(4/18/05) walmart salesmen and milf; evil mother, social worker, and bad cop

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I sat at something like a picnic bench in a toy store or Walmart that was supposed to be an electronics store. The light was very grey, like only half the lights were working. We were near the back of  the customer area, I feel, and I could see an aisle of action figures facing me in the distance. I sat across from a middle-aged, chubby guy. We were both workers. He was teaching me how to get customers to buy more.

I had a device in my hand. It looked like a disc-shaped watch battery hinged by a spring mechanism (or tape?) to what looked like two miniature AA Duracells, so it looked something like a tiny CD Walkman opening. From the disc battery came down three copper lines of an almost intangible thinness that connected to three holes in a circular plate over the mini-AAs. The device was no more than one-third of an inch in diameter.

As the guy spoke, mainly telling me I had to impress customers with what I knew, I accidentally "snapped" one of the copper "wires." It was more like watching a thin tendril of bubblegum dissolve in the wind.

Now a third worker, very "average Joe" and chubby, came up to us with a mother and a son. The second worker said to me, "They want to buy something like that device. Let's show them how it works. Watch my sales routine." He took the device from me.

The kid had a CD Walkman. Apparently the device went into the Walkman. The second worker was saying a few things to the mother about the device. The third worker spontaneously took the left earphone off the boy's head and put his head right next to the boy's to listen to the song. He said, "Hey, I know this song. It's awesome!"

I now understood that the third worker's sales technique was to get chummy with the custmers, to make them feel comfortable and cool. Somehow (either in the dream or after the dream (?)) I knew what my part would be. The second worker would put the device into the Walkman (if I hadn't broken the device), and I in all genuineness would comment on how great the Walkman sounded. The second and third workers would look as each other as if to say, "That's a technique that'll sell things."

My own voice in narration said, "But I didn't care about selling anything, or even the kid. What I wanted was to make love to the mother. At last I've found the woman who can teach me about sexuality."

Now I had a vision of two small junipers (?) on a hillside of thin, balding grass. The junipers may have been bound together by the yellowish cord, though they were still in the ground. Around them was a small, rectangular fence made by four wooden stakes joined by a single line of wire at their tops.

Dream 2

I was in some place like a trailer home, except it was elongated and moving forward like a train. It was all dark except a few ceiling lights pointing light down to two tables like the small lights in trains pint small light down to the seats at night. I sat waiting for dinner, even though I might have been eating dinner already.

Somebody behind me said XXXXX (possibly my mother) was bringing fried chicken. The lady at the table down from mine began laughing. She looked like the evil mother from Ivan Grozny. She said something like "Who eats fried chicken for dinner? What kind of pathetic person would make that for someone?" I laughed now, too. I don't even know why.

Now it was light. The place was much more like a regular kitchen. XXXXX (my mom?) came up behind me with a huge Tupperware container of fried chicken, which had that golden-brown, breaded, homemade look to it. Some pieces were burnt black.

But the surprise of XXXXX coming up with the chicken caused the evil mother to stop laughing. I was thankful. I stopped laughing, too.

Now I saw a big room like a gymnasium. Plenty of light poured in through the top windows. A man stood in the gymnasium. He was walking to a door. I saw this like I was floating. But I also heard someone like the evil mother or Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon narrating, "Now he'll pay for insulting what I offered him."

She was behind some narrow slits in the back wall. She cried a name like Ua or Uat. The man turned around and didn't see anybody. It was like the voice had come from a floating position, too. The man turned to walk away and then turned back quickly and made some kicking and swinging motions before landing on his back and kick-springing. I now saw that he had deflected a number of poison darts. But he hadn't gotten them all. The man stood up and staggered a second before "shaking off" the poison and heading toward the vents to fight.

But now from somewhere else a whole bunch of darts spiked into the man's back. I saw all this now as if I was by the door, in the darkness of the next room. The man stood still for a moment, then flinched and convulsed violently. He fell down to the ground on his stomach, floundering, almost to "U" shapes before finally dying.

I was now walking down a hallway, in the blue moonlight, telling myself I had to call the police or escape the house or fight the killer. I was horribly afraid. I almost headed into a bedroom. But I turned and walked down the hallway again, to the kitchen.

The fridge door was open. I looked over it and saw a young, thick, Hispanic woman kneeling and looking into the fridge, which seemed to have a huge, cardboard box in it. This woman was the killer, the "evil mother," the "Jade Fox."

I said, as if possessed, "Hello, m-m-Master." She stood and smiled like a ditzy seductress. She closed the fridge door. Now we were in the living room. She told me we were preparing to kill more people, but that we might also have to escape.

It was now morning, possibly a wintry one. A woman knocked on the door. She was white haired, a bit pear-shaped, with a black dress and some kind of earthy, colorful scarf. She was "the social worker," and she was here to prove we had murdered someone.

The living room seems to have been lined with pastel couches and wide windows. The young woman and I sat in couches and mutely stared at the ground while the social worker harangued us about "taking a precious life." The social worker was trying to make us feel guilty so we'd confess without her having to investigate. But it wouldn't work. Neither of us really cared about "precious life."

Now the "bad guy" cop burst in. He was muscular, thick, with a wormy head topped with thin, pale blonde hair. He wore a black leather jacket. He yelled all sorts of weird threats and taunts at us.

In the center of the room now was huge, pot-like, leathery bag hanging down from four rough ropes. This bag was full of blood, possibly with a dead body floating in it.

The bad guy cop now yelled at me that he could prove some things about me, at least, and take away a lot of privileges I have right now.he thought he'd get me upset so he could fight me and kick my ass.

I was upset. I rushed up, knocked the cop down against the pot/bag, and twisted his face with my right hand. I twisted and twisted until I heard cracking. Then I threw the bad guy cop into the pot/bag. I had somehow managed to disconnect most of his face from his skull and most of his head from his neck.

Almost completely submerged in blood and floating body parts, the cop shouted, "You've fucked up! You've fought against me! Now I know you did it. You're gonna be locked away!"

I shouted, "Shut up! You're dead, man! Just relax and die!"

I lifted up his head. It slid right off his neck. Then I turned his face toward the water. It plopped right out of and off of his skull. I turned the head back toward me and saw the empty, bloody cavity.

(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.