(10/25/04) can't karaoke money; don't want to fly

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

Dream 1

I was in some place in which a set was put up for lighting or filming a rock band. It feels like the lonely corner of some larger area. I was with a couple other guys at first. They now headed off somewhere.

I felt like I hadn't done a great job singing. There was one other guy. He may have been behind a TV camera or film camera, but he also controlled some kind of karaoke-like background music machine.

The guy played a song he thought I'd be really familiar with, "Money," by Pink Floyd. I couldn't remember either the verses or the order of the verses. So the man "had" a computer "turned on" at the back of this little set. I sat down at it, turned on the internet, and searched for the lyrics to "Money."

The screen was always blue and blank, I think. The first "page" I "pulled up" was some kind of prose poem on money that appeared to have been written in Vietnamese, though it was actually, apparently, in English.

I tried to get to the correct web page, but I could hear the song continuing, getting closer to ending. I knew the other guys off in some other area would still think I was an idiot. I may even have been lamely mumbling the tune.

Dream 2

I was in something like an old plane yard with my mom, my grandpa, and a host of older, unidentified people. It was a desert area with brownish tan ground broken by small islands of green grass.

There seemed to be freight cars everywhere, too, as if we were in a maze of freighters. Some freighters were modern. Others were futuristic, grey, smooth, dull, almost plastic. Yet all of them had apparently been abandoned some time ago. Now they were used as storage areas for small, one-person, high-speed jets.

My grandpa was taking us all here so I could "fly the jet once again." I don't know if anybody else would fly.

Now I "remembered" myself having flown the jet, somehow with my brother. We were high above the green, rippled earth. We did some twirls and flips, which I "remembered" as if I were outside of and above the jet, which may have had no wings. We then descended sharply down toward the ground.

I "remembered" having been afraid but also that everything turned out fine (?). But in between "then" and "now" something horrendous happened that made me afraid of flying the jets, as if this very "memory" of my brother and I would be somewhat duplicated, except this time with a tragic ending.

I didn't tell anybody that I was afraid. I just kept hoping that something would go wrong before I had to start flying.

We got to my grandpa's "lot," which looked something like a towering coffee machine made of freighter metal and futuristic plastic. On the "burner" was a greenish, wooden box as large as a freighter. In this box was my grandpa's jet, as well as a box of small items that needed to be applied to the jet to make it work.

My grandpa went into the wooden freighter and brought out the box of small items, sitting it on some pile of wood nearby. The wooden freight car had been neglected. It and the small box were now housing for mice. The small box was full of hay as well as the large, plastic baggies full of small items. There may also have been huge wads of white stuffing or cotton.

Many of the unidentified folks went off to a similar structure across the way from ours. My mom had both wandered off aimlessly and stayed by side. My grandpa had apparently gone back into the wooden freight car to pull out the jet.

I looked through the baggies, hoping something would be missing. Almost everything was clear plastic, like small, plastic, magnifying glasses. There were also black plastic, half-conical magnifiers, like jewelers' eyepieces. All these things were to be applied to the jet.

But at last I found something, or rather it may have been my grandpa who found it, to be missing. A pair of eyeglasses, similar to the ones I wear, were supposedly broken and missing a lens (although, remembering them now, they seem to have been whole, just a little tattered).

My mom now stood behind me. My grandpa was hurrying back into the wooden freight car. He said, "You can't go flying without the glasses. You won't be able to see quickly enough. Dammit. I'll go look for the other lens. But I doubt I'll find it."

I was relieved but also a little regretful.

(1/12/05) an exercise in shame; straight queer eye; avenge the unborn

(Entered in paper journal at 7:55 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a car with my mother and my mother's good friend's son, RH, on a desert highway or possibly on a highway going past some desert-like industrial district. My mom drove. RH rode in the backseat. He was a child. I may have been a "child" with my "adult" mind.

I said to my mom in a smart-ass way, "I guess it's time to head back and drop RH off at TH the F--"

I was about to say "B" to make the abbreviation "FB." But my mom interrupted me. She said, "I'd watch who you say that kind of stuff around." I knew she meant RH. But now I couldn't take back what I'd said. I knew the damage had already been done.

I was now an adult before a committee of superiors. I don't remember where we were. They told me, "You aren't allowed to say those kinds of things about a person. You should know that."

I thought the people were right. It had been a moment of indiscretion. It was probably even sexual harassment. But then I thought, I wasn't even talking about sex. I wasn't even talking about someone at work. In fact, I was far, far from work when I made that comment.

Now I was lying on a mattress in a tall, thin, thin-walled, pitch-black room. I was on my left (?) side and covering my ears desperately with my hands.

My Aunt M came into the room. She knelt down and whispered over my ears. I heard her perfectly, almost too loud: "Get ready. They're calling you in to a meeting. But really they're just calling you in to fire you."

I walked into a room. MK, one of my coworkers from a temp job I'd worked in 2003 and 2004 in New York, might have been there.

I was now fired. I lay on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a room dark but illuminated by a green light that glowed from behind the bed. The bed was put about three-quarters of the way back from the front window, so that behind the bed was maybe four feet of space.

Two women stood in the empty space. One looked like my Los Alamos Americorps coworker, AL. The other was a blonde girl with short hair and tan skin. She looked like one of my NYC Americorps crew mate KB's friends. She wore only a black thong. "AL" wore full clothing, though I don't know what exactly she wore.

I rolled around on the bed, which I think was bordered on one side by a tall, thin-posted, black-painted, wooden gate. I said, "This is just the kind of thing that happens around here. People think I'm lazy. They think I do nothing. And they're always looking for a reason to fire me. But now they've gone too far. They've ruined me. If I had been in New York, people would have been grateful for me from day one. For some reason people in New York always appreciate the work I do. I'm going back there."

The blonde girl said, "I think you'll have problems with that. Haven't you heard? The people at your Albuquerque Apartment  don't want you, either. You're barred from staying at any of their locations."

I thought, I'll have to find some other place to stay once I get to New York. But chances are nobody will take me.

I was now riding through a big city. But I was now some strange spectator of other events. As I moved through this town, apparently watching this as if by TV, my arms, which I couldn't see, were doing exercises with some coiled-spring-type devices. I would close my arms in together and open them out beside me. I sat at about a 115-degree angle. But I also wasn't exactly there at all.

The TV show followed some guy who, it was narrated, would bring shame on himself in this episode. He had been to all different cities, doing this reality show competition. But now that he had gotten to New York he would break down and stop.

I now saw a huge indoor coliseum. It was night. All the contestants were in a circle at exercise machines like the one "I was on." The guy was maybe forty-five years old, balding, a bit fat, with a panicky look on his face, almost foaming at the mouth. The competition was about to start. But the guy wouldn't start.

There was an empty machine. A young girl, with whom he had made good friends, had not shown up. Her name was either Lake Jones or Jones Lake. The man wanted everybody to stop and look for her. He thought she was in danger. But people were pushing against him, trying to sit him back in his machine.

(Entry continued at 9 AM on an unspecified subway.)

Dream 2

I sat at a huge, fancy dinner table with some friends and the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. At some point I said that I arranged my house so well I was thinkging of making a show called Straight Queer Eye for XXXXX.

One of the Queer Eye guys said sarcastically, "Oh, like that's a funny title. What are you doing, making fun of gay people?"

I said, "No." I may have tried to explain.

Dream 3

I possibly stood at the edge of some barrier and behind a black girl with a nice body in tight, black jeans. I don't know where or when our conversation was.

I said, "How old are you?"

She said, "Fifteen. How old are you?"

I said, "Thirty. We are at the perfect ages to 'avenge the unborn.'" (The phrase was actually a lot strong than "avenge the unborn." It meant pretty much the same thing. But it was so powerful it actually made me sit up in my bed.)

(4/5/08) the murderer's heroic journey

(Entered in paper journal at 7:42 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A man, with whom I was possibly identified, had killed another man who had been abusive to the woman the first man loved. This took place in a small town. The killer fled and went on a journey in the woods. Eventually he took on the appearance of an archaic hero. He was engaged in battle against mystical creatures.

At one point the man entered a cavity in a cliff wall. Against the back wall of the cavity was an altar-like structure that was also an oracle or a monster. There was a domed, oven-like structure, atop which were two pots with torches in them. At the back of that was a gigantic sculpture in the image of the top half of a human skull. Inside the oven-like structure was a sword stuck in the floor of the structure and standing before the fire.

The man jumped into the domed structure and somehow managed to defeat the skull. There was a rope before the man. He grabbed it, jumped, and swung down and backward into the oven. He grabbed the sword and tried to pull it out. But he missed.

The man should have been thought of, at this point, as having failed. He hadn't been able to retrieve the sword. But he managed to get another chance, knowing that he was the only one who could pull the sword out of the stone.

The man jumped down into the oven again by means of the rope and pulled out the sword. But this time he couldn't swing himself back onto the domed top. He had to grasp onto an edge and pull himself up very awkwardly. As he did, people could be heard booing him, as if this were all a show like American Idol.

The man stood up, hoping he hadn't been counted as having failed. But he had failed, and he was killed in a strange way -- possibly by being shot out of the cavity and against a tree, and then having some implement fly at him from the cavity and cut his head off.

Through all of this episode, the man had been long-haired, big, and muscular, dressed in a bear-skin chiton or robe. But he now looked much like he had at the beginning, when he had been the small-town murderer: shortish, of medium build, olive skinned, with stubble all over his face and wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans.

The man walked through a particularly beautiful area of the woods, with trees flaring orange. He was heading back to the small town, hoping he could live here, having failed at the heroic test. The man arrived at the outskirts of the town, at an enormous lawn of baseball fields. The man then realized he had left the town because he was a murderer and a fugitive.

At this point I was the man, though at certain moments I still saw from outside the man's body. I hoped that the townspeople would somehow no longer recognize me. But I sat down on bleachers, watching some boys play baseball, with the specific hope that one of the boys, an old friend of mine, would see me and be happy to see me.

The game ended. The boy did see me. But as soon as he saw me, I hoped he would stop recognizing me before he remembered that I was the murderer.

The boy said something like, "You should get out of here or you'll be in trouble."

Another boy, kind of fat, kind of tan, with blonde hair, came up from the other end of the bleachers. He asked the first boy, "Who is that? I feel I should know him from somewhere."

I was now a boy about the age of the other boys. I felt that if the fat kid found out I was the murderer he would bully me and then go tell the police I was in town. But he came around behind me as the other boy said, "Does the name Hanley sound familiar?" The fat boy tried to be mean to me, but he only seemed to be happy now. I was acting defensively and trying not to let on who I was.

But as the fat boy continued talking to me he turned into a pretty girl. Another pretty girl, pale skinned, with pale blonde hair, also walked up toward me. Both girls were so happy to see me that they were hugging each other. The two girls and the first boy were all saying something like, "Hanley's back!"

(9/17/09) michael jackson's funeral

Dream #1

I was at a funeral for Michael Jackson. The room was smallish and almost looked like a waiting area in an airport terminal. The room was full of middle-aged, black men and women who were all dressed in cheap looking clothing. Natural light came in through a window-wall to my right.

Michael Jackson's body lay, basically, on the floor, at my feet, its head to my feet. The body may have lain atop a few tiered layers of vegetation, like flowers or fruits or gourds. At the four corners of this "bed" were posts, either of thin iron or of vegetation. The four posts were joined by thin, old rope.

The people who were here were, apparently, all members of Michael Jackson's family. They all looked to me, as if I were to minister all the rites of the funeral. I had no idea that I was going to be called on for this. I really had no idea what these people would even want for this ceremony. I possibly thought I'd begin by talking about Michael Jackson's life. But instead, I opened my mouth and began singing the Lord's Prayer in a kind of "soulful" (to me) style. As soon as I began, everybody followed.

The room was now dim, even smaller, with dim, green, fluorescent light, the source of which wasn't even in the room, and with tall walls, like the landing of a fire escape stairwell, or like a little intersection between a hallway and some other part of a building.

I realized as I sang that I only "led" the singing by a change in my tone or rhythm at certain points. For the rest of the song, everybody else was in control. Nevertheless, I felt like every choice I was making was wrong. The song sounded less "soulful" and more and more quasi-classical as I made my choices. I wondered when people would begin to question me, or comment on what an awful sham of a job I was doing. I decided jut to let everybody else make the choices and just sing along with them.

My view was drifting around, as if I were a handheld camera. I eventually fixed on a nativity scene, which may also have been related to a scene from Michael Jackson's life. The nativity scene was maybe two feet tall and made of plastic that was lit up with incandescent light from the inside. It stood on the floor at first. Then, as my view drifted through the crowd, it stood atop a small ledge of wall-like plaster. The nativity scene had a lot of red coloring in it and the lights within shifted from left to right, so it almost looked like ripples of water moving along the scene.

(10/25/09) an old interviewer

(Entered in dream journal at 8:02 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood in a large room like an office. The room wasn't square, but seemed to be made of a number of sub-rooms that opened into each other. The place was full of tables and counters which had stuff strewn all over them, like one might see in a theater or fashion workshop. There were also probably couches and other pieces of furniture.

I walked around through this space and through some kind of "back hallway/stairwell" that looked unfinished,  like drywall had been installed on the other side of the wood frame, but not yet on the side I was standing on. Rope may also have run down between the vertical frame beams.

As I wandered through these two areas, back and forth, I spoke with BT, a person who had interviewed me for a job in April of 2009, and with whom I'd kept up contact. BT may have been planning on hiring me. But he might also have been talking about some other job I might have been getting ready to go to.

At some point BT might have had to leave. But then he might have come back. There might have been some task I'd had to take care of for BT, but I hadn't been able to take care of it. BT and I spoke some more.

(3/1/10) flying too high

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM, on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was a bright, sunny, clear day. I had flown up into the air somehow, and I was now flying over a small, desert town. Beside and just slightly behind me (or possibly just in my head?) was a woman. At first I had floated just over the treetops, then a little bit higher. But now, as the woman and I "spoke" (telepathically, at least to some degree), we floated up a couple hundred feet in the air.

The woman may have spoken about birds -- probably hawks. I now noticed that a bald eagle was flying just below us, maybe ten or fifteen feet below us, wheeling around counter-clockwise and looking up toward us. I knew that the eagle was flying at the top of its range, which I assumed was very high.

I wondered how high I was, and if maybe I was too high. i looked down to the earth below me. The town below was just a spot on a wide expanse of coppery-brown and tan desert land. I could see the curvature of the earth, tilted somewhat. I could see the sky fading to a violet black, as if I were about to leave the earth's atmosphere.

I suddenly felt giddy. I thought, For sure, I'm too high. I now descended rapidly back toward the city. I quickly saw a grid of (red-plastic-roofed?) houses, and I knew I would land on the street between those houses. I felt, however, like I was descending too quickly, and that my impact with the ground would kill me.