(3/31/05) the last few steps; who's the fairest

(Entered in paper journal at 3:25 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I stepped onto and walked along a concrete top to a brick boundary to a parking lot that was at the top of a slope. The boundary fence reached maybe only two and a half feet up above ground level on the parking lot side, but on the other side it cut down anywhere from five to twenty or so feet.

(Now that I think of it, the description as "top of a slope" seems wrong The fence was a wall along a sloped area, so that the wall, though even on the parking lot side, got taller and shorter as it went along the hill slope side, i.e.)

I walked past some guys who stood at a car a few rows away from the edge of the parking lot. The guys made fun of me because I was walking on the top of the fence like some kind of showoff. I tried to ignore them. Besides, I thought, this isn't even the high point. I passed the high point a long time ago. Where I am now, anybody could walk.

I looked down. The ground seemed to be sloping up on the other side of the fence so that the ground would be level with the fence "top" on both sides in just a few steps. There was a light pole on the fence top. I had to swing around to get to the other side.

I looked down at the ground now. It was far below me, farther than it had been so far. I felt woozy, like I couldn't make it.

There was another telephone pole. Then the fenced curved up, in a J shape, to a stair-bank, so that in no more than ten steps I'd be at an even level on both sides.

But when I got around the second telephone pole I felt that the curving of the fence-top and the steepness of the wall would make me fall down. So I just jumped off on the parking lot side. I was suddenly disappointed in myself for not taking the last few steps.

Dream 2

An old, cartoon-like woman (almost like the witch's beggar-lady disguise in Walt Disney's Snow White) stood before either a beautiful, young, blonde woman or a handsome, thick, dark-haired knight. She asked the person whether she was beautiful.

It turns out this old lady was actually a wizard or sorcerer (male) who practiced changing himself into a female until this point, which he thought was the peak of his skill. But he couldn't see himself. I knew if the person in question spoke honestly the wizard would kill him/her.

Now the person was "I." But "I" was also (somehow) the old lady. "I" (person) hemmed and hawed over my answer. This in itself infuriated the old lady. I felt myself in the old lady's mind, and I knew she was getting infuriated, but "I" didn't feel infuriated.

"I" (old lady) now realized "I" was playing a part in a Shakespeare production. The setting was a room in a spooky mansion. The walls (and door!) were high and tall. I had only presently been given the script, I "remembered," and I'd spent fleeting time memorizing it the best I could before being tossed out on stage.

Now my recording of the old lady's monologue, though gusting and building at first, reached a point of uncertainty, so I struggled and stumbled over every word or phrase. I could feel people looking at me: some critics in the audience, but especially the director, backstage, who all wondered why I and/or they ever thought I was a good actor.

The dream then switched to a similar scene, which I don't remember at all.

(9/9/05) a gay-tex wedding; locker room shakespeare

(Entered in paper journal at 6:54 AM at Starbucks on 87th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in an "organic" grocery store that was about the size of a deli. I had gotten a few things -- some kind of bread and some kind of hummus with spinach in it. I walked through a square of wide aisles by a window wall (I think it was just dark, early evening) to the back, to a fridge-shelf.

I picked up a piece of cheese that actually looked like a McDonald's fruit parfait in a clear, plastic, cup. I looked at the information sticker on the top. It said (.90 pounds and 890 calories?). I was trying to figure out why, if the cheese was 100 calories per .1 pound, how it could be 890 calories, which was 90 calories more (?) than it should have been at .9 pounds. I think I came up with some justification.

Now I sat at a dinner table in front of a girl who was telling me that she chose not to eat the cheese because she didn't want to look any more ridiculous. She said I had pointed out a stain on her white shirt. I now saw the stain -- it was across one of her breasts, a streak like dried blood or shit. I told her either that I hadn't meant to embarrass her or that I hadn't mentioned her stain.

The woman then mentioned some other time she'd had a stain, but I only saw the images she was talking about: I couldn't hear her words. There was a thin, tall woman on a stage, dressed in black latex from head to toe, even with a latex mask. There were also metal clasps or straps all over the sit. But she had a liquidy, silver stain somewhere along her stomach. Now some other woman came up. The two women danced something like ballet (?) together.

I said to the woman (as if below the images we were still sitting in the diner), "How awkward to have that stain. And at the first wedding of its kind. A gay latex wedding.

(At this point I may have woken up. I thought to myself that this could have been called a gay-tex wedding.)

Dream 2

I was in a locker room. The locker room was dark, though occasionally lit by flashes of lightning. I and some woman, who may just have had an affair, were storing items in lockers. The lockers were cubic, maybe fifteen inches to a side, maybe greater in depth. The items we were storing (all I remember is a brown, rough, worn, leather pair of shoes) were pieces of evidence of some kind against the woman's husband (?).

Now the "husband" came in. he was kind of fat, with shaggy, curly hair and a big mustache. he was naked and sweaty. He squealed something at us like that he knew something was going on. He may have run at me.

I realized this was all a dramatic production, some adaptation of a Shakespeare play. I now saw the copy for the original Shakespeare play. I saw that there was a huge amount of stage directions. I was more interested, though, to see that dialogue, as if slightly arbitrary and manipulable, was inserted in the stage directions. I saw how it added a dramatic quality to this scene, which was mostly physical fighting, between the character I had been and the husband. I wondered why nobody ever mentioned this feature of Shakespeare's writing.

(10/12/05) shitting at the breakfast table in the library

(Entered in paper journal at 7:51 AM at Starbucks at 98th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood on a roof with a group of people like actors in a color movie from the late 1950s about New York City, except that the actors also seem to have changed to how they'd look nowadays. The building stood below a modern building something like a mix between  60 Wall Street and the Woolworth Building (which is what someone in the dream actually called the building), but with rich, red bricks bordered with rusticated, rich, tan blocks. The day was sunny and free, and yet it felt like everything surrounding us was on stage

An old/young lady to my right said, "Now you'll have to watch this part in the movie again, really to understand how we should feel as we give our performance." But I didn't want to see it again, especially this close.

A plane flew down low and then nosed up or down so as to hit the Woolworth building with either its belly or its back. The building had a hole smashed in it, but there was no fire or explosion. Yet it was like the building had been completely destroyed. The plane flipped over, away from the building, and headed nose-down toward our building before dipping steeply down and crashing into the street below. We could hear the explosion and feel the shaking.

The lady said, "Now we have to practice living in our building." We or I went down into a series of very nice apartments and offices. We were supposed to be sorrowful about what happened, but we were also supposed to be unaware, as if nothing happened, as if it were going to happen to us.

At one point I stood by a sort of opaque window that was almost wall-sized and divided by a modernistic iron design. It may have been in a corner. I cried, with and without feeling.

Somehow the events had receded into the background. I was more interested in the building, and I may have gone around exploring it with my brother.

Now I was by myself. I was in a huge room like a library in a mansion. There were thin windows that went almost from floor to ceiling. There were a few desks. The place was ornate but also a bit ruffled and unkempt. I found a toilet just inside this room. It felt like this toilet had invisible walls around it, a whole feeling of being a restroom unto itself.

A man in a beige bathrobe walked into the "library." There was a dining table. The man set a glass of juice on it, then looked at me and chuckled and walked away. I knew that soon the whole family would be coming in for breakfast.

Now the wife came in. She wore a red bathrobe. She, like her husband, looked young and attractive in a late-1980s, upper-class, and fashionable, but not gaudy, sort of way. Now a little son and daughter came in, both in red bathrobes.

I felt silly for having decided to use this toilet and not looking for the other, more private one, which a sensible person might have found. But the little girl, who had silvery-blonde hair, said something to me that made me feel like less of an idiot.

I defecated. I could tell my feces was sticky. I finished. I finished. I flushed the toilet, but I watched as a particularly nasty, nutty piece of shit stuck in some weird, tray-like compartment of the toilet bowl. I tried to flush it away again, hoping the family wouldn't see me acting so weird, but pretty sure they would.

Now I was in another library, by myself. The room was much smaller, maybe twenty feet by ten feet, and it was filled with a clutter of old paperbacks: classics and pulps. I was looking for a particular classical science book. I didn't find it. I found a patch of other interesting science paperbacks, maybe by Sir Isaac Newton.

I walked farther and saw on one of the lower shelves, which were stuffed full of paper backs, some plays by Shakespeare, one of which may have been The Merchant of Venice. The spine of this book had a contemporary and popular look to it, like the No Fear Shakespeare series books, mixed with the style of a children's horror novel.

I sat down with my back to the shelves. I may have picked out a couple books to read.