(5/2/06) you got something to say?; the big joke

(Entered in paper journal at 5:51 PM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I stood by "my door" in "my bedroom." I looked through the peephole. A roommate, a black man with long dreads and a mean look,  walked toward my door. At first he seemed unaware of me. Then he looked straight at me. I thought, Fine. If he knows I'm looking at him, let him know. I'm tired of ihm thinking he's got everybody scared.

The man walked straight toward me as if there were no door. Then there wa no door. He had been changing into a woman as he approached me, even though "she" was still a "man." "She" looked at me with an ugly face. "She" was somewhat dark, round, with thin, eyes, a white tank top, and a palish blue, denim skirt.

"She" asked me, "Why are you staring at me? You got something to say?"

I told "her," "Yes. You always make all this noise when everybody else is going to bed. It's rude and mean and you need to stop."

We now stood before a doorway outside like at a suburban house with a front yard. She told me, "I've been proud of you for making it this long through all the noise. It's a type of lesson for you. are you complaining about your lessons?"

I didn't feel defensive or threatened. But I did try to justify myself.

Somehow both the woman and I got sidetracked and had a conversation about something outside.

Dream 2

I was on my bed. I heard my landlord in the hallway outside. The landlord was getting ready to leave.

I sat up, jumped off the foot of my bed, and opened my door. My room and the hallway both had an opulent wood and gold glow in the morning sunlight. The hallway was enormous, with plush, green carpet and thick wood walls. The ceilings were high. A stairway went down to another visible level and then back up, like this.

My landlord was on the lower level, but I could see him. A few people, all black, hung around the hall, telling the landlord there were no problems and he could go home.

I yelled at the landlord, "P! P! I have a complaint! Everything's not okay!"

Everybody looked at me, angry. I ran down the steps. It occurred to me this guy's name was PR XXXXX. I couldn't remember his last name. It struck me I might not be able to contact him if I didn't have his last name.

I yelled at him, "The man in this room" (I pointed to a room on the lower level) "makes noise all night long. I'm tired of nobody doing anything about it."

I knew that I was putting myself in danger for what I was doing. But I had to do it.

The landlord said, "He's just a poor Hispanic." (Or Mexican?) "You can't just get mad at him after one incident."

I took the landlord's statement to heart. But I couldn't figure out why I did so. First of all, the man was big and black. He wasn't a poor Hispanic. He wasn't a poor anything. And he had done mean things to me ever since I'd gotten here.

It was night. I was in bed. Suddenly my door was bashed in. Two short Mexican men burst in. I jumped to the foot of my bed, which was now tall.

The second Mexican man pulled a shaving razor

on me, yelling, "You got my friend in trouble! He's just a Mexican" (?) "who can barely speak English!"

The men weren't trying to get sympathy. This was all just another part of their big joke. But when the second man shoved his razor at me I grabbed the man's wrist and then the razor. I pulled the razor out of the man's hand. But when I tried to slash the man I was somehow ineffectual.

(6/11/06) wishing my old boss were still around

(Entered in paper journal at 10 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A group of people in front of a forest clearing (?) led by a woman in singing either an anthem or some kind of ritual song like a healing, victory, or requiem song. Everybody looked at each other, wondering if this awful song could have any use.

I was behind the woman leading the song. I wandered off. The woman and people were the people I worked with. The woman was the main leader, like our director JS. I thought back to our old director SS and wished she were still around.

I was walking through a parking lot. I saw a woman who kind of looked like SS -- I was sure it was her. As I kept getting closer, the woman looked more and less like SS. She smiled at me at one point. Her clothing might have changed, too: from a t-shirt and blue jeans to a white dress.

(8/2/07) i then became an even prettier woman

(Entered in paper journal at 7:30 PM at home.)

Dream #1

I looked into a mirror that may have been slightly misted over. I was reflected as a woman. I was blonde and tan with a slightly round face. I smiled at myself and lifted my eyebrows in mock surprise. I then became an even prettier woman.

(1/1/09) the hound went through the hole

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A movie which was like a Disney cartoon and real life together, as if the cartoon (not computer animation) had the weight and dimension of real life.

I (?) sat on the lower bed of a bunk bed. On the underside of the top bed was a hole maybe three inches in diameter. It was all black inside, like in cartoons.

A little dog that looked like the hound off of The Fox and the Hound jumped out of the hole and attacked me. It would dart at my shoulder and then disappear, immediately reappearing in the hole, then darting at my shoulder again.

The dog and I had once been friends, as if I were the fox. But the dog had gotten mad at me for some reason and was now attacking me. I wasn't really hurt by the attack, but I wanted to resolve whatever misunderstanding was causing the hound's anger.

Now the main character of the movie was a hound character. I wasn't in the movie. The hound had gone through a few different size transformations.

The hound was now something like human-sized. It sat against a wall in a strange cave like a sewer tunnel which also had the look and feel of the bunk bed on which I had been sitting. The hound was afraid of making his next transformation. He thought he might get too big.

But now the walls all grew over with reddish material like flesh. The reddish material also pulsed with clouds of purple and veins of blue. The reddish material had become a smallish room around the hound, possibly with an opening to a tunnel off to his right.

A hole opened above and just before the hound, on the curving "ceiling." A woman's voice told the hound that it needed to go through the hole and into the world as its next transformation. The woman's voice said not to be afraid, that the hound's fears would not be realized.

The hound went through the hole. As he pushed through, he found himself in another room, something like a dim living room with various deep green tones of furniture. He may have had the body of a human baby. (And now the movie was in live-action, not a cartoon.) But it seemed like the baby was enormous compared to everything around him.

The baby yelled, possibly just in his mind, to the woman, "You said my fears wouldn't come true! But they have!"

The woman's voice came back and said, "Don't worry. This is just part of your perception. As the light hits the room, the objects you think you see right now will show themselves to be something else. Then you'll see what everything really is, and how everything is the right size, including you."

This seemed to be proving true. For instance, beside me (as if I had now taken on the character of the hound/baby) I had something like a cup and a book. They seemed miniscule. But I knew that when the light hit them they'd either grow or show themselves that was naturally that small. I was feeling much calmer as the woman spoke to me.

I was now reading a book that may have had typed-out, but bluish, lettering. The writing was divided into numbered paragraphs, like some kind of technical manual. The left page spoke about the phenomenon the woman's voice had been telling me about. The right page spoke either about a chemical process which happens during dreaming or a chemical process which is aided by dreaming. There was a series of abbreviations that looked like LCFO or LFCO.

This was a book my girlfriend H had given me. It was something like an instruction manual for being a good businessman. The book had a soft, white, laminated-feeling cover, and had bluish or purplish, very plain lettering on the front.

(3/28/09) movies you don't ever want to see

(Entered in paper journal at 10:15 AM at home.)

Dream #1

I was in a video store. The place was well lit, but the walls and ceiling were dark. The shelves were metal frame style shelves, mostly about shoulder-height. The place was large, and there were a few other people around.

I found a shelf of lesbian movies -- really, lesbian erotica. The cases of the movies were all dark. They were either, or both, VCR cassette cases and DVD cases. There were little cover pictures and blurbs on each case. Most of the blurbs were written like copy for a porn magazine. I was intrigued by it, but I also felt ashamed for looking at such obviously pornographic material.

There was a wide "doorway" into another section or room of the store. I walked toward it. At some point before I got into the room I saw a shelf full of pornographic films with the title PIG or P.I.G. I didn't even want to look at these cases: I knew those films were really twisted.

In the other room there was another shelf full of lesbian movies. A sign above the shelf said something like, "Due to popular demand, we have brought in more of these enticing movies." The sign may also have said something about enjoying the movies in the summer heat.

Whereas the movies I had previously been looking at were lesbian movies that seemed to have a lesbian erotica edge, these movies were really just flat-out lesbian porn. I walked way from the shelf, not really interested.

There was a tall, wall-sized shelf before me. All the movies on this file were from the PIG series. I only saw the sides of the boxes. Each box-side had a picture. I had the feeling that these films were like porn, but that they also had something like real torture or death scenes in them. I turned away and walked off to the right.

A wall-height shelf to the right had a sign over it saying, "MOVIES YOU DON'T EVER WANT TO SEE." This shelf of movies had the faces of the boxes all showing. I could tell these were movies with real death scenes in them.

I tried not to look at any of the boxes, but I saw a photo (as big as on a poster) of a heavy, dark-skinned, Hispanic (?) man with long, straight, black hair. The man wore a red t-shirt and had his hands folded as if in prayer. Between the man's hands was the end of the man's hair, or else something like hair, which was coated in or transforming into a mass of congealed blood.

I saw another photo, this one only the size of a video cassette case's front, of a young, white man with short, red hair. The young man wore a black t-shirt. Out of the left side of the man's head grew another head, which was like the man's first head, except grey and distorted.