(2/13-14/05) the highest heaven society; they call that bird the backin

(Entered in paper journal at 11:30 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Can't remember how it began. Left from a church area. Drove back to it or came back to it. But now it was different somehow. And now it was at first all by itself with a small parking lot like at the edge of a small town

and then it was like one of the last filled spaces in a defunct strip mall in a suburb with a huge parking lot.

As I came up to this place I could hear someone denouncing it, saying something like (which then actually became), "In our church if people were to die like that we'd bury them. In your church you'd eat them." (This was to say, "You'd make them die like that and then you'd eat them.") I now saw a photocopied article from some journal like Newsweek entitled something like, "You Eat Them When They Die."

It had been a bright, blue day. Now it was night. My NYC Americorps crew chief SM walked away from the church and into the parking lot, saying something like, "You guys are sick. You act like it's Christianity. But it's just killing people."

There was a very calm voice from somewhere saying, "Well if you really believe that, come check. We're open and in service right now."

I looked into all the windows from my distance, maybe fifty feet away. I could see only dim glimmers of light like fluorescent light behind tinted windows and good blinds or even some kind of poster board or drywall. I stayed that far away, yet I was also right by the entrance door, which I also saw from my distance as boarded off.

I kept feeling a strange protrusion like the lip of a cubicle's trashcan pushing outward from the board of the door. I wondered how people got in and out and where the voice came from. It seemed to me this place was either closed down forever or top secret.

But now I was only right by the door, not fifty feet away. I now felt the protrusion to be something like a portable chest of papers, a cardboard-like box papered over with some nice, floral-like designs. I didn't see or feel the front fully. I just opened the top drawer and looked at the first photocopied article I found, which was a series of self-help "healthy living" style articles trying to promote the idea that this church was more about keeping healthy than anything else. I put it away.

I was now in a dark room. Beside me was a door. There was a fluorescent light next door,. The church service was taking place. This room, empty, dark, thin-carpeted, with one dresser and this strange square of file drawers, was the visitor's room. I could barely see anything, yet I saw everything clearly enough.

I pulled out an article I don't remember. It was strange enough and close enough to cannibalism to scare me.

I flipped the box around to see the titles on each file drawer. I don't think I was supposed to do this. I did it surreptitiously.

Next door the service was all a show, put on to make me feel like what I'd heard about this church being cannibalistic was false. There was always a low undercurrent of voices under a lead voice which smoothly yet angrily spoke against people like me who apparently didn't understand religion and yet were "loved" by the religious, anyway.

I pulled out another article from another drawer whose title frightened me but which I forgot as soon as I read it. The article was in defense of cannibalism as a way of staying healthy. It was written in some self-help style of the previous article, but now with an implication even that people who do not believe will be cruelly murdered as well as eaten.

I realized this was a second- or third-level-initiated reading and that I had looked into a drawer I wasn't supposed to look into. But I couldn't remember the drawer I had opened. I put the article in the "Real-Time Live AV Files" drawer, since that was the only title I remembered. But when I closed the drawer I remembered that the article had actually been from a drawer one or two drawers up.

But when I reopened the drawer the article was no longer there. There were tapes which I could tell had a fat, bald, southern-drawled man yelling that the outsiders no longer had a right to persecute the church. And there was a glossy nine-by-thirteen-inch-thick, glossy-covered book, its cover's top half black with yellow lettering and its bottom half a color photo. The title of the book was something like A Technical Manual for a Happy and Blessed Human Communion.

Once again, despite the happy photo of a WASPish family in the woods as if just walking back home from Sunday service, I felt some menacing conviction (and the voices and voice in the next room continued) that the text would constantly imply that those who read this book would be cruelly murdered as well as cannibalized.

I looked at the spine of the book, to the publisher's name, on the bottom of the spine -- The Highest Heaven Society. I was revolted.

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM on 2/14/05 at home in Harlem.)

Dream 2

I walked along an asphalt path with trees on my right at the top of a thickly treed, short slope down to a creek and on my left a street like in East Denver, probably a side street with a factory or warehouse on the other side. I was probably heading toward work or something like work. I had left my glasses where I had just come from (possibly work -- where I was heading, too).

Now a red-tailed hawk flew toward me. I knew it was a red-tailed hawk but I couldn't see it for certain. I spoke to it, telling it hello and that I was glad it had come to see me again. It landed on a tree branch, then flew across to another that was closer to me.

I wished it could get closer. It sensed that, too, as if it also were getting something out of my clear vision of it. It flew down and almost landed on the ground before deciding that wasn't even a possibility.

Both I and it looked for some branch that was low enough for it to land on and for me still to get close enough to see it clearly without my glasses. But in one second, or maybe a half a second, we discovered nothing, and I lifted out my left hand for the hawk to land on.

The hawk landed on my hand. It wasn't heavy. But as it landed, my vision shifted. I was "lying down" in a bed in the dark. But the bed was upright and in a thick of treetops at the ridge of the creek bank's slope. The hawk had crawled onto my head. I felt its fleshy stomach (?) moving around. I kept waiting for it to shit or piss on my head.

After this there may have been some scene where I was in or around some house with a group of folks, watching some movie.

But now it was daytime again. I stood on a path overlooking a steep slope, a box canyon, down maybe fifty feet to a dry bed on the left wall of which was a grey stone arch tunnel. There was a bridge across the gap and another asphalt path on the other side. Then there was a short strip of grass and a wide road that connected down a way to the side road, beside which was the asphalt path on which I had been before.

I felt I must get back there to take care of what hadn't been taken care of. But a slightly older man, a boss like one of the ecology people in the parks would be a "boss" for my Americorps crew (even though our crew chief would be our actual supervisor), kind of held me here in obligation. I wasn't incredibly worried.

Suddenly a bird flew down the canyon. It had a round, disc-like body, probably of broawn feathers, a long tail, and a long neck with a blue head.

It looked maybe three feet long, pretty big. It soared directly in front of me and the boss.

I saw the bird's head and asked the boss if the bird was a pheasant. He said no. He gave me some garbled science talk.

I continued to watch the bird, which grew huge. Its colors changed to white with red, granite-dot-like stipples on the back and red and white stripes for the tail, and a white neck with a green head. It was maybe ten feet long, with a twenty-food wingspan (whereas before its wingspan was maybe only slightly larger than its body). The bird slowly hovered backwards into the arch tunnel.

The boss was gabbing away this whole time. And finally he said, "They call that bird the Backin."

I was in a car with a bunch of friends, kids, probably. We were looking at Polaroids and/or doing something we weren't supposed to be doing.

(7/2/05) stove in my room; the magical paper; verifying the eagle

(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM at Soap Opera Landromat on 116th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I went into "my" "bedroom" and closed the door to avoid the noise of my roommates. The stove was in my bedroom and took up most of the space. All four burners had something on them. I turned on the back left burner, not aware whether any other burner was on.

The burner turned on powerfully. Blue flames spread all up the sides of the "pan," which was like a thick, deep skillet. I panicked. I may have tried to turn down the skillet, but I think the flames reached out for me whenever my hands got too close to the stove. Now I realized all the other burners were in use.

I thought I should open the door for my roommates, who were standing outside my door and talking about how I always lock myself in. I couldn't figure out why I had the stove in my bedroom. Now the front right burner hissed and pressed out a huge plume of smoke. I turned off all the burners, but everything was still going. I noticed how filthy everything was, too.

Dream 2

An Asian woman gave her student or child (who I may have been) a napkin or a strip of brownish, natural- or recycled-looking paper with what looks now like Chinese calligraphy on it. During the course of the day(s) the child kept wanting to get rid of the paper (?). The woman scolded him strongly. "I" couldn't tell why.

Now it was night. (I'm pretty sure I was the child now.) The child stood in a wide, vast courtyard like at a Chinese palace. In the center of this courtyard was a shrine or temple. The woman, now in beautiful, formal, religious attire, including a flowing headdress, sat at an altar.

From somewhere, pale, peach-colored flames glowed and lit the underside of the woman's face brightly. The woman was saying a spell to get rid of a demon or a curse. Somehow this was the moment, it was implied, for which the child's strip of paper would be needed.

Now the child (I?) had this paper in his hand, but it had also been given up during the day. The Asian woman also had it in her hand, even though it had been given up. (At this point I no longer had the child's view but a "low-angle shot" of the woman sitting before the altar.) The woman put the strip of paper before the altar and said some words, maybe reading it.

But wind, I believe convection from the fire, blew the strip of paper out of the woman's hands. It was like the strip of paper dissolved, though once again, the paper could still be seen floating in the air, not really even going higher than two feet above the woman's head.

Dream 3

It was daytime. I was in the woods with a group of folks who were friends and coworkers. I think we were in a pine forest. The feeling was coppery more than green.

We were doing some research. Everybody had been far more observant than I, and I was jealous and downhearted. Now I saw a bird I took to be a red-tailed hawk. I called it out to everybody as it flew over us. Everybody looked and congratulated me, but I thought they were being patronizing. On a closer look, the bird looked too thin to be a red-tailer. It had a lot of grey and black on it, too.

Now it was night. We were across a river from where we had been. We had to come back to verify the presence of the hawk both at day and night. If the hawk did not appear at night, it was an illusion. We might have started calling it an eagle at this point.

Somehow, as if the area were lit by a back-light, we could make out a limb possibly from a downed tree, pretty much parallel with the ground and about eight feet high. We had to sit all night and stare at that branch. The instant we saw the "eagle" we had to wade across the river and look at the eagle up close.

I could feel the approach, though I also thought the "eagle" had to be an illusion and couldn't possibly arrive.

(Continued entry at 8:30 AM on downtown-bound C-train from 116th Street station.)

At the moment when the anticipation got eeriest an owl landed on a branch behind us. Some of us may have turned around to look. I, jealously guarding my chance at "the big moment," didn't turn around.

In a watery, automatic voice, the owl recited a rhyming poem that ended in the line, "Have you ever been an owl?" The poem insinuated I had been an owl. I didn't want to believe that. I wanted to believe I had been an "eagle" and thus had a close connection with the one we were to see. I waited for the owl to say more. But it said nothing.

I now saw, low on the opposite bank of the river, two bears and either a dog or an elk (?!) on a narrow shelf of grass. I felt there was a kinship between all three animals. But I didn't think the animals did enough to show this.

The "elk" now somehow nuzzled a huge clump of grass over to a bear. The bear began gnashing and tearing at the grass. I smiled as if this were cute. But I couldn't figure out why I thought such a violent, almost insane, action was cute.

Now the "eagle" landed on the limb. I don't know if I was first to see it. Two of us, I and someone like my brother or my friend R, were picked up to cross the river.

(Continued at 8:47 AM on the 7-train from Times Square.)

We wore hip waders. We stood on a shelf of land and maybe a couple boulders that jutted out of the water. My friend was ready to go. But I was hesitant. I thought about how squishy the mud would be in the river and how cold the water would be at night. Then I made a big deal about taking everything out of my pockets so nothing would get wet.

My friend may have gone ahead of me. Either way, I knew I was taking too long getting into the water.

(2/7/06) the flying casino; my friend's perverted resolution

(Entered in paper journal at 5:14 PM at Starbucks on 30th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I walked along a path or road along a mountain slope that went down on my right. I saw some bird or birds fly by in the distance. I was excited because I thought it was a red-tailed hawk. It made me feel better about myself, like previously I had been shunned and made to feel like I couldn't see anything special.

But the view of it was for a moment obscured by pine threes and then for good by a wall or cliff which curled around the edge of the path.

As I approached the edge of the path I saw five big, beautiful, white-pinioned birds in a group and flying toward the "wall." I couldn't tell whether they were hawks or "a less special bird." They were incredible to me.

I called one of my friends (possibly KA, a coworker from my Americorps program in the NYC Parks) to come see, even though the birds were already gone. We stood by the railing waiting for the birds to come by.

Now in the distance was a bird that we knew had to be enormous. It was mostly tail, and it was dark, iridescent-like -- like a homogeneity of metallic speckles of dark rainbow colors on a black background. As we faced it it first flew from right to left until it was out of our sight. It flew from left to right, much closer and larger in appearance.

At some point KA asked me whaat kind of bird it was. I said, "It's the phoenix! It's a bird that -- It's a bird that --" But I couldn't remember what the phoenix did that made it so famous.

To mask my shame I tried to come up with some other fact about the phoenix. I felt like I was, within myself, reducing the greatness of the phoenix to preserve my pride and reduce my feeling of shame over not remembering what the phoenix was famous for. Yet, after I reduced the phoenix's stature in my mind, I hoped it would come closer and renew the feeling of greatness with its massiveness.

Now the tail of the phoenix dropped down before us. There were a bunch of people here, mostly college kids.

A man, half-military, half-salesman, stood before us all, announcing that if we climbed up the ladder (which had been the phoenix tail) to the helicopter (which had been the phoenix body), we could have a free test-trip to The Flying Casino. I was actually the first in line. My hands were already on the rungs of the ladder. The whole thing seemed so cheap. I didn't want to do it and demean my conception of the phoenix.

I looked at my left (or right?) hand, which was now not holding onto a rung and was instead down by my waist. I had a "wand" -- a yellow, plastic, hollow cylinder topped with an octagonal (don't know real term) faceted plastic, pale "amethyst" or "purple stone."

This was the pass into the casino. Each person was to go up one at a time. They each got two (or two and a half?) minutes to test the casino.

The "salesman" said, "Climb on up!"

I said, "What am I gonna see up there? Fun and prizes?"

I was trying to joke like this was a funny version of what the salesman had to put up with everyday. But the salesman just glared at me and said, "Huh. Yeah... Get up there."

I climbed up. I put my head up through a hole in the "floor" of the "helicopter." It was green and metallic. Inside, the place felt expansive, though I couldn't see a whole lot.

A guy in a white military officer's uniform and cap knelt at the hole. He welcomed me. I didn't get completely up into the space. If my field of vision were a room, the officer would have correlated with a corner just to my right. I looked to my left. Behind a loose net were a couple other guys at vague tables. Behind the officer's right shoulder was an opening to what looked like the deck of a ship. Behind the officer's left shoulder was another netted or screened enclosure with vague machines I took to be video games.

The officer asked me if I would like to have a cart ride around the ship. I said, mock-ashamedly, "Oh, no. Each person only has a couple minutes."

I felt that everybody up here felt the same dislike for me that the "salesman" felt down below. But now I'd made it worse by acting ashamed when I really wasn't, or, rather, acting more ashamed than I really was.

Dream 2

My friend R (?) stood before me reading a statement from a piece of paper. I listened and reacted pretty strongly to each thing he said. First I was disgusted. Then I was relieved. Then, as his statements go weirder and weirder, I got uneasy in a way like a horribly exaggerated version of a reaction to watching someone bowling begin and then slowly progress toward a gutterball.

R said something like, "I was brought to court" (or put in jail?) "for child molestation charges. But now I will hold my deal with the courts not to misbehave. It is my personal goal to find a young girl -- but not too young! -- but rather young. And then I will do certain things to her she does not like. She will be a little child. And I will do some gross things to her and get away with it."