(4/15/06) i was a dead woman

(Entered in paper journal at 4:15 PM on train from New Haven, Connecticut, to New York City.)

Dream 1

I knew a woman was dead. I saw somehow that she had angered a man who was rich and some type of criminal. I knew he had killed her and (before or after) cut off one of her hands.

I saw something like a cartoon of the woman in some dark blue room like a ballroom. The woman slapped the man in front of all his friends. Either the man or woman was coated in bright red, blod, the only thing (other than the eyes of people) not blue or black. This meant the man was angry and the woman was going to get killed.

I was now in a room with hot pink walls. On a diving "wall" somewhere in the room was a ledge of thin wood that was also painted hot pink. On it stood plastic figurines of a bride and groom. Once again I knew this stood for the man and woman.

I was now as small as the figurines. I stood on the ledge. I knew this meant I was the woman. I knocked the woman figurine off the ledge, somehow trying to reenact her death.

I was walking in the woods. I walked down a trail cluttered with big, schist-like boulders, to a river or lake. All the time I heard a conversation, as if in narration. I was also thinking out how the woma had been killed. I was still the woman, too, though I was myself.

It now all dawned on me, and as it dawned on me, I became sick, like something similar was being done to me, though I hadn't started the feeling the effects until now. I now knew that the man had shot up the woman with some drug in the vertebrae of her neck. When she was paralyzed he did something torturous to her and then, as she was on the verge of death, he cut off one of her hands. She was in a wedding dress.

I was crawling on my belly onto the rocks that waded in the first waters of the river/lake. As I looked at the pool of water surrounded by the boulder I saw so much trash everywhere. There was an upside-down baby carriage that was colored hot pink, with tattered fabric. I was disgusted with the garbage in the water. I thought, This is nature. It shouldn't be so crummy.

I was sick, hardly moving, and afraid that the man who had done this to me would catch up and kill me. I saw the woman's lace-cuffed hand floating palm-up in the water. I felt even sicker.

But now I was standing up, only myself, no longer the woman. I was walking up bouldres that got taller as they got into deeper water. I knew or thought that the rest of the body of the woman would be by the next and last boulder, floating in the shadow of its face, belly up, in her wedding dress, at the fringes of this vast body of water.

As I approached the edge of the boulder, I hunched down, maybe even lay down, suddenly. I didn't want to see the body in the water. I thought something like, That's the last thing I need to see -- more trash in the water.

(8/3/06) the lawyer in the cave; i got quartz in me

(Entered in paper journal at 5:57 PM on N-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan to 7th Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

Something like a television show where a woman went down into a deep cave (an "ethanol plant") to help workers fight for their rights (?). None of the men could believe the woman had come down here. She was a woman and a lawyer. The men didn't expect women in these situations. They also didn't expect white collar people like lawyers to come down here.

I saw a few views of men behind weird veils of subterranean formations like beaded curtains. There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere. The whole view was fuzzy like a TV with bad reception.

The woman got older and a little more eccentric as she walked farther. It became clear she was tough and talented at fighting for people in these situations.

The woman encountered one "miner" who bashed open a bubble-like stone formation to reveal a cauldron full of some fizzy, acidic, black, warm liquid. The miner said this was some kind of dissolving fluid that helped to make the "ethanol," but that close contact with the liquid would dissolve living organisms. Nevertheless, the man reached his arms down into the liquid to pull out something like a pelt.

The woman was in a room (still deep in the cave), sitting on a table with her legs stretched out. She had a shawl over her legs. She was desperately pulling the shawl all over her body.

I (in the room now?) was afraid and disappointed because the woman might have been getting sick. A lot of the miners came in now and spoke to the woman about the cause of their lawsuit. I saw (in pictures) that a beagle had been killed by the dangerous liquid. I wondered if this was the only reason for the lawsuit. It didn't seem like enough.

The beagle lay on its side on the floor at the woman's feet, like it had just carelessly been thrown or left there. It looked preserved -- stuffed -- almost salted somehow.

Dream 2

It was a sunny day. I had come to a river in a big city, like the Hudson in New York, to pick up a little boat for a trip I was probably taking for work. I walked with an old man who looked like a fisherman on something like a boat or a platform on the water. The platform was white, plastic-like, and thick, but hollow feeling, like the lid of a Coleman cooler. It was huge and featureless.

We got to the edge, near the underside of an enormous bridge overlooking the city shore. The man pointed out a pedal boat (like the boats at Central Park or at lakes at amusement parks -- flat, plastic, square devices you pedal to move along the water). The pedal boat was half-submerged in the water.

This was apparently my boat. I thought, I didn't expect the boat to be so flimsy and wet. I tried to figure how I could fit my backpack into the boat so it wouldn't get drenched in one of the seemingly unavoidable puddles of dirty water in the boat.

I said I'd take the boat. We walked back toward a cabin that was on steadier footing.

The man now had an assistant who told me something I couldn't understand. I asked the man to repeat. He said, "The boss says you have to take the 3:15 AM ferry back. That's the latest one. But you have to take it, because you have to have the boat back at 6:30 AM (?)."

There were a lot of people, all (?) of whom I knew, mingling around the cabin, which was wood-paneled and like a new cabin on a nice yacht. I hemmed and hawed about taking the ferry. I would be working until late at night, and then I'd have to take this awkwardly late ferry.

At some point I was walking by a railway, in a thin depression. The depression became a space before wide windows in a house.

I hit my toe and got a big sliver of glass in it. I pulled the sliver out. It was now a one-inch-long quartz crystal with a point and even, solid facets. It was veined, almost marbled, with my blood.

I was panicked. I thought I would get a disease from this piece of glass (which I also still held in my hand, i.e. along with the quartz). But then I thought the crystal (I didn't call it quartz yet) was mystical, that somehow I would get some kind of power from it.

But then the panic came over me again. I stood up and hurried to some man in the distance, saying, "Quartz! I got quartz in me!" in a jittery, repulsed, quivering tone.

(9/13/06) dangerous pool; sixty poisons; hometown food court

(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I and a woman (and maybe others) followed a man into a pool. The man was a leader like from a hippie religious cult. We stepped down into the thick water. He said something like, "If people can't handle this they shouldn't go any farther in. If you haven't developed enough, the water may kill you."

I was panicked. I "walked" clockwise in this gelly, sea-green water in the moonlight. We may have been wading because we were now in deep water. But I was still in only to slightly above my bellybutton. I breathed shallowly like the water was cold. But it was warm. I was really breathing shallowly because I was getting sick. I knew this, and was getting more and more worried.

Dream 2

I was with my mom in something like a coliseum for an indoor sports tournament like hockey, basketball, or something like martial arts. My hands were itchy, cracked, and dry, like I had an illness. I was embarrassed to tell my mom what was wrong, but I at least told her my hands were itching.

My mom said, "Well, go get some lotion. In this place, someone must have lotion!"

I walked around the stadium counterclockwise in an aisle near the front row. I asked people for lotion. Nobody really had any. I sat down in a space with five or six empty seats. Some man to my left (who also may have offered me some lotion) moved over to me. I thought he was gay. I didn't want to talk to him because I thought he was trying to pick me up.

For some reason now I was facing away from the game area, like I'd stood and leaned my back against a railing and faced the man in a seat.

The man told me, "The screens are wonderful today. Usually you feel like nobody's even working behind them. But today the images are very human and spontaneous."

I knew the man was talking about the LED digital screens that displayed highlights and scores, etc. I turned to look. The game area was shrouded by a big, black, thick mesh net. But from the right side of it I saw most of a display screen. It was just displaying a pattern of green squares before a black background like a fountains of cards. It wasn't very impressed.

I walked out to the "ticket booth," which was like an admission desk for a museum. A woman was there -- kind of looked like a pale blonde intellectual skater chick -- but she also wasn't there.

I walked behind a desk and found a book like a coffee table or picture book. I read through it. It was about people who had gone insane and done some pretty awful things.

At some point it was like I was watching a documentary of these people on one of the display screens in the stadium. Close to the end I was "inside" the documentary as if I was seeing -- feeling -- through the electric-buzzed world of the camera. I cornered into a room from a hallway and saw a guitar case, opened, on the floor before a bed.

There were subtitles instead of narration. A young man had gone psychotic. He buried his beagle deep underground in a guitar case. This was after he had boiled the dog. But the dog had been dead before the boiling. The young man had poisoned the dog with sixty poisons -- sixty poisons.

(As I woke up and lay in bed I thought, Well, it shows that people in real life still do some of the things Jung noted his alchemists as discussing symbolically.)

Dream 3

I was on a bus tour that stopped in a town just a small way from "my hometown." I wondered if I couldn't just go back. We were in a food court.

I walked outside. The building was rather small, black brick, like a suburban doctors' office complex. I walked on the wide lawn counterclockwise around the building.

(11/6/07) i was two detectives

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

Dream #1

Two detectives in a living room without much furniture in it. I was one or both of the detectives. A woman had been accused of a crime. She was in the room. She was dark-skinned, maybe Hispanic or East Indian. One of the detectives (both may have been fat and pale, wearing worn-out dress clothes, fedoras, and trenchcoats) stood by a table, by which the woman also stood. The other detective sat on a couch.

The detective (me, from my point of view) sitting on the couch had stated his dismissal of the woman's alleged guilt. The other detective (me, but not seeing from the detective's point of view) wasn't investigating anymore, and he had accepted the other detective's statement of the woman's innocence. But he was still making actions which appeared to be searching for clues to the woman's guilt.

At this point the position of the woman and this second detective varied or alternated. There was a little corner of space behind the table.Alternately the woman and the second detective appeared to be behind the table.

At the edge of the table near the woman and second detective was some loose change. At one point the second detective grabbed the change. Something about the feel of the change, a sliminess or griminess, proved that the surfaces of the coins were poisoned.

The second detective said, "Aha! Now I've proven it! This is how she killed them. So she wasn't innocent after all!"

The first detective (me, from my viewpoint) thought, Now the second detective will die. He inadvertently killed himself to find the woman's guilt.

I (or the first detective?) thought, He (the second detective -- also me by feeling) thought he would impress the older detective by revealing the woman's guilt. But he did it in too roundabout a way. There was a simpler way, which I knew the first detective knew, but which I (as I simply) did not know.

(5/9/09) time poisoning; protected rather than stolen

(Entered in paper journal at 7:05 AM on Q-train into Manhattan from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with my mom and my brother. I possibly sat in the backseat, on the passenger side. It was a darkish, grey day. We were driving through an area of rolling, lawny hills, like in a cemetery.

On our right was a tall wave of green hill, atop which were structures like crypts. I called these structures buildings and was pointing them out as if they were famous buildings in New York City.

There was one "building" that seemed to have a Greek/Egyptian style and seemed to be made out of gold. The next "building" we passed was very strange and thin. It seemed to be made in two sections. The section on the left was like a half-cylinder, encrusted in dark stones (?) which had an iridescent glaze and may have been broken up somehow, with traces of gilding. The section on the right may have been something like a stone pedestal on which sat a statue of a jackal.

I pointed out this building, maybe to my brother in particular, and said that the building was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But as we passed to the next buildings, I thought back to the museum. It suddenly truck me that this building no longer existed. It used to be the building which housed the museum, in the 1960s. But the museum had been moved to a bigger building. I tried to get my mom to back the car up so we could see the building again.

We were now in a kitchen. My mom was busy with something. The kitchen was smallish, with a lot of wood-tones and earth colors. It was lit with a cold, incandescent light. I had climbed up onto a countertop and was probably pulling big books, like art books, off the top of a cupboard. I was trying to show my brother that we had driven past a building which no longer existed.

(At this point I got off the Q-train and walked over to the Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, where I resumed my paper journal entry.)

I was trying to show that we had gone back in time or had been a part of some kind of anachronistic phenomenon. My brother didn't quite understand, or didn't quite seem to be paying attention. I took him back outside to try and illustrate the point.

When we got back outside, I may have had no idea how we were supposed to get back to the museum. We stood before a wide, green field which sloped slightly downward to something like a wide square of concrete, like the floor of a demolished building.

Just beyond that, though somehow obscured, was another building, which looked like a 1970s style building, and which may have had a section like a half cylinder lined with vertical wood slats. I knew that something about this area was also very different from what it "presently" was (wherever that "present" may have been).

I asked my brother, "Don't you recognize that building? Don't you remember what it was, and that it isn't there anymore?"

I now stood back inside the kitchen. My maternal grandmother walked into the kitchen. She looked a little upset. She told me that the son of XXXXX (a mutual friend of my mother and her best friend, though I can't remember her name) had just died. The son seemed to have been doing fine. But one day he drank two glasses of liquid at once and died.

The beverages were like water and chocolate milk. The cause of harm might have been, I knew, drinking two different beverages at once. But it might also have been the fact that the boy (young man, now) had been poisoned, and possibly by his mother.

My grandma had mentioned the boy's death as an explanation for why we would be delayed in getting out of the house and going where we had planned to go (to the museum?). I may have hugged my grandma to comfort her.

We walked through a small but dark hallway at the end of the kitchen and into a wide, emptyish living room lit by a single harsh, cold, incandescent light. There were a few people in the room, all relaxing as if this were one of my mother's holiday parties.

Two large couches sat against the front wall and the wall to my right. My mom's friend sat on the couch to my right. She seemed to be sad but alright. But I thought of the woman as a poisoner. I thought I would have to be careful around her.

Dream #2

I was possibly in an airport. I walked into a buffet-style restaurant. There was a huge, maze-like set of wood railings set up to form a line before the buffet. The place was almost completely empty. The atmosphere was red, as if lit by a red neon light.

I may have been waiting for a friend to arrive, or I may have been trying to figure out what I needed to pick up for a friend's meal. I was walking toward the buffet, possibly cutting through the "maze," when a couple big guys, both like white businessmen dressed business casual, cut in front of me. One of the men may have been a short, Indian man.

I caught back up to the men at the buffet. The men spoke back and forth with one another casually, like they hadn't even noticed having cut in front of me. I did something to bully them so they'd at least have to pay attention to me.

I may have been heading toward a seating area in the restaurant. The seating area apparently had no or very little light in it, lit only by natural light coming into the room from the windows in the concourse outside.

A voice now called over the loudspeaker. There was going to be some kind of fire drill or emergency evacuation drill for the building. The voice (a polite, female voice) said, "We would appreciate it if the customers could also please participate in this drill."

I figured I'd have no trouble participating. But I needed to go pick up my book bag before I did the evacuation. Before I had gone into the restaurant, apparently, I had been reading at a large, circular table, like one might see in the food court of a common area at a university.

The concourse now seemed to be a mostly windowless hallway full of these large, circular tables. I was running to find my bag. I could see the area where I had been sitting, but I couldn't see my bag. I was certain my bag had been stolen. I felt like I wasn't getting to the table fast enough.

I began flying. At some point I may have been pulled backwards. Then, possibly, I had been given my bag back by a security guard, a black woman. I was relieved. My bag had, apparently, been protected rather than stolen. But for some reason I now couldn't believe that this was actually my bag.

(9/25/09) attack of the rats

Dream #1

I was in a room with a few other people, one of them possibly my mother. The room was something like half a stage. It felt very wide but very shallow. The floor was wood or stone. At the back were something like stone steps, two or three, white and porous, leading up, perhaps, to nowhere.

I may have been laying on the floor. But now there were rats scurrying about. We had to get rid of the rats right away. I may at first have thought that we were going to beat the rats to death or poison them. But I now knew that we had to catch them, one by one, pick them up, and inject them with a poison that would sedate them. Then we would take them out of the place.

But the rats were all running around so quickly that I had no idea whether we could actually catch them. I may also have been afraid of touching them: if they were so quick, they might bite me just as quickly.