(10/16/04) snakes on my ass; too young for a car

(Dreams entered only in daytime paper journal. No time/place info for entry.)

Dream 1

I was flying through the clouds on a relatively blue day. I may actually have also been in an airplane, just a small one. I did, however, see down through the floor of the plane, which I feel was some kind of shiny, red, thin plane more like a spaceship than a normal airplane.

I thought to myself something like, If I do this to her, it isn't that bad. I must be able to free myself from my guilty feelings.

Suddenly I was no longer in the plane but simply flying through the clouds. At some point I was holding tight to a woman. She could also fly. We barreled through the clouds, rolling tightly, possibly to preserve the flying height and speed.

But now we were beginning to descend. We dropped down toward a sea in a wide, gradual arc that became sharper. At some point we split apart and turned ourselves around so we could land in the sea feet first.

I was afraid that when I landed I would be smashed by the force of the water. But it turned out that when I "hit," simultaneously with the woman, I, as she, softly but rapidly cleared the water as if falling in from a drop of only a few feet.

We now surfaced, some distance away from one floating platform, but possibly also just to the left of another one. On the platform in the distance was a serious-looking, older man in some kind of ceremonial robe. There may have been an actual spaceship (saucer) above and behind him. We could see that he was angry at us. We may possibly have floated toward him slowly.

Now we were in a room, possibly in the spaceship, though it seemed more like a living room. I and the woman sat on the floor. The man, now possibly an older, thinner man, sat on a tall chair over us. I was now much less conscious of the woman, although I knew she was there.

I had some small, thinly constructed, plastic objects in front of me. They were about the size of Monopoly game pieces, but they were like blue and pink, thinly wired baskets. There may also have been some purplish spheres of plastic, a dusky, grayish amethyst color.

I vaguely thought about moving these plastic objects and found that they were moving as I had been vaguely thinking. I now practiced willing them a little more to move. I noticed that I wasn't quite as able to move the objects, though they were still moving.

I now "remembered" (?) having been in a swamp full of snakes, many of which were trying to attack me. I thought now in this room that I figured upon reaching the swamp's pale green, mossy shores that I had escaped all the snakes. But I now felt pain all over my ass. Small, black "snakes" about one and a half inches long and maybe an eighth of an inch wide were attached to me and biting me and sucking my blood. I began picking them off my ass. I knew that their attack had hindered me from continuing my studies of telekinesis.

Dream 2

I was on some kind of fence or some thin platform, holding an aluminum pole and working on some tarp material that served as a ceiling. This wasn't in a parking lot, but some kind of asphalt lot or dirt lot in the middle of the wilderness.

A lot had happened before this. But now I was talking to some fat kid with curly blonde hair. I was telling him, as I worked on the ceiling, about a few different models of cars. They weren't quite cars -- I could see them in my head. But they were something new that everybody wanted, in the same way that people want cars.

I spoke chiefly of the prices. I started with a couple really expensive models. Then I spoke of one model that was almost as good as the other models but was only $1,995 (?).

As I said this I was hammering something through the tarp and into one of the ceiling corner poles. The kid had been on a pole beside me. But now he had hurried off and away from the "tent" to go tell his mom about the good price for this "car." He ran off to some building in the distance. It was a short, tight, dusty, brick building.

I went after the kid, who hadn't exactly run into the building. I thought, I have to stop him. He needs to know he isn't old enough to get these kinds of things yet. He can't ask his mom to give it to him.

Instead of heading to the building, though, I headed toward a cheap, white hatchback about fifty feet from the building. The kid sat in the car, at the driver's seat. Another kid sat beside him. They were both looking at magazines.

The kid told me (though a closed window) that he was waiting in the car for his mother. It wasn't necessarily to ask for a "car."

The hatchback the kid now sat in was something like one of these "cars," as if the kid had had one all along. I now, though, felt like it was certain that the kid's mother would be very judgmental toward me. I was ashamed, but I also wanted to hide the shameful thing I had done, whatever it was. I now somewhat "melded" with the kid, taking a backwards-glancing interest in the magazine a kid was holding, as if that would stop the mother from being disgusted with me.

(10/26/04) my friend's dad doesn't want me around

(Entered in paper journal at 3:15 AM at my friend R's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

Take plane to Denver, make fun of movie at my friend R's house night time, dad angry, I must leave house.

Next morning waiting for ride away, girl at bus, help with pigtails, Grandma P and cousin AH in car take us. Take girl to bus stop.

Ride somewhere, family house, but family gone. R (?) gets keys -- becomes John Stamos, all we go inside, house full of people.

My Aunt M there, tells me of being existentialist, some existentialist church, were they stopped a record.

Now driving or hovering under tall bridges with trains with fan wheels. Tons of bridges.

Now in locker (?) eating ice cream at a restaurant booth with R. Tells me my estimations of him are correct in a very meaningless or minor way, makes some metaphor he thought I would make.

***

(Daytime paper journal entry.)

I'm writing down the dream remembered from last night only because I want it to be a bit more coherently written.

Dream 1

R and I took a plane from XXXXX to Denver, although it looks now more like we were on a train or in a car. We stayed at R's dad's house. Apparently R's dad lived all by himself, as opposed to being married to my best friend Y's mother, as he is in waking life. it was now nighttime.

We watched some movie in the living room. The television faced a U-shape of three couches. I lay on my right side on the couch facing the television. Somebody in the movie said something for which I had a smart alec comment.

I don't really know where R and his dad had been. But suddenly R's dad peered over the couch and, cheerfully-angrily, said that I had no right to disrespect this movie and that if I thought I was so clever I could find my own place to stay.

I decided just to head back home the next day. At some point I realized that I did, after all, have family here. I could get help from them.

So now it was morning. I had called my grandma P. She was coming for me. But I just went along with washing up, acting like I was just going back home, to XXXXX. I knew that if it were known that I was staying in Denver for this vacation time, things would be ruined for me.

But there was also a little girl here now. She was about eight or ten, blonde, very serious. Her hair had been done up in pigtails but now it was ratty and messy. I knew I had to take her with me when my grandma came for me. So I did her pigtails. She had two on each side of her head. I don't know exactly how I was doing them. It looked like some reverse form of making dreadlocks.

Before I was done, maybe about when I was halfway done, my grandma drove up. I came out of the house. My cousin AH was also in the car. I don't know where I sat in the car. We drove along and at some point dropped the girl off. There were actually two girls now, an older one and a younger one. I walked them onto a bus and sat them in two front seats.

(At some point after this (?) my grandma and AH and I went to a restaurant. At some other point I seem to have donated blood and to have run in terror from the experience.)

Now we were driving through some pretty heavy rain. My grandma couldn't keep me at her house. But she knew my aunt M's (?) house was empty. She had a key. AH had become Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.

R sat in the back seat with me. We were all kind of chuckling at what a surprise this would be, when I was still here in spite of R's dad kicking me out of the house. But I personally was afraid of the war this would start between me and R's dad, and possibly even between me and R.

Now R had managed to take over the situation completely. He was the one in charge of getting us into the house, as if it were his house. He had also (!) changed into John Stamos.

We pulled up to the house, which seemed to curve or angle around a driveway, patio, and yard in such a way that the front door wasn't readily visible to us. The house was painted a dirty sky blue.

It was still raining. We were in the house now. everybody except my grandma and I were now vague. The house had two stories, but the second story wasn't set directly over the first. It was set behind, at the top of a shortish staircase, with the hallway between a left room, a right room, and a bathroom in the middle, having more of an open, airy balcony.

The house was wide and large, very spacious, but dim, with only natural light from the dreary day outside, and dirty, not cluttered, but littered here and there with piles of clothes or rags, and no furniture but things like buckets or construction materials. There may have been no carpet, only a concrete floor.

I walked to and up the stairs. As I walked up the stairs the house changed a few times. I was now on the second floor. I had received the good news that everybody was home after all. All the lights were on. I stood in the hallway. Everywhere was messy with clothes. People were in every room, like this was some kind of day care center.

My aunt M walked up to me. She was much shorter than I, as if I had grown considerably and become quite mature. I wore the t-shirt with the logo of my college improv comedy team on it.

I worried that my aunt would think I wasn't dignified because I was wearing such a shirt. Instead she told me something like she had become an existentialist, and that she was now going to some existentialist church. At one service the pastor (?) stopped a record in the middle of its playing. It was, I think, some kind of sad record, with a style like from the late 1960s.

I now drove (!) along some highway on a gently blue, dryly breezy, sunny, warm day. I drove under at least three bridges. Trains ran across all the bridges, passing just as I passed under the bridges. The undersides were some kind of whitish beige, slightly meshed, plastic material through which the undersides of the trains could be seen.

The trains didn't have wheels on the sides: they ran by huge, whirling, white-bladed, plastic fans on the undersides. It was almost as if I were flying over the car now, and as I passed under each bridge and the trains passed over each bridge, I could feel the warm, soft gusts blasting down from the undersides of the trains.

Now I was in some locker room, eating ice cream at a table with R. R told me my estimates of him were correct, but only in a minor or useless way. He then made a metaphor he thought I would make. The metaphor didn't apply to me at all, but it showed me what a powerless person R thought I was.

(4/29/05) my best buddy; air jump rope; cd bank

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

Dream 1

I was helping teach an enormous group of children who were in something like fourth grade. We were in a wide, low room like a cafeteria. People were already funneling outside for some project I and a couple other "guest speakers" were going to lead.

A couple kids were making trouble. One kid in particular sat on a table. When I tried to get him/her down off the table, he/she accused me of hitting him/her. Now I was walking with a female colleague. The kid was behind us and kept hitting us gently and saying, "You guys are my best buddies."

Now we were outside, down some dirt road along a chalk-white desert cliff. All the kids were gathered around with some other leaders. But nobody would speak to me except that one annoying kid.

Dream 2 (?)

I was in a half-bright, bleary-contrasting room like a long, small kitchen and dining room. I sat at a long table which was just a mess. I had eaten and eaten and left tons of shriveled, wadded wrappers everywhere.

I thought, Finally I've eaten everything. There's nothing left to mess with my self-control (or, rather, to illustrate how little self-control I have). But now I found one last packet of lunch meat.

Dream 3 (?)

I was out on some hex-brick cinder block patio under some nice, shady trees behind a building. The patio sloped up into asphalt along the left side of the building. I had probably walked down that small road with my crew mate MG to get to the patio.

To my right as I faced away from the building I saw about three obese, old, shirtless men jumping rope and heaving labored breaths. They all looked Hispanic, with graying, 1950s-style hairdos.

I thought about how I'd let myself eat too much nowadays. MG told me about some exercise he'd been doing lately. We were waiting to give some kind of presentation to schoolkids. I thought that while I waiting I could do a little exercise.

I hoped MG wouldn't think I was an idiot. But he soon seemed to disappear. I felt his presence somewhere behind me, by the building, but not with certainty.

I began bounding up softly into the air, lifting a knee forward, up to about bellybutton level, then dropping the leg down a little behind me, thus making an ellipse with my jump, i.e.

I'm not exactly sure how.

I actually started getting three or so feet high in the air and hanging there for a while, though I wasn't aware of that being not normal in my dream. I was aware of the old jump ropers all the while.

Dream 4

I drove or rode some kind of vehicle that was like a mix between a tube-train, a bus, and a van. My crew made DF was in the passenger seat. I had to stop off at some bank before I dropped DF off. We were speaking about music. I said I didn't know too much rap nowadays because I haven't had the money to buy CDs for a while. Inwardly I wanted DF to know I wasn't a racist and that I didn't think he was stupid for liking rap, even though I don't like it.

DF invited me to his house to hear some new rap CD. At first it was like he told me we could go to some store (the landscape we drove through was full of mountainous shopping malls) and sample the CD. But when I asked the location of the place he had suggested, he said something like "Oh, it's my house. We'll just go there and listen to the song. Maybe my wife can cook some food. She don't mind."

I thought that really put a crimp in my day, because it was after work and I just wanted to write. But I said okay anyway.

Then there was a pause as I stopped by the bank. DF said, "Well.. actually wait. What time is it? 3:30? Maybe you could come to my house another time, when we could start earlier. Because I actually have a lot to do tonight." I was suddenly relieved and said that I, too, had stuff to do.

I had pulled into a road shoulder like a bus stop,  a half-trapezoid against which the bank faced diagonally.

(7/18/07) bed of a truck

(Entered in paper journal at 8:13 PM at home.)

Dream #1

I was in a van with a group of people. The van was white or pale, with a wide, work-van (emptyish, metallic) feel. We were just starting to drive, trying to get somewhere. But something was making us hesitant, possibly that we hadn't found some members of our group.

Two young men walked past the van. At first we might have thought we should let them in. Then someone in the van said, "No. They're cops. You can always tell, the way they try to dress like they're cool. But they're not."

One of the men was very close-shaven and wore a baseball cap, had a wiry, gaunt look, and was very pale white. The other had tight-to-the-head dreads, down about to the level of his jaw, and a little stubble. He was pale-brown, maybe Black Hispanic, with green eyes.

It somehow became somewhat obvious to me that these guys were cops. I thought, "But then everybody in the van must think I'm a cop, too!"

It was a nice, clear day. I stood in the bed of a truck. We drove down a back road on either side of which were narrow strips of grass bordered by tall trees or farmland. The bed of the truck had no walls and no roof, just barriers on the sides and L-shaped, metal poles in the corners. The bed didn't seem to be even, either: it seemed to step up in halves or quadrants. Everybody must have been in what I still thought of as the "van," which was probably now the cab of this "truck."

The truck was driving forward, as normal, and I stood at the back end of the bed, looking out toward the back of the truck, but I watched the road pass below me and the scenery pass beside me like I was at the front of the truck looking forward.

Somehow we had stopped or slowed down enough to let a tall, skinny, middle-aged, black man approach the car. He had close-cut, salt& pepper hair and beard, brown skin, and wore a brownish-green shirt and shorts. I thought, Why are they letting this guy on? He's a druggie and he wants to corrupt us all.

We were moving again, the truck probably moving forward from the front (in my perception as well as physically). I sat on a bench on the left side of the bed, watching a (white?) man, one of my crew members, talking with the black man while sitting on a bench on the right side of the bed.

Against my instinct, I was making an effort to be polite and listen to what the two men were saying. They tried to include me in the conversation. As I tried to respond, I heard a conversation in the back of my head. The conversation in the back of my head took over. It became a script, outlined with presentation-style headings and formats, on paper in a three-ring binder.

The black man sat to my left on the bench. I was pointing out different parts of the script as I heard it in my head. But it may also have been like we were speaking it out with each other.

(1/20/08) art-books-feces; psychology: earth, cults, flying saucers

(Entered in paper journal at 8:28 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with my grandfather and a couple other family members in a room, like a small museum. I was looking out the window. The scenery outside was moving, like I was in a car. The scenery was like a cemetery. My family members and I were talking about how the exhibit we had seen was disappointing because it didn't employ the principles of recycling. Because of this, we argued, the exhibit lacked feeling.

We "passed" a hill that looked cut-away or sectioned so we could see the roots of the grass and a nearby tree. Something like a red glob or ball rolled along the hill, then merged into the ground. This, my grandfather said, was the one work of art he liked, because it employed the principles of recycling. The ball reappeared from the sectioned area of the hill and rolled down the slope and across the road, as if it were willfully coming toward the building, and toward me in particular.

We all looked away from the window. My grandfather said we were getting ready to leave. I now sat on a tall chair like a swivel chair that was as tall as a library or ladder, with rollers or wheels at the bottom. The room was warm and warm-colored.  In the corner of the room sat an old man who looked like the old version of the Tim Roth character in Youth Without Youth. He was like the curator of the museum.

The room was small but very elegant, modern. It was understated, except that on the walls were all kinds of art works and artifacts. A lot of them had the appearance of geode slices: the glassy, ringed, vivid-colored look. There were also a couple of tall, thin bookshelves along the walls.

Everybody else had pretty much left. I was following them. But I had to linger to see some of the items on the wall. There was something about their ordering which didn't seem completely satisfactory. But the pieces themselves were quite beautiful. Nevertheless, I felt bad liking the pieces because my grandfather had just commented how the pieces had no artistic quality.

I was still moving through the room on the tall chair. I went out the door, which was apparently tall enough to allow the tall chair through! I turned back before closing the door. I told the man in the corner of the room, "Goodbye, and thank you, Dr. Neuman." The man might have been reading a book. He waved very slightly, but kindly.

The door closed as I thought, Is that man's name really Neuman? I now saw a green and brass (?) nameplate on the door that said "Dr. Ed Neuman." I rolled (on the tall chair) down a ramping hallway to catch upp with my family.

I was now in a basement with my mother. I was standing on the floor, no longer sitting in the tall chair. My mom and I were heading toward a front door, but we were waiting for one or two more members of our family to catch up with us. In the meantime we were picking up and reorganizing a bunch of books that were on the floor.

I held some one-word-titled book by Mario Puzo. The cover was black, Puzo's name was lettered white, and the title (beginning with the letter "c"?) was lettered red.

My mom and I were talking about my grandfather, who sat upstairs, as if he were now sitting in Neuman's place. My grandpa was too sick and tired to see us out of the building, but he had been very happy to see us. After seeing us, he even felt like he had more energy.

My mom said, "We should tease him and tell him that if he has so much energy he should come down here and help us rearrange these books! No, I'm just kidding. We don't want him to feel bad or obliged. If he did come down here, the physical work would really hurt him."

I sat on a couch piled with books. Before me were books. I held a book in my hand. My mom may still have been talking. I looked at the book's binding. The top gave the last name of the author: Ligasa or Lisaga.

A band below the name showed a painting of a woman like Liberty in Delacroix's painting of the French Revolution. The woman was charging forward and carrying a flag. But she was looking backward, as if calling the troops, instead of looking forward like in the painting.

I looked at the back of the book, mainly because I somehow caught the name "Freud" on the back or the binding of the book. Apparently the book was by a Latin American author, and was thus acclaimed. The description of the book went something like, "A Native American is wounded in the war" (World War I?) "and looks back on his life. The works of Sigmund Freud have put forward the idea that a person's experiences of his past are not linear but move back and forth through different time periods."

A boy who was supposed to be my second oldest nephew sat to my left. He was a black boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. My mom said something like, "He's finally having less trouble going to the bathroom."

My nephew told me, "I go to the bathroom every morning. I know the pieces of poop when they come out of me. I even know their names. But I'm not like other people. I know their names before they come out of me. I meet them at night. I see them, and I know what shape they'll be. I tell them, 'XXXXX, you aren't going to stay in me! You are going to get out!'"

I could tell my nephew was afraid about having to do this, but that he was proud that he was able to do it. He seemed to need urgently to tell me about this.

We all headed out into a hallway which (now) led to the front door. The hall was white, perhaps with marble floors and walls and a red carpet.

Somewhere there might have been a weird, futuristic-looking altar-type structure, very tall, made out of an aluminum-like substance. The legs were tin rods that supported a wide "bowl" topped with a flat disk that had a hole in its center. This "bowl" was filled with my nephew's feces, as if each piece he had gotten rid of were saved here and treated as sacred.

Dream #2

I was looking through a list of courses to take at a college like a community college. There was a specific philosophy class I wanted to take because it seemed to discuss issues I had currently been involving myself in. But I saw that there was a prerequisite course to this course. I thought, Why should I have to take a prerequisite? I'm not taking this class to get a degree. I'm just interested.

But I looked at the prerequisite course anyway. It was called "Psychology: Earth." It was a short course and was done by video. I now saw that after this course I'd have to take even another course before I could take the philosophy course I'd wanted. This other prerequisite course was called "Psychology: Cults and Flying Saucers." It was also a video course.

(9/27/08) the story of my boss' career

(Entered in paper journal on Q-train.)

Dream #1

I was in a big room. It might have been a mod-fashion type of room, like in a lot of movies about the 1960s and 1970s, with bright-orange walls and lots of big, white blocks everywhere for furniture. But there might also have been other objects in the room, such as small aircraft.

I stood in front of a small, blonde woman who sat on a piece of furniture. I was trying to tell the woman about the career of my boss BS. But as I got to a point where I was talking about when he began working for our company, BS walked past and corrected me. He said, "I began twenty-nine years ago." BS continued walking on and talking about his time at the company. I also continued talking to the girl about BS' time at the company, though I now felt a lot less confident about what I was saying.

The scene soon faded. I could still hear BS talking about his life. But I was now seeing as if I were floating along myself, to my right, before some docks, or along a shore. I first saw a large ship which kind of looked like a battleship and a large yacht combined. Then (at a specific point in BS' story) I saw a ship submerged so that only its bow stuck out of the water, flatly, almost even with the water. The bow itself was flat, like a wood for or a bowling lane.