(1/9/05) getting eaten is dangerous

(Entered in paper journal at 7 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I stood on a slope overlooking a lake or some body of water. Another person was with me. As I faced the lake and slope, the person would have been to my left. I turned to face that person, though I still couldn't see (her?).

Some bird to my left (now) spoke to me from some rocks. I couldn't understand the speech. It almost sounded like bird calls.

I now looked to my right, to the slope and lake. On two tall, spire-like rocks perched two wet-feathered, long-legged, huge birds that I called pelicans. Their feathers were brown as a brown duck's feathers. They opened their mouths. One huge blue jay flew into each bird's mouth. The blue jays struggled a lot. I knew that something dangerous had happened.

(2/2/05) the final showdown; myself in the mirror; indigo bunting; the big store

(No date/time info for paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I was in my room in the dark. My bed seems to have been a futon, like my friend R's girlfriend L's bed. I walked to it, knowing it but not seeing it. I was on the phone with either my friend ML or BMC. My friend was making light of, trying to be cheerful about, my living situation. Apparently things were coming to blows tonight.

My friend said, "So it looks like it's the final showdown." I lay down in the bed, trying to figure out the "correct" way to say "the final showdown" -- I was actually thinking of "the final countdown."

Now there were a few strong knocks on my door. I saw some shadows in the light at the crack under my door. The person knocked again. I no longer had the phone. I walked to the door. I opened it without turning my light on.

One of my flatmates, the darker, heavier one, stood at my door in reflective sunglasses, boxer briefs, and no shirt.

I said, "Hello."

He said, "Hi." He lifted a gun straight up to my face. I ducked and grabbed his arm. We struggled.

Dream 2

I looked at my face in the mirror. I was expecting to look really bad. In fact, when I first looked at my face I thought it did look bad. But then I noticed that my face was smooth except for one or two tiny bumps. I had a few kind of dark, but almost completely faded, blemishes.

Dream 3

I was in something like a parking lot for a bank at the edge of a parking lot for a mall or strip mall. Against the building was a juniper tree or some other small, shrubby tree. I watched an "indigo bunting" land in the tree. It was like a long-bodied version of an eastern bluebird with a blue chest and a bright, deep green tail, very long. Even its beak might have been bright, deep blue.

I said, "Oh! It's an indigo bunting. I thought I'd never see one!"

I slowly walked to the tree to make sure the bird was an indigo bunting. I was afraid of scaring the bird away. But I also lifted up my hand to see if the bird would land on it.

The bird landed. But when I moved my hand the bird slipped off violently and rolled somersaults backwards for about fifteen feet.

Either I walked up to the bird or it flew back toward me. It had lost some of its color as soon as it landed on my hand the first time. But now it was a pale blue with sweeps of pinkish and brick red scalloped along its body. It looked like a paint-scraped building-side.

I thought something like, See? You're already messing things up.

Dream 4

I was watching a movie that was supposed to be The Big Sleep. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie again because I could understand Faulkner a little better nowadays. The color of the film was monochrome, yellow-grey.

The scene was of "Joan Crawford" and "Humphrey Bogart." They were, by this point in the movie, playing each other's roles. "Bogart" wore "Crawford's" clothes, and "Crawford" wore "Bogart's." They each had their voices switched, too, and their heads, at one point, so that the body-head configurations looked really strange. They gave these weird, Eugene O'Neill-esque soliloquies, which preceded some kind of final confrontation between the two characters.

Now it was the confrontation. I was there. The scene was in color. We were at the side, shaded (?), of a tall, wide building like a mall in the middle of nowhere. I remarked how great it was to put all the movie except the end in black and white and the end in color.

The woman ran around the far corner of the building. Now the man ran up, into an enclosed-looking concrete area like a loading dock, which was actually an entrance to the building. I thought I should run after him and tell him where the woman had run. But I was frozen.

Now it was I and my brother, as two little kids, waiting here like we were waiting for our father to come back out. We stood there for a while.

An old man came out and told us, "Didn't you guys know the mall is open now? Why are you just waiting out here?" My brother and I felt stupid for waiting. We went in. I don't know whether my brother stayed there with me.

I was (or we were) looking for a library where I could get a specific book, probably about the paranormal. But for the longest time we just kept walking through what seems to have been a department store like a Dillard's.

We went through rooms and rooms. The rooms were huge, tall, but more like rooms displaying living fashions in museums or historic mansions than like divisions of a department store. rooms were filled with beautiful, classical, wooden furniture and crystal chandeliers and were papered in golden, green, and other colored wallpaper with all kinds of beautifully, classical-French designs.

Finally we came to a "store" that was like the bed and bedding section of a department store with shelves interspersed throughout of books and magazines. The lighting and space were just like at a big Barnes & Noble. I found some magazines and a book that looked interesting. But they weren't what I'd been looking for.

I walked into another room, a wood-walled, small room with a few thick, tall beds. A sales attendant came in. I put the magazines and book down on the bed. I told the sales attendant I was looking for a library, not a bookstore. She told me where it was. Suddenly it was like had forgotten what I had been looking for and she had told me. I wondered why I had ever picked up the book and magazines in the first place.

My brother and I headed to the library. But now we were back outside. We saw how beside and in front of the building was a tall, arch-shaped, deep, copper-bricked entrance that was the only thing that remained standing of a now-ruined building. The building had been destroyed.

The place was very frightening to me at first -- its long depth and shadow and the ghostliness surrounding its destruction. but I lessened the fear by telling myself something I've now forgotten.

(2/13-14/05) the highest heaven society; they call that bird the backin

(Entered in paper journal at 11:30 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

Can't remember how it began. Left from a church area. Drove back to it or came back to it. But now it was different somehow. And now it was at first all by itself with a small parking lot like at the edge of a small town

and then it was like one of the last filled spaces in a defunct strip mall in a suburb with a huge parking lot.

As I came up to this place I could hear someone denouncing it, saying something like (which then actually became), "In our church if people were to die like that we'd bury them. In your church you'd eat them." (This was to say, "You'd make them die like that and then you'd eat them.") I now saw a photocopied article from some journal like Newsweek entitled something like, "You Eat Them When They Die."

It had been a bright, blue day. Now it was night. My NYC Americorps crew chief SM walked away from the church and into the parking lot, saying something like, "You guys are sick. You act like it's Christianity. But it's just killing people."

There was a very calm voice from somewhere saying, "Well if you really believe that, come check. We're open and in service right now."

I looked into all the windows from my distance, maybe fifty feet away. I could see only dim glimmers of light like fluorescent light behind tinted windows and good blinds or even some kind of poster board or drywall. I stayed that far away, yet I was also right by the entrance door, which I also saw from my distance as boarded off.

I kept feeling a strange protrusion like the lip of a cubicle's trashcan pushing outward from the board of the door. I wondered how people got in and out and where the voice came from. It seemed to me this place was either closed down forever or top secret.

But now I was only right by the door, not fifty feet away. I now felt the protrusion to be something like a portable chest of papers, a cardboard-like box papered over with some nice, floral-like designs. I didn't see or feel the front fully. I just opened the top drawer and looked at the first photocopied article I found, which was a series of self-help "healthy living" style articles trying to promote the idea that this church was more about keeping healthy than anything else. I put it away.

I was now in a dark room. Beside me was a door. There was a fluorescent light next door,. The church service was taking place. This room, empty, dark, thin-carpeted, with one dresser and this strange square of file drawers, was the visitor's room. I could barely see anything, yet I saw everything clearly enough.

I pulled out an article I don't remember. It was strange enough and close enough to cannibalism to scare me.

I flipped the box around to see the titles on each file drawer. I don't think I was supposed to do this. I did it surreptitiously.

Next door the service was all a show, put on to make me feel like what I'd heard about this church being cannibalistic was false. There was always a low undercurrent of voices under a lead voice which smoothly yet angrily spoke against people like me who apparently didn't understand religion and yet were "loved" by the religious, anyway.

I pulled out another article from another drawer whose title frightened me but which I forgot as soon as I read it. The article was in defense of cannibalism as a way of staying healthy. It was written in some self-help style of the previous article, but now with an implication even that people who do not believe will be cruelly murdered as well as eaten.

I realized this was a second- or third-level-initiated reading and that I had looked into a drawer I wasn't supposed to look into. But I couldn't remember the drawer I had opened. I put the article in the "Real-Time Live AV Files" drawer, since that was the only title I remembered. But when I closed the drawer I remembered that the article had actually been from a drawer one or two drawers up.

But when I reopened the drawer the article was no longer there. There were tapes which I could tell had a fat, bald, southern-drawled man yelling that the outsiders no longer had a right to persecute the church. And there was a glossy nine-by-thirteen-inch-thick, glossy-covered book, its cover's top half black with yellow lettering and its bottom half a color photo. The title of the book was something like A Technical Manual for a Happy and Blessed Human Communion.

Once again, despite the happy photo of a WASPish family in the woods as if just walking back home from Sunday service, I felt some menacing conviction (and the voices and voice in the next room continued) that the text would constantly imply that those who read this book would be cruelly murdered as well as cannibalized.

I looked at the spine of the book, to the publisher's name, on the bottom of the spine -- The Highest Heaven Society. I was revolted.

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM on 2/14/05 at home in Harlem.)

Dream 2

I walked along an asphalt path with trees on my right at the top of a thickly treed, short slope down to a creek and on my left a street like in East Denver, probably a side street with a factory or warehouse on the other side. I was probably heading toward work or something like work. I had left my glasses where I had just come from (possibly work -- where I was heading, too).

Now a red-tailed hawk flew toward me. I knew it was a red-tailed hawk but I couldn't see it for certain. I spoke to it, telling it hello and that I was glad it had come to see me again. It landed on a tree branch, then flew across to another that was closer to me.

I wished it could get closer. It sensed that, too, as if it also were getting something out of my clear vision of it. It flew down and almost landed on the ground before deciding that wasn't even a possibility.

Both I and it looked for some branch that was low enough for it to land on and for me still to get close enough to see it clearly without my glasses. But in one second, or maybe a half a second, we discovered nothing, and I lifted out my left hand for the hawk to land on.

The hawk landed on my hand. It wasn't heavy. But as it landed, my vision shifted. I was "lying down" in a bed in the dark. But the bed was upright and in a thick of treetops at the ridge of the creek bank's slope. The hawk had crawled onto my head. I felt its fleshy stomach (?) moving around. I kept waiting for it to shit or piss on my head.

After this there may have been some scene where I was in or around some house with a group of folks, watching some movie.

But now it was daytime again. I stood on a path overlooking a steep slope, a box canyon, down maybe fifty feet to a dry bed on the left wall of which was a grey stone arch tunnel. There was a bridge across the gap and another asphalt path on the other side. Then there was a short strip of grass and a wide road that connected down a way to the side road, beside which was the asphalt path on which I had been before.

I felt I must get back there to take care of what hadn't been taken care of. But a slightly older man, a boss like one of the ecology people in the parks would be a "boss" for my Americorps crew (even though our crew chief would be our actual supervisor), kind of held me here in obligation. I wasn't incredibly worried.

Suddenly a bird flew down the canyon. It had a round, disc-like body, probably of broawn feathers, a long tail, and a long neck with a blue head.

It looked maybe three feet long, pretty big. It soared directly in front of me and the boss.

I saw the bird's head and asked the boss if the bird was a pheasant. He said no. He gave me some garbled science talk.

I continued to watch the bird, which grew huge. Its colors changed to white with red, granite-dot-like stipples on the back and red and white stripes for the tail, and a white neck with a green head. It was maybe ten feet long, with a twenty-food wingspan (whereas before its wingspan was maybe only slightly larger than its body). The bird slowly hovered backwards into the arch tunnel.

The boss was gabbing away this whole time. And finally he said, "They call that bird the Backin."

I was in a car with a bunch of friends, kids, probably. We were looking at Polaroids and/or doing something we weren't supposed to be doing.

(1/16/06) the furries of falcon crater; the first day of spanish class; cocaine with the white boy

(Entered in paper journal at 9:46 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

It was daytime. I was in some desert or wilderness. I was with a group of people, but they were all off doing something else. I looked over my shoulder and saw a huge, silvery barn in front of which flew a colorful (but not bright) falcon.

I walked over an enormous crater on a steel girder or very narrow bridge. I wasn't too far across when I saw a bird come out of the sky. It flew closer and closer. As it approached me it flipped so its back faced me. It had red and blue, maybe some green, feathers highlighted with tans and browns. It had a long tail streaming from its tail feathers, red, maybe scaly.

I think I thought, It's a peregrine falcon!

The bird flew off naturally. I felt doomed and afraid and excited and blessed at having seen the bird. I figured (hoped) more birds would come.

I looked up and saw a white bird. I judged by its white head that it was a bald eagle. But its whole body was white. It was slightly disappointed, thinking it was "just" a seagull. But as it flew closer I saw it had a face like a seal, a furry, white seal.

The bird approached the railing of the crater and hovered down to the edge and was actually a seal. Now it was gone.

A group of kids came running up in its place. The area around the crater (if the crater was even there anymore) was now a pine forest. The kids may have come from some log cabin. They were dressed in plush suits with grey bodies like mice but huge, ink ears, like "some kind of bird." The kids all had strange faces. I was pretty sure they all had a deadly virus. One of them, with a chewed off right ear, actually collapsed.

I turned away. I still stood on the girder, but I don't think I was over anything too deep.

The children had been behind my right shoulder. I turned to see behind my left shoulder. Another group of kids, fewer, ran up in white suits like white seal suits. There was a female teacher with them.

I felt like another bird was coming, but I don't know whether I saw it.

Dream 2

I saw in Spanish class. It was our first day. I felt like I was shorter than all the other students, probably less intelligent, too.

The (male) teacher gave us our assignment. Already I knew I probably wouldn't do it. I was already confused by things the teacher was saying. Already I was being overwhelmed and losing ground in class.

The class's seating structure seemed to break apart, so everybody was scattered everywhere. I felt like a ton of people were already looking at me and deciding they didn't like me.

I already wished the semester were over.

The bell rang. I stood up and walked out to the "hallway," which was a balcony (oval?) surrounding the first floor.

I finally, somehow, figured out this was a high school class. I called someone on my cell phone, maybe BA, the leader of my Americorps NYC Parks program. I yelled at BA, asking why he had put me into a high school class.  I felt like I was being sprayed with a hose or soaked in my own sweat.

I walked back into the class. What I really didn't want to admit was that all these high school students could beat me intellectually. Nut now I was also ashamed I had made such a fool of myself by yelling about them right in front of the classroom.

But as I went into the classroom a girl walked past me. She was Hispanic, young, very pretty, very mature. She smiled at me like she thought I was cute because of the fuss I had made. I thought, Wait until she sees what a disappointing person I am, thought. Besides, she's too young for me.

I was outside. I walked some big square of blocks, up a slope, across, along something like a construction site full of muddy, brown gravel. I had a newspaper which I read and/or held over my head (though while I held it over my head I still considered its contents).

I must have stopped somewhere to do some Americorps work. I was now soaked and dirty. I turned and walked back down the slope and to the school. The street was now lined with trees. I realized I was heading back to class.

I looked down at myself -- my clothes (a maroon, button-up shirt and a pair of checkered or thinly patterned tan and black slacks) were disgustingly soaked and sticking to my body.

I wanted to ditch school, but I knew I couldn't do it that early in the school year. I would just have to go to school and live with how disgusting I looked.

Dream 3

I stood in a forest. I saw an image of my Americorps NYC Parks coworker VT a few yards off. Some unseen man to my left told me that VT was a cocaine dealer and that right before she left Americorps she got in trouble for doing cocaine "with the youngest white boy in the whole crew."

(9/15/07) diseased ruins and marshy river; yelling at brother; psychiatrist baggage

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM at Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn Heights.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.

On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.

I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.

I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.

I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.

I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.

Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.

To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.

Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.

In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.

I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.

I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.

A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.

I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.

Dream #2

I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.

My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.

My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)

I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.

Dream #3

My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.

A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.

We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.

(10/26/08) musical in a fast food restaurant

(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked into a fast food restaurant. I was just going to get a coffee so I could sit down and write. The cash register had a square of open space before it, possibly marked by barriers The counter itself seemed large and tall. A young woman was behind the counter. Two older, grey-haired men stood before the counter, ordering something. Both men looked dignified.

When I got up to place my order, the two men told me I should try the soup and XXXXX. I went ahead and ordered it. On my tray I had a coffee, a paper cup of soup, and some weird, pastry-like object as long as a small hero sandwich. My order came to eleven dollars. I was a little disappointed. I thought, And all I wanted was a coffee.

I looked for a place to sit. The seating area was open and sunny. There seemed to be plenty of seats. I might have seen an attractive woman. I might have thought that I should sit by her. But then I somehow got distracted. When I looked back, all the seats were full.

I looked to my right. The seating area was now enormous. To my right was an area with no windows, with dim lighting. I saw a few seats there. I walked over to that area. But as soon as I got there I couldn't see any open tables.

There was an open seat at a table for four people at which only one woman sat. I sat down without asking the woman if it was okay. I tried to take up as little space as possible, and I didn't talk to the woman, so as not to bother her. The woman was tallish, wearing blue jeans and a grey sweater, and with brownish, crimped hair.

There was a TV blaring somewhere. Everyone was watching TV while they ate. The show was a musical.

Now the musical was taking place right inside this restaurant. The room was enormous and opulently lit. There were nicely dressed people dancing all around. Green things like leafs fluttered through the air.

Now the show was over. I saw as if from a high point in the room. The room was enormous and tall. the walls and floors were of marble. The floors were extremely polished, with either a striped or checkered pattern of pink and beige or brown and beige marble.

The green, leafy material that had fallen during the show was now strewn all over the ground. I got a "close-up" view of it. It was like I was talking about it with a woman, possibly my girlfriend H. We suddenly saw that the tattered, green matter that looked like leafs was actually tattered, green wings that were still attached to dead birds which looked like seagulls with tan patterns on them. The woman expressed sad surprise.

Seeing the room from the high view again, I watched an old, white man blowing the green matter off the floor with a leaf blower. The matter all flourished upward in an elegant pattern before disappearing. I thought, Now the dance has gone from being human to being abstract. But all this is still part of the musical.