with red and yellow plastic jugs of water (kind of like ketchup and mustard bottles).

The kids began a water fight. I got in the way. They tossed water onto me. I laughed but was also angry.

Dream 4

I stood in the lobby before the entrance to a museum. I stood by a couple people, like I was in line behind them. A couple of them were told by the female security guard that they had to have the right ticket to get in. They had to purchase the right ticket from some booths off to my right and then get back in this line.

I decided not even to acknowledge the security guard. I knew if I asked a question or said a word she'd do her best to hold me back in her line. But I had my work ID, and I was pretty sure that alone would get me inside.

I took my ID out of my pocket and swung it back and forth as I passed the security guard. Nobody said anything. I got a few steps into the museum and then got nervous because nobody was bothering me.

(9/3/06) not allowed in; document museum; author roommate; mattress office

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I went into a large building at the edge of  a lawn like the Mall in Washington, DC. The first time I went in I wasn't allowed past the lobby, which was huge, like three or four Grand Central Station terminals, and full of people.

I went in a second time and was stopped and led to a room where my friend R was. He was teh boss of this building, or he had an important position in the building.

R told me, "Just tell them I told them to let you in." But I felt like he was making a joke of me, seeing how many times I'd come in and go out.

I was outside again. I went into the building. This time Brooklyn Borough President  Marty Markowitz walked up to me. He grabbed my hands and said, "I beg and plead of you -- please stop coming here!" I tried to keep hold of his hands as he walked away, calling after him that R told me I could come in.

Now some security guards took me up to a nice second-level marble hallway. They were holding me, ostensibly because I was acting suspiciously, but actually because they were sick of me and just wanted to taunt me.

Dream 2

I walked through a museum room. The room was wide and long, lit very warmly, with tall ceilings, and yellow and pink marble columns. There were wooden display cases everywhere, showing old documents. But in particular down the aisles were horizontal displays with rich, beautiful documents inside. There was a pattern to all of it, but I can't remember it now.

Dream 3

In a bedroom with a famous writer. His bed was on one side of the room. Mine was on the other. His headed against the wall, while mine sided against it. A chest of drawers was on the right wall between us, in the corner by the door, which was on the author's wall.

The author had apparently mentioned hating hearing a specific kind of question at author interviews and Q & A sessions. He hated the question, he'd said, because other authors he knew had been compromised by it. I asked the author how he'd react to the question.

I had stood out of my bed to get some clothes. The author now stood out of his bed, which was quite an accomplishment, because he was quite sick.

All I had in all my drawers was women's clothing. As the author stood, talking about his hypothetical response to the hated question, I tried to close my drawers quickly. The author stuck his hand in the last drawer and felt (I don't think he could see well at all) a corset in cellophane wrapping.

The author asked what he had just felt, though he really knew already. He said something like, "It feels awful soft for men's clothing."

I closed the drawer quickly and said, "Don't worry yourself about it."

The author finished his statement on his response, then half-interrupted (after-rupted) himself. He said, "You know, I don't think our living arrangement will work anymore. You seem to have a different lifestyle than mine."

At some point another person had come into the room.

Dream 4

I walked down a dry forest hillside in polarized greyish clear sky sunlight. I was with coworkers who were preparing for another day. I suddenly felt like I hadn't been here in a long time. I walked down to an old square (like a garden!) of tall, wild grass and thin pines.

A woman (like someone from from the NYC parks department I had worked with who reminds me of one of my oldest sister by my estranged biological father) was working in the "garden." She saw me and greeted me. I greeted her but didn't call her name. She smiled and said, "You've forgotten my name, haven't you?" I didn't answer. I walked toward her, possibly speaking cheerily.

As I approached the garden it turned into a pyramidal structure of mattresses in an enormous room. The woman stayed on one of the lower levels of mattresses. I climbed to the top. There was a dark, heavy, wooden railing. My boss EB walked up some stairs, maybe from a basement, to a platform on the other side of the railing.

EB wasn't quite EB. He was very skinny, with longish, reddish hair. He reminded me of one of my first friends in New York City, an Australian boy I met while working for a short time at the New Amsterdam Theater. But "EB" was shorter and more intense-looking.

EB told me, "Man, I wanted to tell you for so long now, How about XXXXX making that $100 million sale of their stock? Pretty good sign, right?"

I said, "Yeah. I've been thinking about that for a while now." (Except I could only slightly remember what EB was talking about, like I was reaching into the history of a "me" that wasn't quite "me.")

I tried to piece together the main question I had had about that issue. I just blurted out, "-- The thing I was confused about, though, was, is it an equity offering or a XXXXX ...? Because one is good and one isn't necessarily good, right?"

I could tell from EB's expression that I both knew a little "ahead" of him (which made him a little jealous) and that I was saying things in a naive, confused way that EB really couldn't answer -- i.e. I had it all wrong. We parted to take care of specific tasks. I headed up to a second level. EB headed back downstairs.

I was now at a desk under the pyramid of mattresses. My desk faced a lot of big, heavy, wooden desks in a large, somewhat dim and factory-like structure. My desk was off to the side, not among the desks or in front of or behind them.

EB (who now looked like EB), came up to me and said, "Don't worry about anything. Your job is fine. You're doing very good work."

(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.

(10/10/06) museum & backpack; dropping my dream journal

(Entered in paper journal at 12:20 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was waiting for some kind of solar planetarium show to begin. I stood in a big lobby -- glass walls, grey day -- chocolate/maroon bricks. I saw there was a lot of time before the show. I would eat at a McDonald's and then walk through the museum.

I walked into a room that somehow resembled a huge sauna. In one corner, very far left (i.e. 10 PM on the direction clock) I saw a bearded fellow who was "Stephen King." I looked again at my cell phone watch. I had less time than I had thought. I would only eat/walk through the museum and would save walking/eating for after the show.

The lobby had been crowded before. Now it was somewhat empty. I walked up the staircase and into other parts of the building, then across a bridge to the other building. I barely saw most of it. It was darker inside -- something like a space exploration section of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Before I headed in I realized I had left my backpack with security in the first building. A security woman by the door told me not to worry -- that bags were transferred to this building once visitors switched over to it.

Dream 2

I came to a wide complex of staircases before a building. It turned into something like the seating area in an auditorium.

A lot of black people milled around, looking mischievous. I waited until some of them sat down. One guy in particular sat in a couch-like structure and sucked on a 32-ounce cola. By him was a downward staircase.

I tried to stay unseen or unnoticed. I got to the staircase and fumbled my dream journal. It fell down the steps -- where I was going anyway. So I didn't do anything odd to pick it up. but on the lower floor I kicked it along, and it accidentally fell down the next staircase as a group of mean black kids was watching. (It was much darker in this level -- a lot of cold steel.) I was going down, anyway. So I didn't worry.

Down on the lowest level, which was very dark, there were interesting undulations in the floor. At the bottom of the staircase a woman was crowding the way. I gently brushed past her but felt guilty for doing so. I saw my dream journal and tried to kick it to a point where the woman would not see me lifting it up.

(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.

(11/12/07) museum flood; brother stabbed; superfriends jealousy; housecleaning lover

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

Dream #1

I was in some place like a monastery. My brother had come into the room I was in. He had come from outdoors. I walked outdoors. I wore a robe like a monk's robe. I walked out into a large, covered walkway of sandstone. The walls (especially at the corners, which were like towers or guard-stations) were thick, with wide "windows" showing a desert-like area of tan hills beyond. I was barefoot and the stone chilled my feet. The light was blue like late afternoon or early morning.

I turned left at a corner. I was afraid of a mountain lion attacking. Something strange was happening on the walls -- it was like Roman figures began to appear in relief.

At another corner I made a left turn. I walked into an inside room. It was a "museum exhibit." But the walls and floor were strangely shaped, as if we were inside a cave. The place was red-brown, like sandstone and clay. On the lumps, mounds, and columns on the floor were art works like frescoes and mosaics, all in a Roman style.

I became afraid, as if a spirit were materializing in this room. I started running. I ran through glass doors and into another "exhibit" room. This room was modern but dark. All the art pieces, which hung from ceilings, stood on weird stands coming out of the floor, or stood at weird angles to each other,were closely but elegantly lit by one light. There was a jeweled feeling to it all.

I was even more afraid of the spirit materializing, so I ran out of this room, too, through another series of doors. This area, I knew, was the front area, the visitors' center (as if this were a national park). Other workers would eventually show up, and then I wouldn't feel alone and afraid.

The room was large, with twenty-foot-high, white walls, red-tile floors, and two aisles of long document-display cases on either side of the front door. Before the front door, to my right, was a long, black mat that led to the front desk, which was to my left.

Two people walked in. The one in front was a Hispanic woman, maybe twenty-five years old, with a green shirt, black pants, and long, black hair. The other person was a tall, white man, rather nondescript. I figured the two people were together. I thought, These people must have some questions for me. Let me answer them. But when I faced the woman to ask how I could help, she turned into my grandmother P. The man vanished.

My grandma was a little rude and impatient. She asked, "Where do I have to stand from here to see the Hudson?"

I said, "This is the East Side. You can't see the Hudson from here."

I showed my grandma a map of where we were. Seeing the map, and how the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers was near here, I said, "Well, I guess technically you can see the Hudson."

My grandma said, "That's what I meant -- where the Hudson drops into the East River. Which way do I have to stand outside to see it?"

I said, "You'll see a big ship outside. Go stand by that. Turn left."

(At this point in my journal, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed writing from the Starbucks on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue at 6 AM.)

My grandma went outside. After a second I followed here. It was dark outside. The whole area outside was like a dock. It floated up and down with the waves. A large, white ship, like a cruise ship, stood in the distance.

I looked to my left. The woman (?) stood near the edge of "the dock." The full moon stood about twenty-five degrees in the horizon. I thought I should warn the woman about the waves. They sometimes submerged the dock entirely. Something bad might happen to a person who went too far underwater with "the dock."

The dock started going underwater. At first I ran toward the dock to warn the woman. But then I had to swim. I grabbed the woman. The woman was like an empty shell.

I swam back to (what was now) "the house." The house looked like a small, suburban house. I pulled myself and the woman up a staircase like a staircase out of a swimming pool.

My brother opened the door. There was a good light inside. I could only see my brother's silhouette against the light. I wondered whether the house would even survive. As the waves rose, they seemed to be pulling everything under.

Dream #2

It was late night. I was possibly coming out of a restaurant. I got a call from my brother. He told me he was finishing up at some arcade. He wanted me to pick him up. He implied that he wanted me to give him cab fare to get home.

I told my brother (assuming that he lived around Houston Street in Manhattan), "I can meet with you and give you a subway ride when we get down into the station together. But I'm not taking a cab home and I'm not giving you cab fare. So do you want me to meet you?"

There was no answer. I said, "Yes or no?" Still no answer. I thought, Oh, you jerk. Don't try to intimidate me. I hung up the phone.

I was now close to the arcade. The street was dark and close, but there were stores with bright, fluorescent light and sharp, white walls. I walked into one of the stores when I saw a troublemaker kid who might have known my brother. He stood at a shoddy, white desk, speaking with a security guard. The kid was short, fattish, possibly Mexican. He wore a pale blue (Denver Nuggets?) jersey with a white t-shirt underneath.

From the kid's rude comments to the security guard I could tell that my brother had been stabbed and was hurt pretty bad. The kid was either trying to get help form my brother or was bragging about how his (the kid's) friends had hurt my brother.

I ran to some other place, then through a long, white-walled (walls thin like scaffolding) tunnel to a bright, white-walled room like a waiting room for a cheap office. The whole place felt grimy and messy. There was another security guard's desk.

My brother lay on the ground. He held a pair of child scissors (green handles) in his left hand. He had been stabbed in his right breast with the scissors. Then he'd had the scissors put in his own hands, to look like he had stabbed himself. Two shortish, fattish, Mexican boys knelt over my brother's legs. The boys were either my brother's friends or the people who had stabbed him.

The hole in my brother's chest wasn't very bloody or very big. I thought, At least he wasn't stabbed in the heart. But, still, he lay as if he were dead. I thought, This was going to happen sooner or later. Why did he always put himself into situations where this would happen?

I knelt by my brother's head and called either the police or my mother. As soon as I had finished dialing, my brother opened his eyes. He tried to sit up. I held him back down. I said, "You'll hurt yourself even more if you try to move."

At this point I might have seen this room completely dark, except with a fire-ring built where my brother had been. An older Mexican/Indian boy sat, with his younger brother to his left, before the fire. Both boys were wrapped in robes or blankets, almost like women.

Dream #3

I stood on the roof of a tall building. The sky was dark blue, like at very early morning. Most of the buildings around me were on fire. Some buildings were falling. I flew over the city, seeing its grid of charred ruins.

Now, on the ground, I saw things as if I were in an old SuperFriends cartoon. Five characters stood at the foot of an escalator: a Superboy/Robin character, a Superman/Lex Luthor-Robot (???) character, a long-haired Superman character, and a Superdog character.

Something thoughtless the Superboy character had done had caused all the destruction. The Superboy character felt very bad. But he now said, "Well, what will our mission be next week?" (As if even the heroes understood that these episodes occurred weekly.)

I thought, Next week? How stupid do they think kids are? The whole city's destroyed. What are they going to save next week? Or is the city going to be magically rebuilt?

One of the Supermen said, "I hope you learned your lesson."

The Superboy said, "I have. If I had't let my jealousy of your relationship" (with Wonder Woman?) "get out of hand, none of this would have happened."

The whole team now did their characteristic exit, up the escalator, which moved them through the air, along the upper levels of corridors of (now intact) skyscrapers, and then through some weird "interdimensional portal." The credits were rolling during this exit scene.

Dream #4

I was in "my bedroom" with a woman. I was naked except for a pair of panties. The woman pulled out a vacuum from a closet and started cleaning my bedroom. She cleaned of a heater by the window. It had roach droppings all over it.

The woman pulled open the curtains. It was dark outside. There was a huge, wide building across the street. We must have been up on the fifteenth floor of this building. I hid behind the bed so nobody in the building across the street would see me, a boy, dressed only in panties.

I asked the woman if she would close the curtains. She said, "Not while I'm cleaning house." I was a little annoyed about that. Nevertheless, I felt thankful that the woman was cleaning the house, and that she was not afraid or ashamed to touch the parts I had let get too dirty.

(1/20/08) art-books-feces; psychology: earth, cults, flying saucers

(Entered in paper journal at 8:28 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with my grandfather and a couple other family members in a room, like a small museum. I was looking out the window. The scenery outside was moving, like I was in a car. The scenery was like a cemetery. My family members and I were talking about how the exhibit we had seen was disappointing because it didn't employ the principles of recycling. Because of this, we argued, the exhibit lacked feeling.

We "passed" a hill that looked cut-away or sectioned so we could see the roots of the grass and a nearby tree. Something like a red glob or ball rolled along the hill, then merged into the ground. This, my grandfather said, was the one work of art he liked, because it employed the principles of recycling. The ball reappeared from the sectioned area of the hill and rolled down the slope and across the road, as if it were willfully coming toward the building, and toward me in particular.

We all looked away from the window. My grandfather said we were getting ready to leave. I now sat on a tall chair like a swivel chair that was as tall as a library or ladder, with rollers or wheels at the bottom. The room was warm and warm-colored.  In the corner of the room sat an old man who looked like the old version of the Tim Roth character in Youth Without Youth. He was like the curator of the museum.

The room was small but very elegant, modern. It was understated, except that on the walls were all kinds of art works and artifacts. A lot of them had the appearance of geode slices: the glassy, ringed, vivid-colored look. There were also a couple of tall, thin bookshelves along the walls.

Everybody else had pretty much left. I was following them. But I had to linger to see some of the items on the wall. There was something about their ordering which didn't seem completely satisfactory. But the pieces themselves were quite beautiful. Nevertheless, I felt bad liking the pieces because my grandfather had just commented how the pieces had no artistic quality.

I was still moving through the room on the tall chair. I went out the door, which was apparently tall enough to allow the tall chair through! I turned back before closing the door. I told the man in the corner of the room, "Goodbye, and thank you, Dr. Neuman." The man might have been reading a book. He waved very slightly, but kindly.

The door closed as I thought, Is that man's name really Neuman? I now saw a green and brass (?) nameplate on the door that said "Dr. Ed Neuman." I rolled (on the tall chair) down a ramping hallway to catch upp with my family.

I was now in a basement with my mother. I was standing on the floor, no longer sitting in the tall chair. My mom and I were heading toward a front door, but we were waiting for one or two more members of our family to catch up with us. In the meantime we were picking up and reorganizing a bunch of books that were on the floor.

I held some one-word-titled book by Mario Puzo. The cover was black, Puzo's name was lettered white, and the title (beginning with the letter "c"?) was lettered red.

My mom and I were talking about my grandfather, who sat upstairs, as if he were now sitting in Neuman's place. My grandpa was too sick and tired to see us out of the building, but he had been very happy to see us. After seeing us, he even felt like he had more energy.

My mom said, "We should tease him and tell him that if he has so much energy he should come down here and help us rearrange these books! No, I'm just kidding. We don't want him to feel bad or obliged. If he did come down here, the physical work would really hurt him."

I sat on a couch piled with books. Before me were books. I held a book in my hand. My mom may still have been talking. I looked at the book's binding. The top gave the last name of the author: Ligasa or Lisaga.

A band below the name showed a painting of a woman like Liberty in Delacroix's painting of the French Revolution. The woman was charging forward and carrying a flag. But she was looking backward, as if calling the troops, instead of looking forward like in the painting.

I looked at the back of the book, mainly because I somehow caught the name "Freud" on the back or the binding of the book. Apparently the book was by a Latin American author, and was thus acclaimed. The description of the book went something like, "A Native American is wounded in the war" (World War I?) "and looks back on his life. The works of Sigmund Freud have put forward the idea that a person's experiences of his past are not linear but move back and forth through different time periods."

A boy who was supposed to be my second oldest nephew sat to my left. He was a black boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. My mom said something like, "He's finally having less trouble going to the bathroom."

My nephew told me, "I go to the bathroom every morning. I know the pieces of poop when they come out of me. I even know their names. But I'm not like other people. I know their names before they come out of me. I meet them at night. I see them, and I know what shape they'll be. I tell them, 'XXXXX, you aren't going to stay in me! You are going to get out!'"

I could tell my nephew was afraid about having to do this, but that he was proud that he was able to do it. He seemed to need urgently to tell me about this.

We all headed out into a hallway which (now) led to the front door. The hall was white, perhaps with marble floors and walls and a red carpet.

Somewhere there might have been a weird, futuristic-looking altar-type structure, very tall, made out of an aluminum-like substance. The legs were tin rods that supported a wide "bowl" topped with a flat disk that had a hole in its center. This "bowl" was filled with my nephew's feces, as if each piece he had gotten rid of were saved here and treated as sacred.

Dream #2

I was looking through a list of courses to take at a college like a community college. There was a specific philosophy class I wanted to take because it seemed to discuss issues I had currently been involving myself in. But I saw that there was a prerequisite course to this course. I thought, Why should I have to take a prerequisite? I'm not taking this class to get a degree. I'm just interested.

But I looked at the prerequisite course anyway. It was called "Psychology: Earth." It was a short course and was done by video. I now saw that after this course I'd have to take even another course before I could take the philosophy course I'd wanted. This other prerequisite course was called "Psychology: Cults and Flying Saucers." It was also a video course.

(10/5/09) the flying jackson 5; rock star gallery

(Entered in paper journal at 8:09 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was part of a group of people standing out in a rainy square or lot. The sky was low and grey. The people with me were probably tall and black and were possibly supposed to be the Jackson 5. We all stood under some shell-like blanket of material, like a tarp or a parachute. An old, black woman waddled up to us, walking with a cane and wearing a long, maroon overcoat.

The wind gathered underneath the shell, lifting us up from the ground. The woman made a remark, something like how it didn't make sense that the Jackson 5 were piloting something like this. I made a strange remark, twisting the words around, basically saying that if the woman didn't know the Jackson 5 could do this, then it was possibly that we weren't the Jackson 5. I said this so the woman would possibly doubt that we were the Jackson 5 and thus wouldn't make a big fuss that we had just done something like this.

I noticed that I had a few red, plastic coffee stir-stir straws sticking out of my mouth like a bunch of crooked teeth.

We were now flying around within a strange, midair circuit made of billboards and iron railings. Everything was lit with incandescent light on the circuit, while everything outside the circuit was in gentle, brownish shadow, as if this area were inside some kind of gigantic building.

I was now flying Michael Jackson around this circuit in a blimp, just so he could have a little fun, as if he were some kind of terminally ill patient stuck in the hospital. But we began flying the blimp faster and faster, so that it was harder and harder to control.

My thought was that as we went around this circuit (counter-clockwise), we would get up enough speed to escape through one of the open gate-like exits, propelling ourselves up into the sky outside (which could be seen somehow, as if through windows: a low, grey rainy sky).

But now the blimp was going so fast that it was very difficult to control, and it kept bumping against the "walls" of the circuit. I knew there was a risk that if we hit the walls too hard, the blimp would explode. But I still felt there was a decent chance that I'd be able to steer us safely out one of the exits.

But now I got some kind of radio transmission from authorities of some kind. The authorities told me I was going too quickly and moving too recklessly, especially with someone like Michael Jackson aboard. I stretched out my legs. My feet began hitting against the steel pipe partitions and plastic board displays.

The blimp was now gone. I was flying, just my body, through a labyrinthine hallway in some museum. Eventually, still making something like a circuit through the narrow passageways, I clipped my feet against the pipes and boards enough to slow me down to a stop.

Dream #2

I stood outside during the daytime in a public area that was somewhat busy with people. I saw, on some handheld device, a video talking about a politician being in some kind of trouble, possibly having to do with some rock singer.

I walked up onto a stone platform that stood maybe six inches above the ground and was maybe twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. As I stood on the platform I noticed someone, maybe my old friend R, standing before a television at the center and back of the stage. The screen may first have been showing a head shot of David Cross as he gave some monologue, possibly about the banality of modern day rock music.

Now the platform was a dark room, like the room for the Kenneth Anger exhibit (which showed at PS1 in 2009) with a couple of draped-off areas and walls lit to appear deep blue or purple. There were three television screens along the back wall.

R stood at the center screen, now watching a video by Amy Winehouse. Winehouse wore a pink, gingham, maid-style costume. She was singing a song I liked, 1950s style, bluesy, hard-edged. But as it got to the chorus, R said, "That's just what I'm talking about! What a bunch of shallow music." I walked behind one of the draped areas, trying to figure out the lyrics to the song I'd just seen and how they could possibly be construed to be so shallow.

I exited the draped area through an exit near the front of the exhibit room, where a projector was playing another music video on the top half of the wall. This song was also familiar to me and also one I liked. There were a lot of purples and blues in the video. I thought the song sounded like something by Weezer, though I referred to the band by some other name.

The video now showed a few of the band members seated and prepared to do something like present for a commercial. The band members all wore black t-shirts with white showing under the sleeves, as if they were also wearing slightly longer white t-shirts under their black t-shirts. The band members were all pale white, a little heavy, with long, unkempt hair. One band member had blonde hair with black streaks, messy and spiky. Another had frizzy, dread-like, brown hair and a stubbly beard. His face was shabby and round.

I turned back to R, who may now have been speaking with my old friend ML. I told ML, "I actually think that song was great. It was by -- it was by..." I said the band name again, but was pretty sure I hadn't gotten it right.