(2/5/06) ghost ants; david bowie and the black man

(Entered in paper journal at 10:05 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was somewhere like a national park visitor center or some camp center in the woods. I sat with my back against a tree. My legs were bare and bent up against my chest. Some ants, not many, but rather large, maybe two inches long, and colored like a bruising sweetgum leaf in late November, pink and purple, crawled near me and then up onto my legs.

The ants were going through a mating process. I had to gather them up while they were doing this. But I was too fascinated watching them to do anything. But now as they finished they dissolved, or rather deflated like dry husks and then fizzed away. I knew I had missed my chance to take their magic.

There were other ants, and these now crawled up on me. I thought, I have the chance to take the magic again. But I didn't want to touch the ants because I thought they were diseased. Also, these ants were clear, like soba noodles (?). I thought they were like ghosts of the ants that had already mated. These ants would walk up on my knees and "vomit" a thick, yellow glop out of their foreheads. Then they and the glop would fizz and spike violently.

Two "researchers" saw what was going on. They and I took samples of the fizz (this, by the way, was impossible -- the ants vanished in the fizz; the fizz didn't exist afterwards) in to a little, shed-like laboratory. I stood at a weird angle relative to the "researchers," like I was up in a corner of the room, looking down at them.

The researchers stood over a white, square, plastic tub of water. They figured either that the ants fizzed because of a disease or that they fizzed into a disease. If either of these hypotheses turned out positive, I was probably going to die from the disease.

The researchers dropped the fizz into the water. This may have been done by "pinching" water out of something like a plastic thermos-lid-like cup and then sprinkling the "pinched" water into the tub. The fizz created a violent fizzing on a small area in the center of the surface of the water. This really didn't mean anything, one way or the other -- yet.

I couldn't stay in the room any longer. I figured I was just going to die. I went out to find more ants. I wanted to prove they didn't have a disease.

Dream 2

I saw a video of David Bowie and a black man singing at a concert. the black man was large and had his head resting joyfully on David Bowie's left shoulder.

I now saw a newspaper photo of David Bowie being kissed and held by the black man. The black man didn't really want people to know about his relationship with David Bowie, but he also liked him, and they were "awesome" in concert.

Now David Bowie and the black man were singing a catchy song I didn't really like. The stage had a crystal-blue background against which everything looked really nice.

Now a bunch of famous people, mostly black, came out on stage. Some people came out on a long, low, chrome motorcycle. The chorus of the catchy song was repeated over and over. Now I saw it all as if from a far back, way up seat.

(6/23/07) the giant fly; what i never saw; two girls in one; lucid in reality

(Entered on Q-train, but don't know when.)

Dream #1

I lay in bed. I opened my eyes and looked at the wall (to my left). An insect, a small roach, I thought, climbed quickly down the wall. I was disappointed to have a roach in my house. I thought I would get up and kill it. But now I saw two on the wall. I thought I might be seeing things.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were lots of insects (flies?) climbing all over my wall. I leaped out of bed, possibly in a straight-bodied roll parallel to the floor and landing in a crouch facing the wall. The wall was full of insects. I wondered what I could do to get rid of the insects. I thought I might have to call an exterminator and leave my house for a little while.

Down on the lower, right section of the wall, or perhaps on the "left foot" corner of my bed, was a fly about the size of my fist. It seemed to call for me, and to control all the other insects so that they, too, would call me. I was afraid, but I got closer. The giant fly made a semi-melodic, buzzing sound, almost like wings beating against a champagne flute. The fly's body was spiny and shine, an orange-green, reflective color. It had orangish wings.

Dream #2

I walked into a nice, big dining room. There might not have been any table. The room was narrow and long. The walls were wood. Some dim, warm daylight came through a yellowish curtain at the other short end of the room. The door I walked in through was at the lower part of the right long wall. A little farther up that wall stood my co-worker and good friend CL. Between us was a chest of drawers.

I walked in and immediately turned to face the chest. CL asked me if I had brought XXXXX (can't remember). I had some green, fleshy-looking sack in my hands. I cut it open and pulled out a "flying saucer." This was something like a silver table ornament or serving tray. It looked like a cake tray with no glass top and with ridges or slots all through it. I put it on the chest.

I thought CL might be trying to hide this object from others, as part of an overall conspiracy. I thought CL might be trying to convince me as well that I hadn't seen the flying saucer. CL very harshly asked me a question insinuating that I had already told my co-worker JB about the flying saucer. I became tense and slightly afraid.

Dream #3

I sat in the front row at some show. The seating was all rows of folding chairs. The floor was white tile. The lights were brightish orange and fluorescent. The place was full of people. The "stage" was level with the floor. On the back wall (a back wall) was a screen against which was projected a karaoke video.

A song started up. The girl to my left, who looked like my co-worker and fellow-Assistant FA, said, "Oh, you should sing this one! You love these guys!" It took me a second before I recognized the song as a Smashing Pumpkins song.

But I couldn't "catch" the words fast enough to begin singing with the music. Plus, the words on the screen weren't the same as the words to the song. And the video would occasionally fade in and out unexpectedly. I  told the girl that I did love this song, but that I didn't know it well enough to keep up.

I began cuddling with the girl. She had nice, dark skin. She wasn't thin, but she had the prettiness of a thin girl.

I was disappointed in myself for being so boring that I couldn't sing a song.

I now sat laying across the girl's chest. The girl now looked like one of my good friends, PD. She was still not thin. She wore a pastel turquoise-green, soft-fabric shirt. Below the collar, squared holes were cut out to look like an Egyptian necklace. The fabric between the holes was also strung in a way to look and feel like beads.

I ran my left finger along this "necklace" collar-piece. I also touched some jewelry on the girl's right upper arm. I felt like a child. I hoped this wouldn't turn the girl off and that we could still have sex. The girl said, "I will miss you very much when I am gone."

Dream #4

I woke up from a dream. I stood out of my bed by the foot of the bed and walked to the wall facing the foot of the bed. There was a wooden ladder folded against the wall. I was going to take it away from the wall, but I hung on one of the steps and looked at my wall. There was a yellowish, chipped substance dirtying the wall.

I didn't remember such messiness. At first I thought, Well, maybe I don't look at this wall well enough to have seen this dirty patch. Then I thought, No. This wall is different in another way: it's missing its little framing decorations: it's just completely smooth.

The discrepancy between this wall and my normal perception of my bedroom wall made me wonder where I was. I told myself, I just woke from a dream. I have to be awake. But I was now getting the strange feeling that life was a dream, and that I could wake into lucidity from waking life just as I would wake into lucidity in dreams.

I did something like what a person would do holding his breath and bracing for a plunge into a swimming pool. I thought, This is exactly what people think can't be done. And I'm trying to do it.

I felt the electric buzz (which, as I'd read in the literature, was a precursor, not for lucid dreams, but for out-of-body experiences). But when lucidity came, I realized that this had all been a dream after all. I wasn't "lucid" in (or ex-) reality. I was only lucid in my dream.

I wanted to explore the lucid dream, but I didn't believe I could imagine anything other than what I was presently seeing: the ladder and the wall. So I told myself, You are going to turn around clockwise. As you complete the turn you will wake back into waking life and you will be back in bed.

But even as I "held my breath, braced," and turned, I thought, Why am I doing this? If I'm lucid I should go exploring. But it was like I couldn't control myself, like I was being controlled by another will and now was in a gravitational spin that I couldn't pull out of.

(8/1/07) poison-fangs and needles

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I floated through a house that looked like the house my family lived in during my last years of high school. There was clutter everywhere, whole mountains of chairs, boxes, and other stuff, making the moving space very crowded.

I saw a spider walk across the floor. At first I thought the spider was a scorpion. But I looked closer. The insect looked like a white crab with a flat shell about six inches in diameter and with two cylinders sticking off the top. The cylinders would lift up, rotate, and drop down. Something inside them could clatter-shunk down, like the sound from an aerosol-spray can, except heavier. These cylinders were fangs. I floated farther and now saw a tiny scorpion run across the floor.

I had floated almost to the back end of the room. I now floated toward the front, toward the door. I was trying to get out of this place as soon as possible. I felt a poisonous insect floating near me. I thought that all the clutter was so close that even if there weren't any floating insects, one of the walking insects could easily jump off the clutter and onto me. I was also afraid that my feet floated low enough off the ground that a crawling insect might be able to jump up and poison me.

I saw a man and woman before a pink screen. It was like the man and woman were on TV. The woman stood on the left side; the man, on the right. The woman had black hair done up in a bob. The woman was overweight. She had a homey (not homely) look about her. The man was tallish, skinnyish, maybe in his fifties. His long, scraggly hair was pulled back. He was deeply tanned and wore a sleeveless, grey shirt.

The woman said, "Being in Atlanta, I never thought I could find someone to do heroin with me. But then I found him. He not only does it; he shoots it into his neck. And he shoots it into himself. I never thought I would find anybody like that!"

The man now brought up a syringe, the cylinder of which was maybe six inches long, with a needle just as long. The plunger of the syringe pressed downward into the cylinder. I watched the man stick himself with the needle and then inject himself with the substance in the syringe.

I was afraid to watch. I couldn't bear to think how it would feel for me. I also didn't watch as the drugs took effect and the man's mind became deranged.

(1/31/08) flying roach software; dirty dancing to the future

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

Dream #1

It was night. I lay in bed. I looked down at my blanket. There were two roaches climbing down around my feet. I wanted to think at first that they weren't there. I got up and smashed one of them. The other one still climbed around on my blanket. I didn't have anything to smash it with.

I found something and came back. The roach now leaped to avoid me. The roach also seemed capable of using long, sharp, curving antennae (?) to defend itself. I went after the roach again. The roached jumped onto the wall. I could hear someone telling me the flying roach had a poison in its antennae that could kill you.

I now sat in a dark restaurant with a group of people. It was like we had been talking about the flying roaches. The nighttime scenery outside was moving, as if we were on a train.

TB, one of my friends and a worker for the company that sold consumer data to my research team, sat in front of me. To her left was a kind of tomboyish woman. This woman spoke about roaches as it they were some sort of software program. She was talking about how she used the software program nowadays. She had pirated the software and was using it at work. This could get her in trouble. But she said she didn't care.

I could tell the tomboyish woman was trying to impress TB with a kind of "lawbreaker" behavior, and that she was trying to show that she'd be a better lover for TB than I would.

Dream #2

I saw a film like Back to the Future. The Michael J. Fox character was being goaded into action by the modern-day (1980s) Biff character.

I now sat in a room, watching the movie with TB. TB had been sick recently. Her stomach was still a little upset. TB wore red pants made of a fabric like corduroy. I began rubbing TB's legs. We stood up and started dancing erotically together.

(8/7/08) pushed out of unused desk; lingerie roach

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at my desk at work. I was watching something like an earnings presentation on my mini-DVD player. My old boss DO walked around on the floor. I suddenly felt like I wasn't working hard enough. I tried to concentrate on the earnings presentation even harder.

Suddenly the angle I was sitting at was is if I were sitting at my co-worker (on DO's team) MD's desk at the building we'd previously worked at. (In waking life, my company had recently moved from one building to another building.) I wondered if DO might stop by and say hi to me.

I felt someone pushing down on my left elbow. It was MD, wearing a casual, white button-up and some khaki shorts. It was like he was trying to elbow me out of his chair.

Dream #2

I was in "my bedroom." I was pulling some nice dresses out of a bag. One dress was white with pinkish-red designs. I was going to hang it in my closet.

I walked to my closet and noticed how easily I could see up to my top shelf. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was a few inches above the top of my head.) There weren't many articles of clothing there. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was where I horded all of my lingerie and women's clothing -- mostly cheap articles I'd bought from discount stores.) I thought something like, I'm really cleaning up!

But something toward the wall caught my eye as I was looking away. I looked back. The thing was a "roach." It was maybe two inches long, and fat. Its back end was covered in white, as if it were casting off skin or as if it were developing a shell around itself to undergo metamorphosis. I couldn't tell whether the thing was dead or alive.

(11/30/08) protection lost; return of the bugs; bug operation

(Entered in paper journal at 8:19 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a long staircase like a courtyard with tall, pink, sandstone (?) walls. It was night. The long walkway had a stairway on either side, and in between was an area filled with vegetation, possibly trees and shrubs. There was a huge cupola structure in the center of this area.

I had walked into "my room," as if this place were a college residence. I lay on my bed, the door to my room possibly still open. It was raining outside.

I heard somebody -- in another room, but within earshot of mine, as if we were in adjoining cubicles of an office -- talking about how announcements for who would get fired would actually be today. I had a feeling that I myself would get fired.

I decided to head down to the office of one of the heads of my department, DM, to talk to DM, just to be friendly. I hoped DM wouldn't think that I was talking to her just in order to save my job.

I had a device like a camera on my bed. The camera was broken and I was playing with some kind of glass tube attached to some plastic gadget. The glass tube was filled with a black, powdery substance that might also have been moist or liquidy, blue ink. I took this tube and device with me.

I now stood with my girlfriend H outside the gates of some place like an estate. The light was like early morning, darkish grey, as if invisible clouds were covering the sky. The area all around us was like a desert wood, like a pinon-juniper forest.

I looked behind us to the thick, pink-red stone gates. Behind the gates the land seemed to dome up a bit. Near the top of the dome I could see the dome of a beautiful building that was made of heavy grey and pink stone, looming just over the vegetation.

Looking forward I noticed how much more tangled and wild the vegetation looked.

H asked me, "If we sleep outside the gates, are we going to be able to keep the vampires away?"

I knew we would sleep in a cupola-like (or gazebo-like?) structure that was like a "camp house" tonight. Within the gates we were protected from vampires. Out here, we really weren't. But I told H we would be fine, even though I wasn't sure that was true.

I didn't know if we could go back behind the gates. I might have needed or wanted to do something beyond the gates, anyway.

Dream #2

I was in "my bathroom." It was night. There may have been a light on somewhere, but probably not in the bathroom. I walked out and caught a view from the corner of my eye (on my right side) of a shirt (? -- maybe red, possibly a bandana or a rag instead of a shirt) with a few flecks on it. There were also some flecks around the piece of cloth. I wondered how this dirty stuff got into my house.

I looked closer to figure out what the flecks were. They were pill-shaped, little, brown things. I then recognized they were roaches. Something about them looked less "dry" than roaches, somewhat liquidy or gooey. At first I thought all the roaches were dead. But now they started to move. I could tell they were just now reviving and that they would disperse and multiply if I didn't stop them right now.

I ran into my kitchen and grabbed a green can of Raid out from the cupboard below my sink. I was in total desperation -- I thought I had finally gotten rid of the roaches in my house. But here they were, all back.

From the time I had headed to the kitchen, I had been moaning in sorrow and fear. Tears were streaming down my face. The can of Raid had a thick, rubbery or plasticky nozzle with a green, plastic tube sticking out of it, like the red, plastic tube sticking out of the nozzle of a can of WD-40, except that this tube was a little shorter and stubbier.

Still moaning and crying, I stood before the doorway to the bathroom. The door was only half open. I stuck my right arm in with the can of Raid. I sprayed the Raid. The spray came out in a continuous mist, much more moist than the normal aerosol spray. I kept spraying and spraying.

Even though I had averted my eyes, I could see that some roaches were standing up, trying to get away from the poison. I did my best to spray every inch of the floor, so that no bugs could escape. The spray was collecting on the floor in pools. I now hoped I would be able to drown all the roaches.

Dream #3

I was down in the basement of a house, possibly in "my mom's house." The basement was big and somehow nice, but it was cluttered, both with furniture and things like clothes. I stood in a small clearing in all this space and stuff.

I stood before a television which may have been playing a music video by Smash Mouth. The music video may have been showing a montage of gogo dancers (possibly including one dressed up like Wonder Woman).

I was dancing along with the video, and may have been or have thought of myself as a woman. As I danced, my mom (?) looked down the stairwell to me -- even though there couldn't have gotten a view of me at all from the top of the tall, twisty stairwell. I kept dancing, thinking I was a pretty good performer.

My sister (?) and brother came downstairs, each possibly carrying a board game. My sister may have asked me something about dancing. We started discussing dancing (or whatever) as I continued to dance. My brother kept trying to get my attention, but I was having a hard enough time focusing on what my sister was saying.

Suddenly my brother burst out in an hysterical laugh (which seemed to produce in my mind little, brown, pill-shaped images, like bugs). He walked back up the stairs, continuing his hysterical laughter. I felt bad, like I had hurt my brother by ignoring him.

I followed my brother upstairs. When I got upstairs I saw my brother (as a kid?) standing before my mother in a big, but dirty, kitchen. The sunlight in the kitchen was bright, yellow, and warm. My brother held a game like Operation in his arms. The organs for the game were, I knew, brown and pill-shaped, like bugs.

My brother was acting like (perhaps in truth) the only reason for his laughter was that he had finally succeeded in figuring out how to play this game. But looking at my brother's face, I could see that my brother was in intense pain.

(I woke from this dream to the laughter of a person down on the sidewalk below my bedroom window. The person was laughing really loud, hysterically. The two people were speaking back and forth in Spanish.)

(12/11/08) spider in my room

(Entered in paper journal at 6:35 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my bedroom." I may have had a black or grey blanket on my bed. The room was dim with light coming only from the hallway or a different room. I may have been thinking gladly to myself how my room was free of bugs. I might have been afraid of that changing.

As I lay down for bed, something jumped off the wall, onto my blanket (which was all crumpled up on my bed). The thing was some kind of bug, but it looked like a little piece of trash. It moved around. It appeared to be all legs. At first it may have "had"/"been" only six or four legs. The legs were one-eighth of an inch long and translucent, with spherical tips. They seemed more like fangs than legs to me.

As the spider moved along, it "opened out," its legs now being long, black and white striped, thin, and half an inch long. The previous "legs" had coalesced into a sort of body.

I was trying to get the spider off my bed, but I didn't want to kill it or touch it. I would try to blow it off my bed, but it would constantly hold its place.

At some point I may have succeeded in getting the spider off my bed. I may then have chased it around the room, trying to get it even farther away from me, until it ended up, somehow, back on my bed.

At last I may have smashed the spider with a shoe or a book or something flat, like a board or a stiff piece of paper. But even then all that happened was that the spider was no longer there. It may have been gone, or it may have hidden under a fold, just as easily as it may have been smashed.

(9/27/09) struggle for lucidity; the murakami bug

Dream #1

I opened my eyes in my bedroom. The bedroom was dark, and my vision was a bit staticky. I realized that my lights were off, which wasn't usual for my room. (Due to some problems with paranoia, I'd slept with my lights on from about July of 2009 through about the end of 2010.)

I realized I was dreaming. I became lucid. But I immediately began losing my dream. Everything faded into blackness, as if I had closed my eyes. I told myself to open my eyes again. It took an immense effort. But when my eyes began to open, my dream-vision smeared out before me, as if I were speeding through a tunnel the walls of which were made of my dream-bedroom.

I now had my eyes open in my bedroom, with the lights on. I was awake. (I may actually have been awake at this point.) I lay on my back and looked up to the ceiling, my head half-covered by m blanket. I fell into a numbed state and thought I was probably on the verge of sleeping and dreaming again. At some point the lights may even have gone out in my room.

I told myself, Well, you can't get back to the lucid dream you were having. But perhaps if you're in this state, you can push yourself into another lucid dream, or even an out of body experience, an astral projection. I told myself to concentrate. I "concentrated" intensely, almost viciously.

I felt a rushing (downward or upward?) sensation in my body. I felt like closed-eye purple electrodes had attached to my body to pull me upward. I felt like I was scowling, teeth bared, to pull myself upward, out of my body. I thought, I'm doing it!

Everything went black. (I may have woken up and then gone back to sleep for another dream.) I lay in my bedroom and opened my eyes again. The room was dark, swimming with staticky orgone eyebugs.  I told myself, You're dreaming again. Get up this time.

I was suddenly standing, at the foot of where I had been laying, my blanket crumpled up like a cocoon at my feet. I ma have thought of myself as wearing a grey robe, being all grey myself, and even wearing a head covering, like a woman in a Giotto painting portraying Jesus' life might wear.

I lost my energy or my focus again. My eyes closed. I told myself to open them, not to lose my dream. I succeeded in doing this, but almost immediately afterward, the scene became increasingly staticky, maybe even grey-white, and I lost my dream.

Dream #2

I was in a big room with a couple other people. My mother may possibly have been among the people. The room may have been a mix between something like a hallway in an airport terminal and a nice, wood-walled library in a mansion. Natural light came in from a window to the right, the window possibly almost as tall and wide as the wall itself.

On the left wall was a platform that ran along the entire wall, lifted up maybe three feet from the rest of the floor, with railing -- structured almost like the moving walkway conveyor belts at airports, but, again, with touches of wood, carpeting, etc., that made it look like something in a mansion. I stood on that platform, probably with my mother.

We had found a small bug and were now having to dispose of it. The bug was almost beetle shaped, but with a much more distinct, rounder head, almost half the size of its body. The bug's color was a pale-copper brown, dappled with a pale-brown, almost like a pale version of the color on a sunflower seed's shell. We grabbed up the bug in a napkin and tossed it into (or toward?) a trashcan.

My mother walked away, down the long hallway. In some way, it felt like she was walking from one wing of the NYPL Rose Main Reading Room to the other. The other two women (???) may also have been gone now.

I noticed that the bug hadn't gone into the trashcan after all. I saw it wandering around on the floor. I picked it up (it was maybe three quarters of an inch long) to throw it away. But now, panicked, not wanting to be thrown away, the bug grew thin, green, vegetation-like tendrils out of itself. These tendrils grew long and coiled themselves around. They grew little leafs or thorns, so that the bug almost looked decorated with something out of a work by Takashi Murakami.

I tried to throw the bug into the white trash bag, but I couldn't: the tendrils stuck to me like sticky stalks of weeds. I tried to shake the bug off me. The tendrils now coiled all around my hands, and the "leafs" (if they ever had been leafs) were now soft thorns sticking into my skin. (During all this, I noticed that I was wearing white, latex gloves.) I finally somehow managed to shake the Murakami-bug off my hands.

The bug didn't go all the way into the trash. It clung to the side of the bag, near the mouth of the trashcan, its tendrils sprawling out like uncoiled wire, threatening to spring back out of the can by the energy of their own tension. I thought I'd have to be ready for that.

I now walked down the platform, possibly following after the women. I looked at my hands. I noticed that I had cuts on my hands from where the little thorns had dug in. At first the cuts seemed small, just like little scratches. But then I saw that some of the cuts, especially around the knuckles at the base of my fingers, cut all the way to the bone.

I looked into one of these cuts and saw something beneath that looked like firm, porous tofu. It sickened me to see that, but I told myself not to worry about it. It's fat, I think, I told myself. Your friends have told about seeing that before, when they'd broken their bones or cut themselves really deeply. So don't worry about it.

I may now have met up with a few of my friends, possibly from my old improv comedy team from college. My friends all sat in an airport-like seating area that also looked like part of a mansion. My friends might have regarded me like I was a joke, not to be taken seriously, and then gone back to whatever their conversation had been.