(10/3/04) three hundred-foot/step rose; bloom-less flowers in the land of the dead; esti skepti

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

Dream 1

Don't remember the beginning, except that for some reason I was in an unkempt garden, or, rather, a wild garden, with my brother. We were putting up or pulling down something.

At some point my brother pointed up a stairway either three hundred feet or three hundred steps tall. It was blue-painted, thin metal, and it curved in a spiral. Its landing had no floor attached to it. It was a shaky stairway (I may have called it a ladder). I was afraid to go up it, and I told my brother so.

Then -- (after what?) -- I was climbing up a white-barked "tree" no larger than one inch in diameter. I called the "tree" a rose. It was covered in thorns both long (maybe three inches) and short (maybe one-eighth inch). I may have been climbing up this "rose" in order to take something off its top, which, oddly enough, was a small cone of yellowing leafs. I may have been climbing up the tree to pull or cut the tree down.

But as I continued climbing up the tree I felt the tree being cut down or rotting away from the bottom up, as if the top parts of the tree floated in the air while the lower parts were cut away, rotted and fell away, and/or disappeared altogether. But I knew the top parts, where I was, would fall, straight to the hard ground, as soon as there was no more tree left beneath them, possibly because of my weight.

I looked to my left and saw the stairway beside me. For a moment I was no longer filled with the fear of falling. Instead I was filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment. I had climbed all the way up this "rose," which was just as flimsy as, if not flimsier than, the stairway, and had attained a height of three hundred feet/steps without even having noticed it.

I now felt-saw the last bit of "trunk" rot and fall away beneath me (it looked like a splintered chair leg). Instead of holding onto the "rose" top and falling with it, though, I let go and let myself alone fall to the ground. I assume the "rose" top thus stayed floating in the air.

I myself discovered (guess what...) that I could control my rate of descent. I floated down to the ground, possibly landing on a patch of grass. I looked around and was in awe of the beauty of this wild garden. My mother may have been somewhere.

Dream 2

I was in some dark place. Something may have happened before, but I don't don't remember. In this dark place, which now feels like a tent, I was convinced I had died. I walked, or, rather, crawled, through an opening into an immense, lonely field of grass. I was on a long, wide slope, at the top of which may have been a tree, on the far left side. It was a mostly clear, sunny day.

I was still convinced that I was dead, that I had come into the land of the dead. But I moved around very slowly, as I move when I become aware that I'm dreaming. I saw patches of watery-yellow leafs in the grass, like patches of reverse shadows passing over the green. I told myself, So this is what it's like in the land of the dead. I have a lot to learn here, too.

But then I remembered (!) having seen a lawn in Albuquerque with this same patterning of grass. I tried thinking back to that lawn to remember exactly how it was. Slowly my feeling of being in the land of the dead dawned into a realization that I was actually dreaming.

I calmed myself down as soon as I realized I was dreaming. But I wasn't fully aware of things, not enough to get myself out of an overall daydream-like state. I walked over to a wide, yellow patch of grass and bent down to it, almost laying down on it.

I saw that in between the yellow blades were smallish clusters of old flowers with no petals. The heads were softly greenish-grey. I though to myself, This is what causes the patches to appear yellow -- these petal-less, yellowy flower-heads.

Dream 3

I stood behind a thin barrier erected between the sidewalk and a street. It was morning, kind of cool, very sunny, although everything had a low-sun, reddish-orange tint to it. The street was kind of busy. I waited for (my bosses for my present job) RN and A to show up across the street so I could help them unload things.

I kind of looked away for a second. When I looked back across the street I saw RN and A, each already carrying three or four boxes in each hand, already walking down the sidewalk. I wondered how I could have missed them so completely.

I was now in a camper trailer in the dark. I might have been in a bed. I don't really know. All I know is there was a barrier like a kitchen counter around with RN and A walked, going past me and to the front door.

RN said, "Let's get out of here. This guy is so lazy. He'll never get to work." I couldn't figure out why he'd say that. I just wasn't even aware that RN and A had gotten here yet.

I stood up to go out the door after them. I could feel-see them outside the trailer, walking to a cargo trailer with empty boxes in their hands. They had already started working, and here I was, doing nothing. I was now standing right by the open door. The light outside kept shifting between day and night and early morning. I didn't go outside. I stood in front of an oven.

My sister was behind me, holding a baby in a long blanket. She held it against her so that it was looking over her right shoulder. She was telling me something abut my dad. My dad didn't like the Spanish language or refused to speak it or even works that kind of found their way into the Spanish language. This was something of an annoyance as my sister's baby was Spanish in some way.

My dad would often say "esti" for "this," which bugged my sister, because she said it should have been something else in Spanish, but that Dad was using a Spanish-Italian hybrid word. He also used the word "skepti," the English for which I don't remember now.

I listened to my sister's story, laughed, and would interject things like, "What? He said that?" for a little while as I kept fixed on the stove and the door, wanting to get to work. It seems like a pot of food or perhaps just a pile of food kept appearing and vanishing.

At some point I walked out the door and down the steps. It was daylight. My sister followed me to the doorway and stood in it, continuing to tell me about Dad. It was like she was going on and on in an attempt to make some complete circuit of her argument, but she couldn't find the connections, so she had to keep going.

But I had to leave to get to work. My sister was still talking as I started to walk away. But she was also not talking. But also something like a deep, phantom-like part of her spoke in a demanding voice, "Well, I'll show you what being ungrateful gets you. You're in trouble."

(2/21/05) thank goodness that's no longer me

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I brought roses to a woman in a nice, old car that was parked in a driveway surrounded by lush-leafed bushes. The roses were, however, like I had pulled some kind of thin, woody-stemmed shrub out of the ground. The leafs were yellowing in some spots. The leafs were shaped like:

I don't think I ever saw any actual rose flowers.

I would open the door to the car, the passenger side, and put the "roses" somewhere. The lady, fine, elegant, like the second wife in the movie Seabiscuit, would say something seductively innocuous, and I would stretch across the front seat, which had no steering wheel or dashboard, like a backseat, and, almost in a crawling position, kiss the lady.

I think I was a tall, strong, beautiful man, though not rich. The lady had a rich husband. I didn't want to be with the woman, but I felt compelled, almost hypnotized, by the woman's will.

The scene repeated itself with sligh variations, mainly that I took more notice of the things around me. It repeated itself again -- but this time I felt separated "from myself," and when it came time for the kiss I even thought something like, Thank goodness that's no longer me.

(9/10/05) rose arches; pornographic bookmark; whatever god blesses will be blessed; broken cell phone; revenge of the pirates

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

It was night. I was walking with my friend and NYC Americorps coworker KB along a street in a busy part of a desert town. The street was on a hill, sloping up to the street where we were, and sloping up from either side of the street we were on to the point where we stood. We were getting ready to leave "work" for the day, but I wanted to cross the street.

KB and XXXXX (some male coworker) ha dgone to a restaurant I thought was special. I was kind of sad they hadn't invited me. But I looked across to where they had gone. It was just a small place with a white plastic sign, backlit by fluorescent lighting, saying "First Avenue XXXXX." There may have been a rose shape on the sign.

I said, "Oh, it was only there? I don't need to go there." So we turned around.

Before we went home, KB had to show me something on the other side of the hill. As we went down I saw the tops of the arches of an old McDonald's building.

All the lights were off, and the arches might have been smashed.

Dream 2

I was in a room with my friend R. It may have been night. A light was on. R showed me some porno magazine. He showed me the girl he liked. At first I didn't want to see it. I didn't want R to think I liked pornography. But then I looked.

R showed me how he had the page saved with a strand or a few strands of long, metallic-purple hair bound about three-quarters of an inch up by a small string of beads, tan and brown, in an austere pattern.

Dream 3

I walked into a church with my mom. We met a nun who was going to read and pray about a screenplay I had written. The manuscript was huge. I don't think my mom approved of it. The nun was pretty, though old, and a tiny bit pale and chubby-faced.

The nun took my manuscript. We walked along with her through a maze of domed and columned rooms both large and small. The place was dark, but dazzling images like moving stained glass windows were playing against the walls and our bodies. The images were mostly white, grey, blue, and purple, and seem mainly to have featured doves.

My mom kept telling me and the nun how she didn't think she thought the screenplay was very godly and how she would do what she could to make religious people agree. I kept telling her and the nun things like, "We're here to see what God says about my screenplay. If God like it, then this is one time you won't be able to hinder my success."

My mom appealed solely to the nun now. I said to the nun, "It doesn't matter what my mom convinces you about. Whatever God blesses will be blessed, and you will be the messenger of that blessing."

The nun took my statement as pride and said, "Well, I haven't prayed to God yet, so watch how you treat me." She walked away to pray.

I now realized I had given the nun the wrong manuscript. The manuscript I had given her was a novel of the plot, not a screenplay. I had taken the story too seriously in the novel, and it had turned out petty and boring. The screenplay was much more fun. I didn't want the nun to think that I had made such a big deal out of such a bad work.

Dream 4

I was outside during the day. Maybe on some tall bridge. I got a call on my cell phone from my Aunt P. She spoke in a very low and gravelly voice. She said something like, "Since you never call me, I decided to call you. I know you don't care about me and you don't want to hear from me." I was about to tell her that wasn't true and that I loved her. But my phone broke.

I walked to a car where my NYC Americorps crew chief SM sat. My phone was broke in half, like the only thing that had held it together were two black wires which were now snapped.

SM saw my phone and said, "You shouldn't have a nice phone like that! Let me see it." I gave him the phone.

The car SM sat in was short and full of trash and blankets, so that SM seemed to be hiding from everything. I looked away from the car, as if standing below the car door. Like the door opened upward instead of outward.

I saw a T-Mobile store across a parking lot. I could feel the rest of my Americorps crew somewhere. I thought, This time I'm taking my phone directly to the T-Mobile store, and I'll exchange it for something free right there.

SM was doing something I didn't like on my phone. I told him to give me my phone back. He gave me my old phone back. It was broken in half, but it worked. But I wanted my new phone. Somehow I got it.

I checked my bill on my old phone. I was surprised, having gotten my new phone, that my bill wasn't enormous. But I saw that T-Mobile had put the charge on a deferred payment plan. I scrolled down to see what the changes would be for the next few months.

Now I had my new phone. I walked through a street with tall buildings close on either side. I read two text messages I had received, one from my mom and one from my grandfather. The messages were both like goodbye messages.

The one from my mom made it sound like I was dead. It said something like, "I am glad I had the time with you up until 9/10/05, and I'll always remember how you loved us all." I was really upset that my mom thought I was dead. I wanted to call her back, but now I had no reception on my phone.

I was now part of some movie about a young man who was a fashion brat and who only wanted to hurt people.

Dream 5

A movie or TV show of which I was somehow a part, in which a group of pirates or criminals were trapped in some brown-metal, mushroom shaped building and stalking out of the ocean. "I" handed the people some kind of sweet food through prison bars. They may not have received it, or they may have dropped it.

Now the focus was on a canal-filled town in the "17th" (18th?) century. A group of rich people were on a big ship just outside the town. The air and sky and water all had a coppery tinge. The prisoners had escaped, and they were all coming on a rowboat to attack the ship. They would succeed if they reached the ship. They were all dressed in rich, beautiful clothing, and that showed they had been mistaken as something lower than they were by being kept captive. They were coming to avenge themselves.

But "I" knew some of us on the ship had actually done something to help them. If I could convince them of that before they attacked, I might be able to save us all. I didn't know if i could. Their plan was to begin killing as soon as they got on board.