(12/9/07) deadly friends; las vegas descent

(Entered in paper journal at 9:25 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood on a subway platform with my old friend R and his fiancee L. The platform was very busy, but it was wide, with tall ceilings. I was waiting for a Q-train. As one train pulled up, R started talking about how he and L did something really cool that I could have been a part of if I hadn't stopped being friends with him.

The train that pulled up was an N-train. It was heading in my direction. But I needed a Q-train. Through the windows of the train I saw that my train was coming, but on the other platform. I ran off from R and L, kind of happy not to have to listen to R's talking anymore.

I didn't know if I could make my train. The stairwell up, which I would need to take to cross and get down to the other platform, was full, mostly of Hispanic people, mainly Mexican. Somehow, though I managed to jump about three-quarters of the way up the stairways side and grab the handrails.

I waited until a group of people made an opening for me. Then I flipped myself onto the stairs. The handrails were a softish-feeling aluminum.

I quickly ran to the other stairway and jumped down over its side. I got into the train (which appeared to be packed with people) right as the doors were closing.

I walked through the car. It was almost completely empty. It was filthy, and it had a weird smell, as if a homeless person were in it.

Three little Hispanic kids ran around in the train. I thought they were chasing around me, trying to taunt me in the guise of playing an innocent game with one another.

The kids' mother lay on one of the long benches (grey benches). She was covered entirely by a (pink?) blanket. Somewhere near her was a dried patch of blood. I probably stepped in the blood. It was sticky. I headed quickly into the next car, more out of a sense of indignant disgust than fear.

I was in a very dark room. My mom was somewhere, possibly even just talking to me by cell phone. I may have stood by a desk, kicking little cubes of safety glass out of the ridges of a green car-floor-mat.

My mom told me about the last time she'd seen my brother. My brother's friends had done something bad to him. My mom told my brother something like he shouldn't be surprised that these things happen if he keeps making friends with people like that. My mom said that my brother agreed and didn't seem too violently upset.

But my brother ended up found (?) in some place like an area by the side of a road or in a field. His mouth had been taped, my mom said. I could "see"/"feel" my brother's mouth and eyes taped over with silver duct tape.

My mom said it had later been determined that my brother had conspired to have himself killed by a friend. He had gone to a friend's house and had a drug mixture called a "coke XXXXX" ("coke set"?). He passed out. He then had his mouth taped by his friend so that he couldn't breathe -- as if the drug mixture impaired my brother's ability to breathe through his nose. His friend then took him and dumped him somewhere (roadside or field) to die.

Dream #2

I was in a commercial airplane. We seemed to be landing. I could see a lot, as if the windows on the plane were enormous. Suddenly we pulled up steeply. We ascended quickly, to a level where the blue sky became dark indigo. Big chunks of snow flew all around us. I laughed with glee. It was like I could feel the snow.

We now descended in Las Vegas. Somehow we landed on the road heading to the toll booth for cars. We pulled into the toll booth as far as we could.

A van in the toll booth pulled backwards and crashed into us. Its whole back end was smashed. I worried that the driver would sue us. But I realized he couldn't: he couldn't blame us for such a stupid action of his own. He must have realized that. He drove off to our side and away from us without even going into the airport.

I was at my dad's house. My stepmother was there and was somehow also my mom. I was trying to get out of the house and go somewhere. But my mom/stepmother kept threatening me, saying that if I left, she would make me very sorry. She also tried to convince me that, for now, this was where I wanted to be.

(8/18/08) high priced crappy rentals

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I stood before a big apartment building with a woman who was a real estate agent. The building was grey concrete and dirty, almost more like the backside of an industrial building than an apartment building. The building faced a big parking lot like a shopping mall parking lot. The sky was overcast in an electric grey way, almost unreal.

The woman told me I could have a one-room apartment here for $1,500 a month. I knew the place was small and kind of trashy, but I thought it was a good deal. I asked the woman, "Why is there so much vacancy in this place?"

The woman said, "Probably cause the folks are still cleaning up the guts." I realized that the woman meant that someone (I envisioned a big, fat man) had been murdered here, and that the police were still cleaning up what had been a pretty big mess. In the meantime, nobody wanted to live here anymore.

I wondered if the man had been murdered in the room the woman was trying to rent to me. I wondered how the woman could do such a thing to me.

I had made some sort of agreement with the woman and was now somewhere else. I now thought about subway logistics for this place. I knew the nearest train was the Q, but that the Q was a far walk away, and that I would be on a stop that was farther away from work than the one I would get on at my current apartment.

I was on the phone now, discussing all this with the woman. The woman was trying to convince me how easy it was to get to the train. But as she was explaining this, I could see the neighborhood in my mind's eye, as if I were looking at it all while standing at the edge of and on the underside of a highway overpass.

I realized how bleak and trashy this whole neighborhood looked. I knew this was a bad neighborhood, full of crime. I couldn't figure out how the woman would try to rent out such an ugly place in such an awful neighborhood for such a high price.

The woman was explaining something to me like how to walk to the subway to avoid danger most effectively.