(9/27/04) trilobite roaches; cheap and expensive camera; lingerie and hair dryer

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info.)

Dream 1

Enormous insects like roaches ran through my house. They weren't roaches, though I called them roaches. They were shaped like trilobites, though they were smooth like futuristic cars, and a greyish green-beige color. Their eyes were like smooth, blackish windows. They also didn't quite have feet.

Their centers below the "window-eye" ridged up like the cabin of a car. All I could feel was dismay and weariness, as if I lamented having to deal with roaches all over again after not having had to deal with them for so long.

Dream 2

I was on a two-story train. I don't know where we were, but it was like we were in a terminal. The light on the train was dim, just some skylight coming in from the edges of the platform, tinging the floors and surfaces a white-grey blue. Other people must have been on the train, but I couldn't really see them. I stood in between the rows of seats, near a door that was open (on the second story of a train, no less). The aisle was wide, maybe five feet wide.

I had been somewhere before this, possibly an actual place in the dream and now forgotten, but possibly just a "memory." I was getting on the train to go back to this place, even though I had gotten on this train, apparently, from this place. It is possible that at this place my friend R had caused me all kinds of annoyance.

I asked myself, Why are you going back there? Why repeat what's already happened? I was now knelt close to the left row of seats, facing so the seats faced me. I told myself, Well, perhaps I'm going back because that's my "ka-tet." I now stood.

I faced "forward" again. I was close to the open door. I held a book which I dropped when the train lurched forward. The book, I now saw, was of William Blake's poetry. It was like the Viking Portable Blake, with the blue strip at the top in which were classical-modern, beige letters spelling "BLAKE" widely and thinly. But instead of Blake's "Ancient of Days" picture of God kneeling in a circle like the Sun on the cover, there was a black and white photograph "of Blake."

Seeing the book slip away toward the door, I lunged for it. I slapped my hand down on the book before it toppled out. But even though I did this I wasn't quite sure I had done it. I felt like I was doomed to lose the book.

Now I was somewhere "in New York." It was strange feeling. Behind me were tall, tall buildings, in the streets between which were lights and activity and people, like at Times Square. But the buildings were all red brick, all very clean, almost quiet buildings. And they all seemed about eight hundred meters behind me, so that when I looked back they all appeared small. Yet it felt like I was standing right on 8th Avenue, looking west.

In front of me, though, was a huge vacant lot, slightly mounded, full of grass, and behind a six- or seven-foot-tall chain link fence. R stood in front of me and someone else. Behind R, over the field, was a thick, greasy, black-grey cloud of smoke smothering the landscape of the vacant lot and almost blotting out the moon above it.

R, like a parent, said something like, "It looks like we aren't going to be able to go to XXXXX" (New York?) "now, since we have all this trouble going on here in XXXXX." (New York?) "So that means XXXXX." (We'll have to postpone that ice cream?)

R was now gone. It seems now that the plan suddenly became that I and this unknown woman next to me were to meet R for ice cream somewhere. We may also possibly have been told not to move from where we were, as going into XXXXX (the Times Square-like area behind me) would cause us to spend money or not be interested in ice cream anymore.

But I really wanted to go there, to see what was there. so we went down. We were at a glass display case in the middle of the street. There were no cars, just tons of people, and tons and tons of warm lights, making the night like day. The lights were incandescent yellow, with maybe a few reds and oranges. But overall it felt like we were in a dazzling casino with glass display cases instead of gaming tables.

The case this unknown woman and I were at held on its top video cameras. I noticed two cameras in particular. One was quite regular, compact, silvery. Another one, a couple cameras away, was weird. It was grey, silvery, and compact, but with a large lens on the front.

The lens seemed to be coated in some iridescent pink color. It was flat and maybe five inches in diameter. On the top of the camera, behind the stethoscope-shaped lens, was a panel of buttons, a whole lot of buttons, which may even have spilled over onto the sides of the camera.

I saw the prices on the cameras. They were pasted onto the lenses with 1 by 1 3/4 inch (?), pale blue, Post-it notes. The smaller camera was $139. The larger one was $1,329.

The salesman behind the case got very interested when I started looking at the larger camera. But the woman beside me told me something like, "No. Don't lose your grip. This guy wants you to get the expensive one. But you know you don't want it. It won't be as good for you as the cheaper one. But if you keep listening to this guy he'll confuse you into slipping up the prices so you think that $1,329 = $139."

I suddenly felt as if I had very poor control of my perceptions.

Dream 3

I was in a department store at a mall. I may have been in a Mervyn's. I don't remember most of the dream. I was at the register now, though. I either was buying or had bought an article of pink lingerie for $9.99. I now either was buying or had bought a hair dryer that was boxed like some kind of power tool, for $13.99 or $13.29. But, either while purchasing or after having purchased the hair dryer, I calculated the cost. I suddenly realized that I had spent way too much money.

I walked away from the register with the lingerie in a white bag, all crumpled and flattish, airless inside, and the hair dryer box in my right hand (where the bag also was, as if I had two hands there?).

I walked to the doorway where the department store opened to the mall, and I swung the hair dryer box in front of the theft-protection gates. Doing this, I thought, would show exactly how much the hair dryer would cost, in some way that seemed to show me if it would fit into my budget. If it wouldn't fit into my budget, I would have to put it away somewhere near the shoplifting security gates. But if it did fit into my budget, I would go back to the cash register and pay for it.

But when I waved it past the gates, it set off a quiet alarm. A nice store security guard walked up to me. He looked like the Maytag repairman in the TV commercials. He had a small, computer-like device in his hand, in which he was typing things. He asked me if I was trying to steal. I said no, that I was just checking the price. He said, "Well, I'll just walk you back to the register."

But I got a glimpse of the LCD display of  his device to see that the hair dryer cost $XXXXX (either $13.99 or $13.29). That really was too much for me to spend, especially after I had bought the lingerie. So now I wanted to put it away. But I didn't want the security guard to think that I was putting it away only because I got caught trying to steal it. So I just decided to let things be. I'd just get the hair dryer, even though I didn't really want it now.

I now started worrying that the security guard would see the pink babydoll slip and panties I'd bought.

(5/6/06) gigantic bug; old car radios

(Entered in paper journal at 11:35 AM at Starbucks on 35th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

It was morning. I lay on my bed. I saw few roaches running around my room. I was disgusted and worried. But then I saw a big bug which now seems more like a scorpion than a roach. The "roach" was about the size of half my forearm. I thought, I'll have to smash this one. I can't let it run around my room.

The bug crawled up the door of my closet (at the foot of my bed). It was colored like the shed shell of a cicada rusted or tainted with a meaty residue. It jumped at my face. I think I got out of the way. I looked down to see it running across my pillow.

Dream 2

I was in the backseat of an old-style car. It was day. The seat was like a black or dark-painted wooden bench. The interior of the car was very dark. But the backseat felt very spacious. In the driver's seat was a man, shaggy blonde with a heavy mustache.

In the front passenger seat was someone indiscernible (now). There was a "radio" like an intercom (or a Pignose amp) "strapped" in the dash-front (where the radio would usually be) in a metallic suspender like a removable cup-holder. The radio was white plastic.

The device was having awful reception problems.

I realized that in the man's childhood or young adulthood there were no radios in the car. This was how people had music in their cars -- these strapped-in radios. The man now also spoke about how there was no heat in the cars in the 1970s (?).

I had been about to lay down and sleep a while. But I sat up. I thought, You have to be able to bear this. This is only one trip in a car like this. When this man was my age he ahd to make trips like this all the time. And no heat in the car, even when it was winter.

(6/23/07) the giant fly; what i never saw; two girls in one; lucid in reality

(Entered on Q-train, but don't know when.)

Dream #1

I lay in bed. I opened my eyes and looked at the wall (to my left). An insect, a small roach, I thought, climbed quickly down the wall. I was disappointed to have a roach in my house. I thought I would get up and kill it. But now I saw two on the wall. I thought I might be seeing things.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were lots of insects (flies?) climbing all over my wall. I leaped out of bed, possibly in a straight-bodied roll parallel to the floor and landing in a crouch facing the wall. The wall was full of insects. I wondered what I could do to get rid of the insects. I thought I might have to call an exterminator and leave my house for a little while.

Down on the lower, right section of the wall, or perhaps on the "left foot" corner of my bed, was a fly about the size of my fist. It seemed to call for me, and to control all the other insects so that they, too, would call me. I was afraid, but I got closer. The giant fly made a semi-melodic, buzzing sound, almost like wings beating against a champagne flute. The fly's body was spiny and shine, an orange-green, reflective color. It had orangish wings.

Dream #2

I walked into a nice, big dining room. There might not have been any table. The room was narrow and long. The walls were wood. Some dim, warm daylight came through a yellowish curtain at the other short end of the room. The door I walked in through was at the lower part of the right long wall. A little farther up that wall stood my co-worker and good friend CL. Between us was a chest of drawers.

I walked in and immediately turned to face the chest. CL asked me if I had brought XXXXX (can't remember). I had some green, fleshy-looking sack in my hands. I cut it open and pulled out a "flying saucer." This was something like a silver table ornament or serving tray. It looked like a cake tray with no glass top and with ridges or slots all through it. I put it on the chest.

I thought CL might be trying to hide this object from others, as part of an overall conspiracy. I thought CL might be trying to convince me as well that I hadn't seen the flying saucer. CL very harshly asked me a question insinuating that I had already told my co-worker JB about the flying saucer. I became tense and slightly afraid.

Dream #3

I sat in the front row at some show. The seating was all rows of folding chairs. The floor was white tile. The lights were brightish orange and fluorescent. The place was full of people. The "stage" was level with the floor. On the back wall (a back wall) was a screen against which was projected a karaoke video.

A song started up. The girl to my left, who looked like my co-worker and fellow-Assistant FA, said, "Oh, you should sing this one! You love these guys!" It took me a second before I recognized the song as a Smashing Pumpkins song.

But I couldn't "catch" the words fast enough to begin singing with the music. Plus, the words on the screen weren't the same as the words to the song. And the video would occasionally fade in and out unexpectedly. I  told the girl that I did love this song, but that I didn't know it well enough to keep up.

I began cuddling with the girl. She had nice, dark skin. She wasn't thin, but she had the prettiness of a thin girl.

I was disappointed in myself for being so boring that I couldn't sing a song.

I now sat laying across the girl's chest. The girl now looked like one of my good friends, PD. She was still not thin. She wore a pastel turquoise-green, soft-fabric shirt. Below the collar, squared holes were cut out to look like an Egyptian necklace. The fabric between the holes was also strung in a way to look and feel like beads.

I ran my left finger along this "necklace" collar-piece. I also touched some jewelry on the girl's right upper arm. I felt like a child. I hoped this wouldn't turn the girl off and that we could still have sex. The girl said, "I will miss you very much when I am gone."

Dream #4

I woke up from a dream. I stood out of my bed by the foot of the bed and walked to the wall facing the foot of the bed. There was a wooden ladder folded against the wall. I was going to take it away from the wall, but I hung on one of the steps and looked at my wall. There was a yellowish, chipped substance dirtying the wall.

I didn't remember such messiness. At first I thought, Well, maybe I don't look at this wall well enough to have seen this dirty patch. Then I thought, No. This wall is different in another way: it's missing its little framing decorations: it's just completely smooth.

The discrepancy between this wall and my normal perception of my bedroom wall made me wonder where I was. I told myself, I just woke from a dream. I have to be awake. But I was now getting the strange feeling that life was a dream, and that I could wake into lucidity from waking life just as I would wake into lucidity in dreams.

I did something like what a person would do holding his breath and bracing for a plunge into a swimming pool. I thought, This is exactly what people think can't be done. And I'm trying to do it.

I felt the electric buzz (which, as I'd read in the literature, was a precursor, not for lucid dreams, but for out-of-body experiences). But when lucidity came, I realized that this had all been a dream after all. I wasn't "lucid" in (or ex-) reality. I was only lucid in my dream.

I wanted to explore the lucid dream, but I didn't believe I could imagine anything other than what I was presently seeing: the ladder and the wall. So I told myself, You are going to turn around clockwise. As you complete the turn you will wake back into waking life and you will be back in bed.

But even as I "held my breath, braced," and turned, I thought, Why am I doing this? If I'm lucid I should go exploring. But it was like I couldn't control myself, like I was being controlled by another will and now was in a gravitational spin that I couldn't pull out of.

(6/30/07) decaf urn

Dream #1

I stood on a street like a main street of a small town. There was a beautiful, orange-metallic sunset that made all the building fronts glow. Something about the building fronts seemed flimsy, like cardboard boxes. I heard my friend R talking, as if he were behind me and to my right (?) but also as if I were imagining this whole scene and hearing him "in real life." R said, "Oh, PK? Isn't he the world economist for your company?" R said this in a way that was supposed to make me feel like I didn't know as much as he did.

I was in a store like a Kmart. The store seemed desolate. I sat or crouched by the back wall, with the wall to my left, looking at a row of boxes lining the wall. The stacks of boxes varied, but none was higher than ten feet tall.

I walked out of some back area and back out to this row of boxes lining the wall. I was carrying an orange-handled (to mark decaf) coffee urn in my left hand. I shuffled back and forth by the shorter stacks of boxes. I was telling someone behind me and to my right that I could find R's statements in a box, is if by opening the box, I would make R's actual voice come out.

I continued the conversation, which soon made me realize I needed to take the coffee urn to the back area. I took it back to the restroom. I saw there was an urn on the floor. I wondered why I'd need to bring this one in if there already was one in this room. I washed the urn in the sink. A small, dead roach fell off from some part of the urn.

(7/4/07) tinted window; orange sparks

(Entered in paper journal at 8:35 AM at Ozzie's cafe on Seventh Avenue and Lincoln Place in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I sat on the floor in a living room. My sister sat on the right end of a couch to my left. I may have been sitting with my back against the right end of the couch, so my sister was directly to my left and above me. We both wrote in a notebook. We were writing a plan or a structured report, but it had to do with something mystical.

I stopped in the middle of writing (my sister and I were writing the same thing at the same speed, and we both stopped at the same time). I looked to the wall to the right. There were two roaches. I went to the wall. My sister stood behind me.

I said, "Well, we can just kill these roaches." But now I saw a lot of tiny, tiny roaches on the wall. It was like clouds of gnats. I didn't know what to do.

I saw out a window on the left side of the room. I was far from the window. The room was dim. The window must also have been tinted: it looked like full day outside, but the sky was a heavy, thick, though vivid blue. There were some redbrick building tops before the sky, and something like a heavy, steel beam over the top view just outside the window.

Dream #2

I stood under something like a bridge and saw orange curtains of thick sparks flow down before a sea-green sky like orange sun gleams on the crests of rolling waves in a river.

(11/3/07) bedroom; domino bugs; lewd armstrong; funeral truck; the heron pond

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I lay on "my bed" in "my bedroom," which was in a basement. Light came in from some window above me. The walls were grey concrete, with patches of sea-green paint clinging to it. The room was cluttered with boxes and clothes, but it felt pretty big. The ceilings were high. There might have been a wide, cylindrical column.

Dream #2

I lay stomach-down on the floor, facing my oldest nephew. We had some game like dominoes going between us. The light was on in the room.

A little roach crawled across my nephew's left arm. He didn't know "what kind of bug" it was. He didn't seem too worried about it. I told him not to worry, that you don't usually see things like that.

(I got off the train at this point. I resumed writing at 9:30 AM at the Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #3

An astronaut floated before a camera. Behind him was the blue earth. I couldn't tell who the astronaut was. His face-plate was white like gauze. I hoped the astronaut was Neil Armstrong, and that he would say something inspiring.

The astronaut said something I couldn't understand. Then he laughed and flipped off the camera. I thought, Well, then, it couldn't be Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong would never make a lewd gesture like that. But, actually, I was now even more sure that it was Neil Armstrong.

Dream #4

I stood out at a chain-link fence surrounding the edge of a supermarket parking lot, like the fence around the parking lot in front of the Western Beef grocery store on Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn. The sun was like in the afternoon or morning, low and golden.

A semi-truck pulled around from the road and into the parking lot. Instead of a regular trailer there was something like a "coal carrying" trailer with one side (the right side, facing me) lower.

In the bed of the trailer was a pile of brown-tan soil concealing long stretches of "brick" that were more like walls of Anasazi ruins. Half hanging out of some of the soil was a young Hispanic person. The person looked like a woman but might have been a man. Her hair was blondish. She was definitely dead. This was her funeral procession.

Another vehicle drove behind the semi. It was a big, black pickup truck. It was shiny. The back may have been covered somehow, as if by a tarp "roof." The cab and the bed were full of Mexican people, all smallish, rough looking, definitely workers. The all looked very sad, but quiet and solemn. I turned to watch the pickup truck pull into the parking lot. The parking lot was very full.

Dream #5

I stood out on a lawn. The sky was blue and the sunlight was low and golden. I walked down the lawn and toward a big (?) pond. Along the banks of the pond were birds that were either dead or sleeping. I might have called them herons, though they were as big as golden eagles and somehow had the roughness of vultures. The birds ranged in color from off-white to a whitish tan-gold. They all lay face-down.

There were living herons in the pond. They looked more like black-crowned herons (?).

I stepped into the pond. There were now beds of marsh-grass, which gave the soil some consistency. I thought to myself something like, These are all herons. But no cranes?

I looked to my right. I now saw a slender, white "crane" (egret?). It walked over toward me. I thought, Can it know it's coming my way? Wouldn't it be afraid of me or angry at me for being here?

I walked farther, stepping off the bed of grass and into lower, softer soil. My legs sunk in a little. I looked down and realized the bird was coming in my direction because I was stirring up food (fish, I believed) with my steps.

The pond was now different, and I was in a different part. It was like the pond edged into concrete walls on the back and left sides. I stood in this corner, under the shade of trees and perhaps chest-deep in water.

There were beds of grass to my right, but the water didn't seem to lose any of its depth. The crane was still to my right. It was approaching me, as if it hadn't gotten any closer.

I looked down again and saw that my footsteps were stirring up little bugs, not little fish. I was a little disappointed that the crane would eat these bugs. I thought I could imagine eating little fish, but not bugs. I thought, Well, maybe the crane will have to eat bugs until I stir up some good fish.

I was talking with a woman on my cell phone. She was some famous ecologist or naturalist. I was trying to get an interview with her. I was also excited to tell her I was in this pond (I might have called it a "heron pond" or "crane pond"), that I was finally working in a pond again. I thought, after telling the woman, Well! -- maybe she'll be impressed enough to give me an interview!

The crane now swam close to me. It was swirling under the water with the agility of a snake. It might have curled to my breast for a moment.

The woman said she couldn't do the interview XXXXX (soon), but asked if we could do it XXXXX (later). I thought and said that that would actually be really convenient.

I hung up. I swam (the water all over was now so deep that I had to swim) back to the back concrete edge, which now was like steps instead of a concrete wall. I lay my cell phone on the steps. One or a few woman stood at the edge. They were like partners in whatever task I was currently completing. It was also like they were calling for me but I couldn't hear them or understand them.

I swam back out into the water. The yellow and green leafs glittered on the surface of the water.

I heard myself having a conversation with my co-worker MD. There was some management meeting I wanted to go to. But MD told me I couldn't go because I wouldn't understand it anyway.

I saw a black and white comic strip, drawn in the style of Beetle Bailey. It had five frames. In the first frame a young "soldier" was being nagged by his wife (who looked like an old, grey-haired woman, a "mother"). The soldier imagined his boss (Sergeant?) nagging him. In the second frame the soldier was in his boss' office and his boss was nagging him. He imagined his wife nagging him. In the third frame the solder was at the dinner table with his wife, who was nagging him as he imagined his boss nagging him again.

In the fourth frame the wife and soldier were in bed. The soldier was almost out of the frame. The two may have shared the same imagination, of the Sergeant standing calmly. In the fifth frame the soldier lay sleeping, the covers pulled up halfway over his face. He imagined himself as a boy, sleeping the same way.

(1/31/08) flying roach software; dirty dancing to the future

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

Dream #1

It was night. I lay in bed. I looked down at my blanket. There were two roaches climbing down around my feet. I wanted to think at first that they weren't there. I got up and smashed one of them. The other one still climbed around on my blanket. I didn't have anything to smash it with.

I found something and came back. The roach now leaped to avoid me. The roach also seemed capable of using long, sharp, curving antennae (?) to defend itself. I went after the roach again. The roached jumped onto the wall. I could hear someone telling me the flying roach had a poison in its antennae that could kill you.

I now sat in a dark restaurant with a group of people. It was like we had been talking about the flying roaches. The nighttime scenery outside was moving, as if we were on a train.

TB, one of my friends and a worker for the company that sold consumer data to my research team, sat in front of me. To her left was a kind of tomboyish woman. This woman spoke about roaches as it they were some sort of software program. She was talking about how she used the software program nowadays. She had pirated the software and was using it at work. This could get her in trouble. But she said she didn't care.

I could tell the tomboyish woman was trying to impress TB with a kind of "lawbreaker" behavior, and that she was trying to show that she'd be a better lover for TB than I would.

Dream #2

I saw a film like Back to the Future. The Michael J. Fox character was being goaded into action by the modern-day (1980s) Biff character.

I now sat in a room, watching the movie with TB. TB had been sick recently. Her stomach was still a little upset. TB wore red pants made of a fabric like corduroy. I began rubbing TB's legs. We stood up and started dancing erotically together.

(8/7/08) pushed out of unused desk; lingerie roach

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at my desk at work. I was watching something like an earnings presentation on my mini-DVD player. My old boss DO walked around on the floor. I suddenly felt like I wasn't working hard enough. I tried to concentrate on the earnings presentation even harder.

Suddenly the angle I was sitting at was is if I were sitting at my co-worker (on DO's team) MD's desk at the building we'd previously worked at. (In waking life, my company had recently moved from one building to another building.) I wondered if DO might stop by and say hi to me.

I felt someone pushing down on my left elbow. It was MD, wearing a casual, white button-up and some khaki shorts. It was like he was trying to elbow me out of his chair.

Dream #2

I was in "my bedroom." I was pulling some nice dresses out of a bag. One dress was white with pinkish-red designs. I was going to hang it in my closet.

I walked to my closet and noticed how easily I could see up to my top shelf. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was a few inches above the top of my head.) There weren't many articles of clothing there. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was where I horded all of my lingerie and women's clothing -- mostly cheap articles I'd bought from discount stores.) I thought something like, I'm really cleaning up!

But something toward the wall caught my eye as I was looking away. I looked back. The thing was a "roach." It was maybe two inches long, and fat. Its back end was covered in white, as if it were casting off skin or as if it were developing a shell around itself to undergo metamorphosis. I couldn't tell whether the thing was dead or alive.

(11/30/08) protection lost; return of the bugs; bug operation

(Entered in paper journal at 8:19 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a long staircase like a courtyard with tall, pink, sandstone (?) walls. It was night. The long walkway had a stairway on either side, and in between was an area filled with vegetation, possibly trees and shrubs. There was a huge cupola structure in the center of this area.

I had walked into "my room," as if this place were a college residence. I lay on my bed, the door to my room possibly still open. It was raining outside.

I heard somebody -- in another room, but within earshot of mine, as if we were in adjoining cubicles of an office -- talking about how announcements for who would get fired would actually be today. I had a feeling that I myself would get fired.

I decided to head down to the office of one of the heads of my department, DM, to talk to DM, just to be friendly. I hoped DM wouldn't think that I was talking to her just in order to save my job.

I had a device like a camera on my bed. The camera was broken and I was playing with some kind of glass tube attached to some plastic gadget. The glass tube was filled with a black, powdery substance that might also have been moist or liquidy, blue ink. I took this tube and device with me.

I now stood with my girlfriend H outside the gates of some place like an estate. The light was like early morning, darkish grey, as if invisible clouds were covering the sky. The area all around us was like a desert wood, like a pinon-juniper forest.

I looked behind us to the thick, pink-red stone gates. Behind the gates the land seemed to dome up a bit. Near the top of the dome I could see the dome of a beautiful building that was made of heavy grey and pink stone, looming just over the vegetation.

Looking forward I noticed how much more tangled and wild the vegetation looked.

H asked me, "If we sleep outside the gates, are we going to be able to keep the vampires away?"

I knew we would sleep in a cupola-like (or gazebo-like?) structure that was like a "camp house" tonight. Within the gates we were protected from vampires. Out here, we really weren't. But I told H we would be fine, even though I wasn't sure that was true.

I didn't know if we could go back behind the gates. I might have needed or wanted to do something beyond the gates, anyway.

Dream #2

I was in "my bathroom." It was night. There may have been a light on somewhere, but probably not in the bathroom. I walked out and caught a view from the corner of my eye (on my right side) of a shirt (? -- maybe red, possibly a bandana or a rag instead of a shirt) with a few flecks on it. There were also some flecks around the piece of cloth. I wondered how this dirty stuff got into my house.

I looked closer to figure out what the flecks were. They were pill-shaped, little, brown things. I then recognized they were roaches. Something about them looked less "dry" than roaches, somewhat liquidy or gooey. At first I thought all the roaches were dead. But now they started to move. I could tell they were just now reviving and that they would disperse and multiply if I didn't stop them right now.

I ran into my kitchen and grabbed a green can of Raid out from the cupboard below my sink. I was in total desperation -- I thought I had finally gotten rid of the roaches in my house. But here they were, all back.

From the time I had headed to the kitchen, I had been moaning in sorrow and fear. Tears were streaming down my face. The can of Raid had a thick, rubbery or plasticky nozzle with a green, plastic tube sticking out of it, like the red, plastic tube sticking out of the nozzle of a can of WD-40, except that this tube was a little shorter and stubbier.

Still moaning and crying, I stood before the doorway to the bathroom. The door was only half open. I stuck my right arm in with the can of Raid. I sprayed the Raid. The spray came out in a continuous mist, much more moist than the normal aerosol spray. I kept spraying and spraying.

Even though I had averted my eyes, I could see that some roaches were standing up, trying to get away from the poison. I did my best to spray every inch of the floor, so that no bugs could escape. The spray was collecting on the floor in pools. I now hoped I would be able to drown all the roaches.

Dream #3

I was down in the basement of a house, possibly in "my mom's house." The basement was big and somehow nice, but it was cluttered, both with furniture and things like clothes. I stood in a small clearing in all this space and stuff.

I stood before a television which may have been playing a music video by Smash Mouth. The music video may have been showing a montage of gogo dancers (possibly including one dressed up like Wonder Woman).

I was dancing along with the video, and may have been or have thought of myself as a woman. As I danced, my mom (?) looked down the stairwell to me -- even though there couldn't have gotten a view of me at all from the top of the tall, twisty stairwell. I kept dancing, thinking I was a pretty good performer.

My sister (?) and brother came downstairs, each possibly carrying a board game. My sister may have asked me something about dancing. We started discussing dancing (or whatever) as I continued to dance. My brother kept trying to get my attention, but I was having a hard enough time focusing on what my sister was saying.

Suddenly my brother burst out in an hysterical laugh (which seemed to produce in my mind little, brown, pill-shaped images, like bugs). He walked back up the stairs, continuing his hysterical laughter. I felt bad, like I had hurt my brother by ignoring him.

I followed my brother upstairs. When I got upstairs I saw my brother (as a kid?) standing before my mother in a big, but dirty, kitchen. The sunlight in the kitchen was bright, yellow, and warm. My brother held a game like Operation in his arms. The organs for the game were, I knew, brown and pill-shaped, like bugs.

My brother was acting like (perhaps in truth) the only reason for his laughter was that he had finally succeeded in figuring out how to play this game. But looking at my brother's face, I could see that my brother was in intense pain.

(I woke from this dream to the laughter of a person down on the sidewalk below my bedroom window. The person was laughing really loud, hysterically. The two people were speaking back and forth in Spanish.)

(12/30/08) the lion dance; roach apartment; elephant alien

(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM, on B-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.

I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.

This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.

I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.

I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."

On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.

My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.

There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.

My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.

There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.

One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.

I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.

I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.

I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.

But the boys had lost their inspiration.

The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.

I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"

I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.

I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.

I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.

Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.

Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.

The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.

The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.

I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.

Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.

The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.

I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.

I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.

I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.

I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.

At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.

I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.

I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.

The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.

I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.

Dream #2

I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.

One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.

But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.

Dream #3

I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.

I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"

I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.

I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.

The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)

(5/4/09) bathroom flood

(Entered in paper journal at 7:41 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was night. I was probably in my apartment alone. But then I was in my apartment with my girlfriend H. I was in the bathroom. I was possibly sitting on the toilet at first. But then I was standing before my bathtub. The light in my bathroom was off. The shower curtain was open just a little.

I saw a couple little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub. I thought they were roaches. I was upset that I possibly had roaches in my house. But I wasn't sure what I had seen. So I pulled back the shower curtain.

There were little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub, some apparently two inches long, others of smaller size, down to tiny specks. These shapes didn't seem like roaches at all, now. They were formless, little blots. I thought they were products of my own sight, physical perturbations on my own eyes.

But I thought that, regardless of what the visions were, I had let my bathroom get too dirty. I thought that if I didn't clean my bathroom, real roaches eventually would show up. So I started sweeping my bathroom floor. As I cleaned, I could hear H talk about how she couldn't study unless her house was clean.

Some of the dust seemed caked on the floor or sticky. There was now sudsy water washing up and down the floor, around the toilet. It started sloshing back and forth so violently that I had to back out of the bathroom.

It seemed to be lightning and thundering outside. There didn't seem to be any lights on in the house. The water sloshed back and forth through about half the length of the bathroom.

H may have said something, worrying about the water staying or attracting more roaches. I said, "Don't worry. We just have to wait for it to drain away."

I could now see a drain-grate. Water was sucking down into that grate, leaving milky foam behind. The water made a foamy, violently gurgling sound as it went down the grate. I felt ashamed that this mess was keeping H from studying, or that it might keep her from studying if she were to stay at my place.

(5/13/09) insects among friends; my space jet isn't good enough

Dream #1

I was in a room like the dining room of the house my family lived in from the time I was eleven to fifteen years old. My family was there, as were other people, possibly my peers from the job I had just gotten laid off from. It was daytime, and natural light came into the room from a sliding-glass door at the back of the room. There were a few pieces of furniture in the room There might have been a nice rug on the floor.

On the wall to my right was my mom's buffet, one of her favorite pieces of furniture. The left cupboard door of the buffet was missing. A large insect like a roach tumbled out of the cupboard. The insect was maybe an inch and a half or two inches long. It landed on its legs on the floor. It was dead, dried out.

A smaller insect, also roach-like, but maybe only half an inch long, devoured the larger insect before our very eyes, until the larger insect was nothing more than a frame, like legs and a few spindly structures outlining where the body used to be.

I was ashamed that I had let my co-workers, whom I thought of as friends, especially my co-worker CT, see that I had allowed such a large insect into my house.

Dream #2

I was with my family, driving a large jet or new space rocket down through tunnels like walkway tunnels between subway platforms. The corridors had concrete floors and white-tiled walls and were lit with greenish-grey-white fluorescent light.

At first the jet we drove in looked (in my mind's eye?) white and like a hybrid of an SR-71, a Concord, and a space shuttle, with a radar disc on top. The vehicle may have had a grid pattern on it, as if it was tiled.

There was a young boy with us, somewhere, as if behind me and to my left, and not quite inside the vehicle. The boy was short, of medium build, bratty looking, a little tan, with longish, golden-brown hair, wearing a cocked backward, blue baseball cap, a longish, navy blue t-shirt, and baggy blue jeans.

The boy was making fun of the vehicle in a bratty way, like the vehicle wasn't good enough. In some way I felt like the boy was right. But I alsy felt like I just needed to ignore the boy. We were doing just fine in this vehicle. At some point the vehicle become more like an SR-71, black and tall.

We stopped in a wide opening, like there area before the turnstiles at subway stations. We may have gotten out of the vehicle, as if we were going to walk through the turnstiles and onto the subway platform.