(1/16-17/05) i was a scout; may the force be with super kmart

(Entered in paper journal at 11:25 PM, 1/16/05, at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Entire battled carried out in room as if one person stood for many troops. I was a scout.

(Entered at 6:15 AM, 1/17/05, at home in Harlem.)

Dream 2

I went to a movie with one of my friend R's gay male friends. I sat there before the movie started, acting upset that R and others hadn't showed up. They hadn't showed up, I now knew, because they had hoped the guy would hit on me. Then R sat in the seat in front of  me. I couldn't see him. I couldn't see over the seats. I was as short in them as a five-year-old.

My foot was in the crack of the seat. R said something weird about getting my foot out of Virginia. Everybody around me laughed. I felt stupid, especially at having that be R's greeting to me.

Everybody around me shouted a similar phrase back at R, but mumbling, as if they weren't sure it was a good idea to do so. R got upset. I, normal height now, tapped R on the slope between his neck and his left shoulder and laughed a gentle laugh.

We were suddenly walking through a Super Kmart-type store that sold clothes, groceries, etc. I passed a black and red, wide-mesh crocheted (knit?) outfit.

I thought of how much I wanted it. But I wondered what everybody else would think of me if I took it.

I then saw a feminine, shawl-style poncho with a hood (?!), made of wool, grey with pink, thin, wide, square designs, fall off a display shelf and onto the ground. I grabbed this and put this on, hoping not to look feminine, but to look like Obi-Wan Kenobi in his first scene in Star Wars. I walked up to R, who stood in the checkout line. I said something like, "May the Force be with you." He just smiled slightly.

I walked around the store. A guy I thought was a serious businessman who'd kick my ass because of the way I looked just laughed and said, "Good for you, Force!"

I walked down a frozen food aisle. There were two samples-tables. I walked to the first one and said my Force thing. I now was wearing a huge, brown robe and yellow, thick, dirty, leather gloves. The man at the table asked me if I wanted to try a sample. He said the first sample, some kind of beef (?) on a Ritz cracker, was too messy. He got me crab salad on a Ritz cracker instead. I took off my gloves to grab the cracker. The table guy was taking all this seriously, as if I were actually the wizard I was pretending to be.

Now I was trapped in some house. I was I was but not I. I kept addressing myself form outside myself as Tom. I had discovered something here and now had to get out and tell people. But I couldn't get out or figure out why.

A dog, possibly my friend R's dog, kept sniffing at the crack between the door and the floor. I thought something like, Just like usual. When she wants to go out, she treats me like I'm being mean. But I'm not being mean. As soon as I get all this taken care of I'll take her out.

I fainted. After this there may have been some strange scene in which I realized something beautiful about Hitler in an almost religious ecstasy.

(4/20/05) darth baseball; speeches

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was watching the new Star Wars film. I was surprised by how few computerized special effects were used. The emphasis seemed to be on a fun story and strange, transfixing visuals. There was one scene of a bad guy looking out the windows of a narrow, dark room in a ship, out to a bunch of stars in the distance. His pale skin glowed purple in the dark light.

Then there was a whole sequence made Terry Gilliam/Joseph Cornell style of a "newspaper clipping man" in a business suit flying through a kaleidoscopic sky of "Post-it" neon yellows, pinks, greens, and oranges, raying circularly like sunbeams at one moment, fragmenting and mixing with other collage clippings at another moment.

Then there was a strange scene where Darth Vader visited Yoda's house (which was like Yoda's cottage except full of things like stereos and TVs) and demanded that Yoda give him the secrets of the good power.

During this time I was Darth Vader. I wondered why Anakin was all dressed up as Darth Vader this early in the movie. Then I realized that it was in the second movie, not the third, that Anakin changed into Darth Vader. All the while "I" was walking through Yoda's house as Darth Vader.

Then there was a scene of a couple guys in the first row of a baseball game. I thought, How characteristic of Spielberg (!) always to add that contemporary touch to his films.

One of the baseball fans now stood on the field, holding onto the barrier between the field and the seats. The barrier was about three feet tall and made of some adobe-like substance. His feet lifted up and flailed behind him. He was beginning to float away, but he was trying to stop himself, all the while joking rather easily and lightly with his male and female friends in the front row.

Dream 2

I stood by a van that looked like a silver camper trailer. In the distance was a long picnic table with a bunch of members from my NYC Americorps program. We had been dismissed from some meeting where only some of us were supposed to give speeches, though all of us had prepared speeches.

I felt a pang of regret that I hadn't given my speech. The chief of an NYC Americorps crew I was not on, AP, walked up to me. I concealed my minor disappointment so she wouldn't think I was just some dumb, obsessed weirdo.