(7/4/06) the stream test; being part of the hill; my brother wrecks house; suspicion in the video store

(Entered into paper journal at 9:02 AM at Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a stream with a boy and a girl. I was someone like Carlos Castaneda, and this stream was a new test for me. I was eager, excited. But the kids were indifferent.

I stood in the water so it came up near my solar plexus. I looked down to the bed of the clear stream. The bed had a floor of tan and coppery, smooth cobblestones.

I looked back up. Huge waves heaved toward me. They were deep blue like the sea. As the flooded over me I felt some kind of intense magic. I had to battle to absorb it to stay conscious.

But to my left the little girl was standing or treading water as if nothing were happening. And the little boy was scuttering around to my right, near the bed of the stream, which now looked like an Islamic tile floor, and wearing big, clunky, eyes-and-nose swimming goggles and having fun. I felt stupid for thinking my experience had been intense at all.

Dream 2

I was running up a hill in a park. The hill was all lush, beautiful lawn, lit by powerful, white lights so that the atmosphere was dim and the vibrant lawn had a crystalline, undersea look.

I headed toward a log cabin on the hill to get something for a group of friends below. I felt some person below judging me for having been running up and down the hill all day when there were easier ways to do things.

I was a pretty girl. I thought, But I like running up the hill. I like the exertion. Plus, I like being part of the hill. It's beautiful.

Dream 3

I was (possibly) watching an apartment for a woman like my landlady. My brother came in. I told him he could stay, but that he had to treat this place with respect. My brother started bashing all over, making tons of noise.

Suddenly the place was full of noise. The TV was blasting. There were pots boiling full blast in the closet-sized kitchen. And my brother was taunting me about all the noise he could make.

I said, "I'm just giving you a couple more chances to calm down."

My brother went into the bathroom and broke the handle off the sliding door of the shower. He brought it out to show me how he didn't care what I told him, and how he would do whatever he wanted.

I went to the store and pulled out a blue business card from under a gross, damp pile of dish rags. My landlady's phone number was on the top line of the card. Then, written in blue ink on lines below, were three other numbers, one of which was for the police.

I called one of the numbers. Now my brother had to leave, or these people would come for him. I felt bad for rejecting my brother. But he'd already broken one thing in my house.

My brother was now standing on the couch in the living room. He said, "Okay, okay. I'm going before they get here. But just look at this before I go."

A movie was playing on the TV: some comedy starring Owen Wilson. But this particular scene was of a forest. A huge, dull-yellow turtle with brown-black spots walked between pine trees. Now an enormous snake was somewhere.

Dream 4

I went into a video store at night. There were almost no lights on in the store. I went to the back of the store and found something I liked.

I went to the cashier. The cashier yelled at me, "What do you have in your backpack?"

I, without taking off my backpack, showed the cashier I hadn't stolen anything from the store. The cashier was satisfied. But he still didn't like me. Either he threw his arms up in the air or he made me throw my arms in the air. A white bracelet of a loose, rubbery material fell down one of our arms.

The man said, "Next time you come in here, you get one of these," (the bracelet) "which means you leave your backpack right here until you leave the store!"

I thought, Great. Now I can't even bring my backpack into the video store. I noticed the man now. He was short, a little fat, with long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He had a beard that was reddish brown with grey undertones. He was angry-looking but also small and lazy and weak-looking. I thought, Well, this guy is a lot like me!

(7/18/06) sliding down a mine shaft; not sleeping together; shades of black; mom takes me shopping

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on train from Utica Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was with two other men, hikers, going up a mountain cliff of ice. It was day. We were in thick, tan, fur-lined coats. I was behind the leader. We were in the shade.

We ascended to a hole like a mine shaft, except that it was the size of a dumbwaiter or heating vent. The leader went down the shaft. I felt his apprehension, like going down the slide-like shaft was a mistake -- also that the slide pinched his bottom and legs somehow.

I was now sliding behind the leader. The floor of the shaft was like ice over a black, metallic material. Soon the ice wore away, the slope leveled out, and the shaped widened into an open space.

The leader and I (I don't know about the third person) stood and walked to a house that looked somehow Mexican, with thin (wooden or concrete) posts in arching patterns for a roof over a nice patio. It was dark, but the house was lit as if by moonlight.

Dream 2

I was at a party (?), possibly at my friend R's house. I sat on a couch with a blonde woman. Soon we were by ourselves (or possibly speaking with a third person). We were under a blanket. She was naked. I was kissing her near her vagina. I wanted to bury my face in her vagina.

Now it was like some of that hadn't happened. I was on the couch in an empty version of a room very like R's TV room with L's sister A. I didn't know whether A liked me. We were both tired. I figured if we both slept on the couch that would mean she liked me.

But R stood before us. He wanted to talk. I said something like, "We're both tired. I think we're gonna say goodnight."

R looked at me with a daze dazed with anger that he was hiding -- jealousy that a girl liked me and not him. He left.

A reached her arms out toward me, but more like she wanted to tell me goodbye and not like she wanted me to stay.

I said, "Weren't we planning to sleep here together? What's wrong? Do you not have enough pillows?"

A said, "No, no. I have a pillow." A was laying so her head was two feet from the end of the couch. She looked awkward and uncomfortable, under a scant blanket and on a thin pillow, while a lot of nice blankets and pillows were beside her and at the head of the couch.

Dream 3

(Not sure if this was a "dream.")

I lay in bed. Suddenly I was very relaxed. I "felt" a visual of my body as an aura pattern. But all the aura's gradations were shades of black. My body was like a funnel or tunnel moving in toward a deep black oval at my solar plexus.

A woman who was about seventy years old asked me questions I can't remember, specifically about my body. She may have asked me a question about my right arm, to which I responded, "I don't know. The colors all seem black to me." I was intrigued that an answer regarding the physical condition of my body was stated as regarding the color condition of my aura.

The woman now asked about the deepening of my aura at the solar plexus, how it was somehow troubled. This spot was key to my identity. The woman gave this spot the name Ren-O-Wen.

Dream 4

My mom had called to tell me that if I still needed XXXXX, she would come pick me up on Monday to go get it. XXXXX was something like pants or shirts. I told her okay. But then I realized I shouldn't do something silly like go shopping with my mom on a Monday. Everybody at work would laugh at me.

It was morning, maybe around 6:30 AM. I was in the desert, by a shopping center/strip mall before a sun-obscuring, shade-purple and pink mountain range. The air was slightly mist. I walked toward the mountains.

I was in XXXXX (as if "this" "Santa Fe" were south of Albuquerque). I had to get to Albuquerque to get what my mom wanted to buy me. (It was Saturday, so my mom wouldn't have to come down on Monday, after all.) But I realized Albuquerque was seventy miles up the road and over those huge mountains.

I sat on a wood post before the shopping center parking lot. Suddenly my mom drove up in a van with a man. She stopped. I got in. She told me she'd had a feeling I'd try to make it on my own. So she'd driven down here to pick me up today instead of Monday. I was relieved.

We drove to "my house." I was inside "my house" now, as if waiting for my mom to come pick me up, as if she hadn't just picked me up. I was on the phone with my boss BS's girlfriend. She complained about how BS spent too much time at work. Now BS and my mom drove up in the van to take me shopping.