(1/22/06) the vessel loses oxygen; nuclear attack

(Entered in paper journal at 10:53 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was on a boardwalk on a river. There were huge battleships or other military ships traveling down the river. They all started sinking, or falling, into some kind of pit. I had to take care of it somehow, or I had to tell somebody in charge about it.

Along the boardwalk were shops. I was now all the way at the end of the shops. The buildings were cream-yellow stucco. The shop I was by may have been an office for some magazine publishing group. I had been given a task. I now had to take care of it.

I walked back down the boardwalk to where I had been before. As I passed along (the "boardwalk" was like cobbles wept with sand, like this elevated walkway by a river was actually a walkway right off a beach) I passed by groups of young men "playing sports." Many stood by tables and had the ball of their sport and were passing it around with each other. I felt menaced whenever I passed the men.

As one table, where the guys were "playing football," as I approached, all the guys backed far away from the table out of dislike for me. One guy stayed close to the table and hassled me a little as I passed. I noticed on the table a big, plastic cup of Pepsi and ice. The Pepsi was of a lighter color, from having been diluted by the ice.

I now came up to the only group of white people I'd seen so far. There were men and women, all, apparently, really smart. They were playing with an orange Hacky Sack. They fumbled it out of their circle, which had an empty space in it.

I didn't want to take the Hacky Sack back to the people because I felt like I was unworthy to be in their presence. But I took it up to them anyway. I kicked it to one of them. Everybody was impressed with the way I kicked.

They somehow involved me in their game, even though I kept trying to leave, feeling I was stupid and athletically inept. Even though I always missed or messed up, they kept involving me in the game.

Once the Hacky Sack came at me high. I bounced it off my left shoulder and kicked it with my right foot. But the kick went way off. But the guy to my left said something like, "Wow, that was really good technique." I still kept trying to back out.

Now the "coach," a woman who liked like SS, the director at my work, came up and said, "Okay, now everybody break up into your four groups and head out for the competition." I knew now that everybody had been using their practice to get comfortable passing to their particular teammates. Since I had just passed to anybody, I hadn't caught on to that, either.

Everybody was now in the ocean, divided into their four groups (of four?) and using the Hacky Sack like a ball. I saw there was no team I could fit into.

I started to tell the coach. But she interrupted me. She said, "I know. You and I both know you can't stay here, and you really didn't want to, anyway. Which is why I wondered why you didn't just leave before everybody started liking you. They don't understand that you can't stay. But I can't let you stay. I don't even want to. What am I supposed to tell them?"

Their game or motto was called something like "The Rug," which didn't make sense to me.

I was floating back to the end of the shops again, disembodied this time. I flew along all the shop signs and saw that the second to last shop was called The Rug. I saw how the last shop sign was just clear plastic with a target-bracket-style

design near its bottom. I saw the word "RUG" appear in the bracket field.

I thought, They can't move into that shop -- their sign would look all skewed. Then I realized the transparent plastic was some kind of monitor. The

was a space that got graphics from a computer inside the shop and which could be manipulated (from inside) to the center of the screen. I thought, Oh -- well, then, the sign won't look so bad.

Now I was back where I'd begun. The ocean was a river again.

-- No.

I was floating back, too fast, even: because I saw three ships, all military, two smaller than the one enormous one, sinking into the water. They were like huge "Battleship" game pieces, even with the pegs for the holes. They got washed over with water, tides of it. I wanted to slow down so I could see exactly what was happening.

Now I was back to where I'd started. There was a huge mouth for an underwater tunnel. Apparently I went down. There was a big vessel down there, more like a spaceship than a battleship. I had gone down to it it rescue some people who were trapped when the machine malfunctioned. The people were in an air-supply compartment that was about to be corroded and destroyed.

The first time I went down there, everybody except one woman was dead, and somehow I even messed up rescuing her. She may have dissolved when I touched her.

I stood on the walkway, looking at the bridge and tunnel-mouth again. It was like the first time had and hadn't happened now. Now the vessel down below was malfunctioning. Somehow I had been briefed (maybe even by myself) on the circumstances.

Suddenly I was being pulled or sucked headfirst and backwards down into the tunnel. I remembered having come up the tunnel the first time. The tunnel was a tall, wide slope of steel rails, coppery tinted by age and shadows and walls.

I now plunged below water and shot down to the vessel, which was lodged in some maze-like tunnel. Off to my right (I was right side up now. As I had been traveling I may have been a girl. But I was myself again now.) was a -- some kind of reef or deep-sea tunnel.

We were deep below the water. The vessel was for exploration. I opened the hatch to the airlock, apparently where the last air was. I had been holding my breath all this time, I realized.

I got into the airlock. There was woman there. At one moment the woman was beautiful, tall, thin woman I'd never met before. At another she was my cousin, AH, though I still didn't know.

I knew there was barely any chance I could save the woman. The water was so deep. The woman would have to hold her breath all the way to the top. she'd already been breathing less air than she'd needed.

The woman was a naked anime cartoon girl. I put her (she was barely awake) on a red disc. She floated upward through crystal blue water and vanished like on a teleporter beam. I knew the water was now not so deep as I had thought.

I turned back to the vessel. The water was black and dark again. I swam up through the airlock, which was now filled with water. I swam up through a little hallway, to another door, and into a hallway locked off from the water. The hallway was much larger, like a hallway on the spaceship in Aliens.

I was soaking wet. I was tired. I knew this was it. I was going with the ship. I couldn't make it back through the water.

To the left was some mild, fluorescent light and possibly a museum display hallway. There were other people, possibly a lot of them, in this area of the ship, all preparing to die, or, maybe, to leave the ship.

I was now in the "apartment" or "cabin" of two friends. It was small but nice. Nothing seemed quite level, like the ship was tilted, so everything inside was tilted. There was a sliding glass door (?) behind a longish, oval dining table. It had loose, vertical blinds that were an orange-tan color.

The two friends were husband and wife. The husband was in some other room. The wife, Hispanic (?) with long, straight, full, black hair and a very lovely body, was in the adjoining living room. (By the living room was a kitchen with a breakfast bar, then a dark hallway to one or two other rooms.)

I looked through the blinds. Down a floor or two was a square of yard strewn with oak leafs. Something about it looked like a display in a museum. But it was snowing.

The woman said, "Look. The climate system is so messed up that it's actually snowing inside the ship."

I thought, recalled, that the husband and wife were scientists. The "yard" was actually some kind of ecological or horticultural experiment. The husband and wife were two of the more interesting scientists on this ship, though they had less to do than most of the other scientists with the  subjects of the actual exploration.

The ship probably was an ocean vessel, some kind of submarine. But it was also possibly some kind of spaceship. The ship had malfunctioned and crashed and was running out of oxygen. Nobody was going to live, and everybody was facing the facts.

But this thin sprinkling of "snow" seemed to cheapen the wife's experiment plot. I held the wife and said, "I know, I know." I was glad that, if I couldn't escape, I could at least be here for my friends.

Dream 2

I was at a house that was also like a bar. I sat at the bar and watched the television. Some news channel caught two of George W. Bush's closest aides in two cities in the Middle East, where they were shown conspiring, on Bush's behalf, with Osama bin Laden, for the next terrorist attack. We all knew we were pretty much doomed.

Bush, who, the news made obvious, planned all of this, wasn't being investigated at all. So nothing was really changing. It was like the news had just pointed out the crime as another item of gossip. A lot of people even thought the attack wouldn't happen for a long time, like Bush wouldn't let it happen.

Everybody (six or seven people) in this place got ready for something. I went into the bathroom. I "knew" this place was a complex or compound for scientific research. There were hallways all of us could use to get out of the compound. I tried to figure out what was possible.

I heard and felt one explosion. I knew the attack had started, and that this time it was nuclear missiles we were being attacked with. But I still tried to think of how to escape.

A second explosion rocked the compound, though both explosions might have been far off. I came out into the living room. Behind the couch were huge windows looking out at a bunch of trees over which nothing could be seen.

I stood to my friend R's left. R told me, "They've already begun the attack!" He started crying, raging, "How could they" (he may have meant me) "let them attack so soon?"

All I could do was embrace him and say, "I know. I'm sorry. This really sucks."

(9/16/06) the volcanic oxygen of love; even if you were kidding, you deserved it; the lawnmower boyfriend; an empty office in the cards

(Entered in paper journal at 8:57 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A group of people were chosen to deal with something like a volcano. Although each person was chosen for a different task, everybody in the group was chosen because they were of the highest level of intelligence.

Each person had been sent into their separate locations around the volcano to perform their separate missions. But all of them or almost all of them were close to the point of death now, having delved deep into the workings of the volcano without actually making it function.

I saw a man in a tall but ragged office building which was next to and a little skewed from a similar building. I also saw a woman in Army fatigues in a very small cave that was lit red. With both of them (three, possibly -- the woman may have had a man with her) it was like the oxygen was depleting, suffocating them.

The people weren't trying to make the volcano work to "bring back oxygen" in their spaces. Their goal was something else. But their having gotten so far into the workings of the volcano "tripped" something antagonistic that was now killing them by suffocation. They had not done all they had needed to do, and they were only seconds from losing consciousness, so they simply relaxed and resigned themselves to death.

Then out of nowhere the volcano erupted. It was more like a geyser. It was just a blast of water from flat, boggy, salty ground. Steam and mist wafted and billowed violently over the land.

And suddenly oxygen filled the areas. The woman, who may have been cradling the man (boy) with her, looked back toward the exit of the cave. She breathed deeply.

The man in the office stood up. He looked out the window to the office next to him. A man and woman, both very strong and attractive, stood up and kissed each other.

I was now the man in the first office. I thought, This is finally all over; at last they can have their love.

Dream 2

There were a dog and a wolf in a field. The wolf was used by farmers (?) to keep wild animals (possibly even giraffes) in check But the wolf may have had a bad or abusive side. The way the wolf "disciplined" was to jump on the animals and bite their necks as if attacking them to eat them. But he would just rough them up until they stopped.

The dog wasn't doing anything bad, but the wolf decided to jump on the dog anyway. The dog was angry because he wasn't wild and shouldn't have been jumped on anyway. He lay down, which was the general animal sign of submission, but then rolled over and bit onto the wolf's throat.

The wolf and the dog wrestled quite a ways, mainly with both standing and the wolf trying to shake off the dog. When the wolf had finally shaken off the dog, though, the wolf's throat was completely gashed open. The wolf walked away to die -- it knew it was going to die. It had a meek, little smile on its face, as if to tell the dog, Couldn't you see I was just kidding?

I (watching all this from the hills) thought, Even if you were just kidding, you deserved it! You were abusing your power!

Dream 3

I was in a big but cheap looking, kind of modern living room with glass walls. It was night. There were a few people in the house, but in particular a young woman, who probably owned the house. I was there to be with her. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. She liked me, and I knew, though I didn't necessarily like.

I knew the woman's boyfriend also knew the woman liked me. He wanted to kill me and kill her because she liked me. I was going to stand up to him and tell him to leave her alone. But now he came at the house. He looked like me somehow, when I had long hair.

At a sprint the boyfriend pushed a lawnmower-like device through the window wall. He skirted all of us and ended up by a dining table, holding a knife out at us. He wasn't going to listen to reason. He wanted to kill.

Dream 4

I put a birthday card in my co-worker AS's office. The whole office space was cluttered and confused, full of dirty, white-green office light. After doing something, I came back to the office. Everybody was there now, whereas they hadn't been before.

I went into CJ's office, which was around a cluttered hall corner from AS's, and down a long hall from everybody else's office. I thought of AS and headed into her office, which was now empty (but dusty), dotted sparsely with a couple wires, a keyboard, etc.

AS walked out of the office. I tried to tell her happy birthday. But she just looked at me as if soemthing in the card (or the fact that I hadn't signed the card everybody else had signed?) had really offended her. AS had blonde hair, as opposed to her usual brunette hair color. I called after her, "I like your hairstyle change!" But she walked away without even pausing to acknowledge me.

I went back into CJ's office. CJ asked me, "Did you get the research done out there?" CJ had sent me out to an open field like at the Valles Caldera, near Los Alamos, New Mexico. I hadn't found out what he had wanted me to find out. But I told him what I had seen. CJ made an angry face but didn't say anything.

I drifted back in my vision to the valley, which was slightly obscured as if I were (thought I wasn't) standing behind a final corner or bend of a mountain. During this time I was trying to figure why the "lava" from the "volcano" I had witnessed a while back (as if my first dream were real) hadn't glopped over the ground and hardened into basalt.

Some image came into my mind of a gradual hardening of ash from the point of ejection in a circle outward. The ash would be invisible until it hardened.

(8/12/07) dream analysis by stock analyst; my name is preemie

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on the phone with my boss DO. He was with my psychiatrist A. I "saw" that they were in a room like my great grandmother's living room. DO had rushed to the phone when I had come on. He told me he had read the letter I had given to my psychiatrist.

Trying to help me somehow, as if everybody were panicked about my condition, DO said, "I see what the Dark Girl and the girl with black eyes mean." I "saw" that the Dark Girl was a Mexican or Native American girl with very dark skin. The girl with black eyes was like classic grey alien, except maybe only waist-height, and somehow childlike.

DO said, "The Dark Girl means you want to control things. The girl with black eyes means you have no knowledge of history."

Dream #2

I walked into a gigantic, K-Mart-like store with my family. AN, a temporary assistant at my company, was with us. We all went our separate ways, but AN kept following me. I was trying to shake him off. He was trying to gauge where I really wanted to go, but he was acting like he wasn't trying to follow me at all.

AN said, "I'm going up to the electronics section." So I walked up there with him to put him where he said he wasted to go and thus "oblige" him to stay there and not follow me.

When we got to the electronics section, in the back of the store, I said, "I don't have any interest in electronics. I'm leaving." I headed off toward the left wall of the store. I felt like AN was still following me. I ran faster and faster and wove in and out of aisles to throw AN off my trail.

A kid pulling a cart stacked almost to the ceiling (maybe fifty feet high?) with boxes got in my way. I jumped and flew over the boxes and onto the top shelf of what looked like an aisle of "big-box" warehouse shelves. I ran along the top shelf toward the entrance of the store and the cash registers.

When I got to the end of the aisle I could see down (way down) to the entrance and cash registers. This whole area was moderately busy with people. AN ran, crouched, from behind a display case island, like a counter of watch displays, and hid behind one of the unused cash registers. I could tell, by the way AN was moving and hiding, that he was waiting until he saw me come back around to this part of the store so he could start following me again.

I leapt down to the cash register. I pulled AN out from behind the register. I yelled, "Why are you following me?!"

AN ignored my question. He was about to call out to some partners of his who weren't necessarily following me but were lurking around, just in case they needed to help AN with stalking me.

But before AN could call out to his partners, I covered his mouth and nose. I held AN's mouth and nose for so long that AN died.

AN was now my brother. I held him in my arms. I carried him through the store, trying to find my family. The store was now a restaurant set up as some kind of beach bar. It was humongous. The place was full of people. Some people sat on couches.

I couldn't believe I had killed my brother. I also didn't want to be accused of it -- even though I was obviously guilty!

I got to a completely dark corner of the bar-like area. There were still, apparently, people sitting in this corner of the bar. For a moment I thought I could see the faces of the people. But when I got up to the people I couldn't see anything at all.

I called, "Is my family still here?"

The people all replied. They all sounded young, like they were in their mid-twenties. They said, "No, not here." I turned around. I still couldn't see anything. The people called, "Hey, wait a minute. Who are you? We don't even know who you are to help you."

I said, "M... m... my name is Preemie."

(10/11/07) waterbed succubus

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

Dream #1

I and my brother were walking out of a white-walled room and into a small hallway, then around a corner and into another room. We were possibly re-enacting a scene where an old man grabbed two little boys' genitals.

But when we got into the second room, my brother had become a woman, probably around my age, but more mature than I. My brother and I may possibly have been naked (and young?) before. Now I and the woman my brother had become were naked. The room was small, rather empty, but somehow cluttered. It was like a pile of something lay or stood under the blanket on the bed.

The woman lured me onto the bed. Suddenly the bed was like a clear bag -- actually like a clear version of a waterbed mattress. Somehow the woman had pulled us inside this bag. There was water, maybe even plant life, in the bag. The woman had pulled me in here to suffocate me.

A couple of times I could see as if I stood outside the bag. I saw the woman inside the bag, beating against it, herself suffocating. The bag was damp on the inside with evaporated and re-condensed water. The woman lay in maybe two or three inches of water. The water looked pure, distilled.

I was back in the bag now. It was now like a white blanket over the two of us. The woman was young, had a smooth face, tan skin, red hair, and thin, blue eyes. I lay as she sat over me. I may have been an out-of-shape man, in a sense too weak to defend himself against a healthy woman.

The woman had set up the bag so that I would suffocate. The whole bag was losing oxygen, but the bottom part lost it more quickly than the top part. The woman could sit over me and watch me suffocate. When she saw I was suffocated she could get out of the bag before she suffocated. She had tricked, not forced, me into this situation.

As I lay dying the woman spoke softly to me. But her comments were somewhat cruel. The woman said that she and a lot of people were jealous of me, and that was why she was doing this to me. She may have started singing a pretty, gentle song to the same effect.

As the woman continued singing I found myself flying through an enormous structure like a dim warehouse constructed of brick and black iron. I flew through "tunnels" consisting of tent-like, greyish, translucent, thin fabric for walls and ceiling and varicolored, mostly purple, pink, orange, and blue, quilts for floors. I hovered only about six inches above the floors. The tunnels may only have been about two feet tall.

As I flew along I saw lifted up flaps along the ceilings of the tunnel. They were exposed to windows which showed high, deep, blue sky. I flew along through sloped tunnels now. The sloped tunnels led up to the ceiling. I thought, If the woman doesn't see me and doesn't suspect, I could fly through one of the flaps and out one of the windows (or out through the ceiling?).

I feel like at one point I flow along over wall-less quilt-floors. I could see down to the floor of the warehouse. I could see all the multicolored" floors filling the warehouse.

(One little thing I think is kind of -- though not extremely -- interesting reflecting on this dream is that, in waking life, about three or so years later, i.e. in about 2010, The American Folk Art Museum, which was at that time located next to the Museum of Modern Art, and was, by then, one of my favorite museums in New York City, went a little quilt crazy, showing an exhibition by Paula Nadelstern, then showing a two-floor exhibition of the history of American quilts, and finally putting on a gigantic show of red and white quilts at the Armory on 66th Street and Park Avenue.)

(11/8/07) lesbian kissing joke; bowling green jacket; the shortest bio; brother's suffocation

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A movie preview. Two women kissing in dim light, outdoors, possibly in a courtyard or near a pool. One woman was blonde; the other, brunette. The blonde woman eventually started up a relationship with some big man, whom I dont think I ever saw directly.

The kissing scene started over, except now this was where the man first met the blonde woman. The blonde woman was kissing the brunette and then waved over the brunette's shoulder (still holding the brunette's hands -- they seemed to be kneeling and holding hands while kissing.)

In another scene the blonde woman was in a swimming pool with the brunette, convincing the brunette that the relationship with the man would soon be revealed as a joke.

I sat (on a trunk or a box?) in a bedroom filled with grey natural light. Against the wall facing me was a desk. On the right wall, the near the wall facing me, was a doorway to a big movie theater full of people.

I could hear the music for the preview for the movie Walk Hard. I thought a point would be coming up soon where everybody would laugh. But only a few people laughed. I thought, Oh -- well, the big laugh must be coming soon.

Dream #2

I walked out of some place like a subway stop and into a grey, cold day. There were people rushing all over. The area was all torn up, like the construction area around Bowling Green.

I was cold. I pulled a black jacket out of the back pocket of my book bag. It suddenly occurred to me that I had had my jacket in there for a long time. I was afraid to put on the jacket -- I didn't want my boss BS to think I was a wimp for wearing a jacket so early in the cold season.

I walked along torn up sidewalk and a wall (to my right) of scaffolding. People even seemed to be walking in the street. Two people walked past me -- first, a woman on crutches missing her left leg; second, a man on crutches, possibly using both of his legs to walk.

Dream #3

I sat at a pale, wood table. I sat across from my boss BS. He sat a little to my left. I was resting my head on the surface of the table. The wood was thick but not very dense. It was polished, but there seemed to be little, grey nicks all over the surface.

I was explaining to BS that I had actually lived alright while I was in the Americorps volunteer programs I had been in, regardless of having made around six dollars an hour at the most recent position and -- (I tried to mention the position I'd had in New Mexico, but I got sidetracked somehow).

BS decided that he and I should have a contest of who could write the shortest bio.

Dream #4

I was in an empty room with my psychiatrist A. The room was white with pale wood floors. A sat against a wall. I sat just right and forward of the center of the room. We both probably sat in folding chairs. A may also have been my mother. We were discussing some day-to-day activities.

My brother lay before A now and pulled a big, clear, plastic bag over himself. He stuck it up like a tent. Even though he said very little, he made it clear he would try to suffocate himself. He was seriously trying to get our attention. I could feel my brother dying at points, but I simply hoped he would be alright. A/my mom seemed also to be doing a good job of ignoring my brother.

We stood up and walked out the door, now plainly talking about day-to-day activities, as if to show my brother we weren't worried about him at all. We walked down the hall. A/my mom lay on a couch. I headed toward the front door.

I saw my brother had now laid himself on a basket full of used, white towels. The basket was small, so my brother, fitting in the basket, must have been small as well. My brother held the plastic bag over himself again, as if he were going to suffocate himself.