(12/7/08) astral projection over college campus

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

Dream #1

I stood by "my car" in the parking lot of a college campus. I stood before an open field, possibly under the shade of a tree. It was a sunny day. I was looking for one building in particular. It may have been the theater building. I may have seen some yellow trees in the distance.

I began walking across the field, but stopped. I had forgotten something in the car. I may have gone back to the car. At some point I lifted myself into the air. I flew higher and higher, eventually just above the tops of the trees within my sight (there were few trees -- the campus was mostly lawn and complexes of red-brick, new-looking buildings).

I moved toward a complex of buildings near the top, left quadrant of the lawn. Some students were walking along the concrete walkways by the buildings and along the lawn. I moved myself through the air by pointing my (right?) index finger to a coordinate and "pulling down" as if I were scrolling on a computer screen. I was seeing a lot more yellow trees.

As I approached the complex of buildings (which had a concrete courtyard inside its loosely joined area), I became aware that I was doing something extraordinary by flying. I assumed that I was either dreaming or having and out-of-body experience. I thought, Well, then, this experience isn't real. But it felt real, and I thought, Then it must be real in some sense. I thought, Maybe I'm not even flying. Maybe I'm just dreaming of looking at a computer screen. After all, that's what this flying is like. But I felt the atmosphere around me, so I was convinced something about this experience was real.

I got to the other side of the complex. I flew past a modern-looking, slope-roofed building with greenhouse-style windows near the top of the building. I wondered if people would see me. I also wondered if the people walking below had seen me, and how any of them would react. Would they think I was a ghost? Would they be afraid? Would they think I was doing something I wasn't supposed to do? Would they try to pull me down? I now tried not to be seen.

For a moment I lost my ability to fly. I began flying again, approaching the building at the end of the complex. I told myself I had lost the ability to fly because I had started thinking of the complex as an interior, and of whatever was beyond it as an exterior. In my lucid dreams I would often, I told myself, be afraid of approaching exteriors, because I thought of the dreams as products of my imagination, and I'd never believed I had strong enough imagination to produce an entire exterior environment.

But I told myself, This environment all has something real to it. Don't think of it as your imagination. Just relax and go beyond.

I started flying again, high enough to see over the building at the end of the complex. I could see blue sky and green trees. I told myself, There. See? You're seeing things just fine.

But as I approached the last building, I again lost my ability to fly. I dropped quickly, so that I had to grab onto the edge of a roof. I didn't know if I could fly anymore. But I knew I had to get past the complex. I thought I would climb onto the roof, then find some way off the roof, after which I would simply walk beyond the buildings and see what was there. But as I started pulling myself up onto the roof, there was a movement, as if the building were falling over, so that it would crash to the ground and smash me.

But suddenly the building was just a big bookshelf in a bedroom. The bookshelf was empty, pale, unfinished, and had a weird structure on top of it, like the roof of an old, tall house. I wasn't hurt when the bookshelf and I fell to the ground.

I may now have been like a little kid. I thought I should try to stand the building back up. I may have tried, to see if I had the strength. I didn't. But some figure, like a girl-angel, lifted the bookshelf back up for me.

I looked around and thought about something like bugs. I thought I should clean this place up to prevent getting bugs. I then had some weird, distorted visions of simply-drawn cartoon faces.

(5/19/09) pursued by an old friend

(Entered at 9:35 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was a sunny, blue day. I floated or walked along an asphalt road and then along a dusty dirt road or path. I floated/walked up to and then past a small bridge that went over a little creek that ran to my right. On the other side of the bridge may have been a border of dusty dirt, then a slightly rolling field of lawn, at the edge of which, surrounded by trees, may have been an apartment complex.

I "remembered" a conversation I'd had with my old boss BS, in which BS had implied how I hadn't been good enough to keep, and in which he'd implied that he'd do whatever he could to keep anybody else from ever taking me.

I felt trapped, doomed never to find work again. I thought I might as well get away from it all. I thought I'd go back out to work in nature, like I'd done before I'd gotten my office job.

I floated upward, maybe twenty feet in the air. Once I reached that height, my old friend R, who was out walking his dog, caught sight of me. I didn't want anything to do with R, and I tried to float away before he tried to contact me.

But R played some kind of sneaky trick. He called his dog to run out across a wide lawn that spanned off to the left of the path I'd been traveling along. (R and his dog had approached this area from the right side of the path.) My goal had been, and still was, to fly out along the left field.

I knew R would call his dog out to follow me through the field. Then, regardless of where I went, R could go there, too, forcibly contacting me and justifying it by saying that this, after all, was where his dog had spontaneously chosen to go, and that R had had no choice but to follow his dog.

I decided to throw R's dog off my trail. I don't know how I did it. The ground below me was deep with snow. It spanned far to the horizon. I caused R's dog to veer far to the left. For some reason, I then began following the dog, hoping to cause the dog to veer farther and farther off course.

But soon the dog sped so far ahead of me that I was panicking to catch up with it, in hopes of throwing it irretrievably off course. I was also hoping, in all of this chase, to speed (still flying) so far ahead of R that he'd have no ability to catch up with me before my plan was complete.

But now I looked and saw R behind me, only a hundred or so yards away, even after all my efforts. R was slowly, but confidently and ruthlessly, plodding through the snow.

I flew through a "suburban neighborhood" (it looked completely deserted, with snow drifts filling the streets and even the houses). I was still calling after R's dog, who still charged along through an open, vast field in the distance.

I flew through a snowy backyard, under the (leafy?) canopy of a low tree, and through the sliding-glass back door of a house. I quickly flew through the house, which was dim, with only natural light coming through the windows, and which had snow drifts piled halfway up to the ceiling.

I flew through a paneless front window and into a front yard. The front yard felt extremely small, surrounded by small trees, with snow drifts up almost to the top of the (chest-high?) chain-link fence. The sunlight reflected golden off the snow.

I looked behind me. R was still following. He was now coming through the back of the house.

I couldn't fly anymore. I was trudging frantically through the snow, trying to get over the fence. Once I was past the fence, I felt, I would have a little bit more security and a little better chance of avoiding R. But for some reason it was extremely difficult to straddle and jump the fence. My heart and muscles were straining.

I was shouting at R's dog, trying to throw her as far off course as possible, but also pleading, like I was trying with all my heart to trick R into thinking that his dog was my friend.

R was now in the front yard. He grabbed one of my feet and tried to pull me back into the yard. I tried desperately to shake him off and jump the fence.