(8/5/06) high rents for killers' caves; obvious classic literature and medieval pulp novels

(Entered in paper journal at 1:22 PM at Starbucks at Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was on a journey down a cave (?) with other people, possibly my friend R and a woman. The cave had some quality like a haunted house in an amusement park, and even had features like in a house. Then there would be deep drops down.

We were possibly pursuing a bad person. He might have been killing people as he ran, while we were far behind. I was afraid of him because he could kill us. But I also wanted to get to him as soon as possible.

When we went down the drops I felt some hesitation from the people I was with. I yelled at them, near the end, "Just let yourself drop down! It's the only way to catch up!"

The people I was with were going down slowly, as if along the walls. I tried to drop down freely. But even I was somehow stumbling along the cave walls.

I got down to the bottom. I stood before a little hallway like in a house. The hallway was blocked off by a little children's barrier-fence, the kind that can be expanded to block the doorways between rooms in a house, and was full of human heads, maybe two or three heads deep. I "knew" the killer was here.

I was in the room next to this hallway. It was nice. A nice window showed a sunny day outside. The room had pale blue carpet and seemed kind of empty except a TV and video games. I went through a couple other rooms, looking for the family that lived here, to warn them about the killer.

I stopped at one point, realizing how quiet this place was. I thought to myself, The only other thing I'd like here is more private drapes, and I could live here pretty easily.

I was "called back" by a woman. I "walked back" to the living room. Apparently it was time to leave for the day, as if we came here regularly or had come here as part of some regular chore.

The house was now enormous, middle-class looking, but huge. I looked at the wall to my left. It gave the rental rate for places like this. I saw this place was rather expensive. A smaller place like this was $1,700 per month. A larger one (still maybe as large as this one?) was $2,400.

The woman who had called me sat at a dining table to my right. We headed toward the front door.

Dream 2

I sat by a woman in a big room. There was a lively group of people somewhere in the distance. The woman and I spoke about something smart. Then I turned my attention to a book. I read a little, the first couple paragraphs, which described a car trip, comparing it to some other harrowing or humbling experience.

Somehow I realized the book I was reading was The Grapes of Wrath. I thought, How obvious for someone to be reading The Grapes of Wrath. I thought the girl I was with must have been thinking that I was just trying, in an obvious and pretty conventional way, to look smart in front of her.

I was reading out of a huge anthology, like one I had in college. It had a pale tan paper cover with a little bit of a plastic feel to it. I flipped out of The Grapes of Wrath and tried to find something a little more unique to read.

I found Faulkner's The Wild Palms. I thought, I never realized that I owned a copy of The Wild Palms just by owning this book! But I didn't want to read The Wild Palms, either.

I realized I was just searching aimlessly. I forced myself to put the book away and just work on talking to the woman instead of trying to impress her with what I was reading. It just felt healthier to speak with the woman. I also felt like I was getting too obsessed with reading -- and with reading things I didn't even want to read.

But as I was putting down the book I flipped through the pages. my attention was caught by color plates of paintings by Maxfield Parrish or Edwin Austin Abbey depicting medieval scenes.

The scenes were like covers for pulp paperback novels. One was for a book called Merlin. In the scene, Merlin, a tall, towering man in a red-orange gown) stood with his arms oopen wide at his sides on a mountaintop before a blue sky with thick, brilliant, white clouds.

Another scene was for a book entitled Sir Gawain and XXXXX (possibly Ywain, but possibly not). This scene was like a spotlight on a dark forest.

(12/20/08) she died in her imagination

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

Dream #1

I was in a (dark?) room with a woman or possibly the ghost of a woman. The woman appeared to be young and blonde, very pretty. But she was actually an old woman, or a woman who had died long ago. I stood as if between two rooms: one, in which this woman lay on a bed, and the other, a dark living room where some other woman (?), like the woman's attendant (?), sat in deep shadow.

The woman told me a story of how she'd known she was going to die. She'd had a disease like cancer and was in the final stages. I heard her story and "understood," at first, that she'd been asked to take a role in a film adaptation of a John D. MacDonald movie. I "understood" that the woman was at death's door and could hardly move when her final scene was shot.

I imagined the scene: a 1950s black and white movie. The woman, with long, dark hair, probably red, lying under a big, fur blanket, saying some final words. At some point the woman may have pulled down the blanket to expose her breasts. I "understood" that the final scene, which may have been a death scene, anyway, had been re-written so that the almost-invalid woman could act it out in her condition.

But then, as if time replayed itself, I "heard" the woman's actual "telling" of the story. The woman had always admired John D. MacDonald's novels and had wanted to act in an adaptation of one. But she had never gotten the chance. So, on her death-bed, she imagined herself acting out her favorite novel. This imagination was so powerful to her that it was almost like a reality to her. In fact, at the time of her death, she died "in her imagination," passing away as the character of the novel, in the final scene of the novel, rather than as herself in her bed.

When I heard this story I laughed. It was so heartwarming, and so quirky, somehow -- a Hollywood starlet passing away in a pulp novel fantasy. But then I began to cry. I thought of how much this work meant to her, and how tragic it was that this starlet never got to express herself fully.

As I cried, the room lit slightly. The light came from a small pool of water. The pool was where the woman's sickbed had been. The woman sat or stood or floated in the pool. She wore an elegant, green and white striped swimsuit. She was simultaneously modern and older styled. She had the poise and beauty of both Grace Kelly and a modern surfer girl.

The woman told me her name -- something like Jean Harlow or Jean Jordan. She told me I could find other movies she'd acted in by looking in an old (box or shelf?) of books she'd kept nearby. She may have embraced me.

I now stood in front of a bookshelf, looking through a stack of books. I knew I should get the titles of these books and then watch the movies with the titles. All the novels were extreme pulp novels: sci-fi, crime, even pornography. I assumed the film adaptations of these novels were all little-heard-of B-movies.

I had a handful of books but can remember only one cover clearly. A painting wherein a woman possibly in a yellow outfit, or maybe a yellow trench coat, was running across a deep green, shadowy background. The woman was looking over her right shoulder, as if panicked that something would attack her. The (very long) title ran across the bottom of the page -- something like: I Can't Use My ESP to Call the Martians Who Are Getting (Rescuing?) Me.

There were other crime books with covers painted in deep, ashy blues and grey-blacks. One may have used the derogatory term for black people in its title.

There may have been another person, probably a man, fumbling around in the books as well, trying to get a hold of all the books I was looking at.