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

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

Dream 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream 2

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

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

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

(11/3/07) bedroom; domino bugs; lewd armstrong; funeral truck; the heron pond

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I lay on "my bed" in "my bedroom," which was in a basement. Light came in from some window above me. The walls were grey concrete, with patches of sea-green paint clinging to it. The room was cluttered with boxes and clothes, but it felt pretty big. The ceilings were high. There might have been a wide, cylindrical column.

Dream #2

I lay stomach-down on the floor, facing my oldest nephew. We had some game like dominoes going between us. The light was on in the room.

A little roach crawled across my nephew's left arm. He didn't know "what kind of bug" it was. He didn't seem too worried about it. I told him not to worry, that you don't usually see things like that.

(I got off the train at this point. I resumed writing at 9:30 AM at the Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #3

An astronaut floated before a camera. Behind him was the blue earth. I couldn't tell who the astronaut was. His face-plate was white like gauze. I hoped the astronaut was Neil Armstrong, and that he would say something inspiring.

The astronaut said something I couldn't understand. Then he laughed and flipped off the camera. I thought, Well, then, it couldn't be Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong would never make a lewd gesture like that. But, actually, I was now even more sure that it was Neil Armstrong.

Dream #4

I stood out at a chain-link fence surrounding the edge of a supermarket parking lot, like the fence around the parking lot in front of the Western Beef grocery store on Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn. The sun was like in the afternoon or morning, low and golden.

A semi-truck pulled around from the road and into the parking lot. Instead of a regular trailer there was something like a "coal carrying" trailer with one side (the right side, facing me) lower.

In the bed of the trailer was a pile of brown-tan soil concealing long stretches of "brick" that were more like walls of Anasazi ruins. Half hanging out of some of the soil was a young Hispanic person. The person looked like a woman but might have been a man. Her hair was blondish. She was definitely dead. This was her funeral procession.

Another vehicle drove behind the semi. It was a big, black pickup truck. It was shiny. The back may have been covered somehow, as if by a tarp "roof." The cab and the bed were full of Mexican people, all smallish, rough looking, definitely workers. The all looked very sad, but quiet and solemn. I turned to watch the pickup truck pull into the parking lot. The parking lot was very full.

Dream #5

I stood out on a lawn. The sky was blue and the sunlight was low and golden. I walked down the lawn and toward a big (?) pond. Along the banks of the pond were birds that were either dead or sleeping. I might have called them herons, though they were as big as golden eagles and somehow had the roughness of vultures. The birds ranged in color from off-white to a whitish tan-gold. They all lay face-down.

There were living herons in the pond. They looked more like black-crowned herons (?).

I stepped into the pond. There were now beds of marsh-grass, which gave the soil some consistency. I thought to myself something like, These are all herons. But no cranes?

I looked to my right. I now saw a slender, white "crane" (egret?). It walked over toward me. I thought, Can it know it's coming my way? Wouldn't it be afraid of me or angry at me for being here?

I walked farther, stepping off the bed of grass and into lower, softer soil. My legs sunk in a little. I looked down and realized the bird was coming in my direction because I was stirring up food (fish, I believed) with my steps.

The pond was now different, and I was in a different part. It was like the pond edged into concrete walls on the back and left sides. I stood in this corner, under the shade of trees and perhaps chest-deep in water.

There were beds of grass to my right, but the water didn't seem to lose any of its depth. The crane was still to my right. It was approaching me, as if it hadn't gotten any closer.

I looked down again and saw that my footsteps were stirring up little bugs, not little fish. I was a little disappointed that the crane would eat these bugs. I thought I could imagine eating little fish, but not bugs. I thought, Well, maybe the crane will have to eat bugs until I stir up some good fish.

I was talking with a woman on my cell phone. She was some famous ecologist or naturalist. I was trying to get an interview with her. I was also excited to tell her I was in this pond (I might have called it a "heron pond" or "crane pond"), that I was finally working in a pond again. I thought, after telling the woman, Well! -- maybe she'll be impressed enough to give me an interview!

The crane now swam close to me. It was swirling under the water with the agility of a snake. It might have curled to my breast for a moment.

The woman said she couldn't do the interview XXXXX (soon), but asked if we could do it XXXXX (later). I thought and said that that would actually be really convenient.

I hung up. I swam (the water all over was now so deep that I had to swim) back to the back concrete edge, which now was like steps instead of a concrete wall. I lay my cell phone on the steps. One or a few woman stood at the edge. They were like partners in whatever task I was currently completing. It was also like they were calling for me but I couldn't hear them or understand them.

I swam back out into the water. The yellow and green leafs glittered on the surface of the water.

I heard myself having a conversation with my co-worker MD. There was some management meeting I wanted to go to. But MD told me I couldn't go because I wouldn't understand it anyway.

I saw a black and white comic strip, drawn in the style of Beetle Bailey. It had five frames. In the first frame a young "soldier" was being nagged by his wife (who looked like an old, grey-haired woman, a "mother"). The soldier imagined his boss (Sergeant?) nagging him. In the second frame the soldier was in his boss' office and his boss was nagging him. He imagined his wife nagging him. In the third frame the solder was at the dinner table with his wife, who was nagging him as he imagined his boss nagging him again.

In the fourth frame the wife and soldier were in bed. The soldier was almost out of the frame. The two may have shared the same imagination, of the Sergeant standing calmly. In the fifth frame the soldier lay sleeping, the covers pulled up halfway over his face. He imagined himself as a boy, sleeping the same way.

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

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

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1/20/08) 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.

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

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

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5/26/08) washing a painting; no idea who i am

(Entered in paper journal at 9:06 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was possibly on a dark shore with my mom, my aunt M, and another woman, possibly my cousin AH. The sky was dark, almost brownish. The ground was like mud, or like muddy pools.

My mom and the other woman stood in two different puddles full of muddy water. They were wading their arms into the water as if cleaning something off. They were also searching for something, possibly a painting.

I ended up standing in the water in my mother's place. I may have held the painting. I may have been washing it off with the muddy water. As I was doing so, my aunt was talking about how incompetent my mom was, how she hadn't been able to find the painting.

Dream #2

I stood in a very cramped room with a few people, among whom were my mother, my oldest nephew, and a few other family members. The room was probably a kitchen and was bright with light from a window. My nephew sat by a stainless steel refrigerator. His dull reflection showed on one of the sides of the fridge -- possibly not the side he sat next to, which may, however, have been bright with window-light reflection.

I said to my nephew, "You know that this you" (I pointed to my nephew's reflection) "isn't real, right?" My nephew said yes. I then asked him, "But, now, are you quite sure that this you" (I pointed to him, but toward his lap) "is real?" I could tell that other people in the room were listening to me and thinking that I was trying to teach my nephew a good lesson.

There was now a scene before me -- a McDonald's menu all in red, as if written in some kind of fancy menu card and hung up on a wall. I was working to figure out how McDonald's sales would perform given their new menu.

I now sat in an audience, looking out at a very dim stage, which may have been lit with red-orange light, and which was pretty much level with the front row of seats. There were two men, possibly Asian, who were making some deep statements about something like business or finance.

As the men started speaking, some recording started, music or voice, which was supposed to appear like it came from a device, like a phone or a HAM radio, or a person at a table on the right side of the stage. I thought the double-sound was making a statement on the reality and unreality of everything we say -- as if everything we say is and is not based in reality. The speech of the Asian man became more philosophical than businesslike.

Suddenly one of my senior co-workers, KU, who was sitting behind me and just to my right, got angry at the person sitting behind him. He said, "You'd better apologize and clean that up right now!" I could tell that the person sitting behind KU had spilled something like a chocolate shake on the floor and that it had spilled into KU's row. The person behind KU, I felt, was a young man, pale white, with shaggyish, blonde hair and possibly some scraggly facial hair and wearing jeans and a t-shirt for some heavy metal band.

KU said, "You have no idea who I am, and how much I can mess with your life if you don't apologize!"

The man behind KU now said something like, "I have just as many connections as you have!" He then made some reference to a group of very powerful people in the Private Equity industry.

I had been hoping KU could get this guy to apologize. It had becoming clearer to me that this guy had spilled his drink into KU's space on purpose. I thought KU had been right to stand up for himself. But now I felt despair at the fact that this guy fought against KU in the same way and simply wouldn't apologize.