(9/29/04) lingerie ad posters; mountain flood; grandpa at his own funeral; mother electrocutes nephew; no emergency hires needed

(Entered in paper journal at 12:17 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Had dream where Grandpa died, came and contacted me.

Mother on mantel.

Newspaper ad murals.

Me in lingerie, wish mom would go so I could change. Mom thinks I'm ungrateful. Grandma P somewhere.

Dream 2

Run outside some place. Mountain path back to home washed to straight cliff by rain. Walk around cliff. Friend falls down path. I shout, No. Friend okay, think, I'm an idiot.

Get up path. Empty river full of bugs. Run down logs. Hear flood coming. Now full of water.

In boat. Crash into other boat. Knock something off. Move nose of other boat crash into boat. Signs to my apartment. In long, dry flume like boat floor. Move nose of another boat. More water. Crash, break boat in half.

Upset. SDM says, Don't worry. But I wish I could've been a good transvestite.

Dream 3

Reading newspaper. Somehow Grandma J asks me about author. Article about South NM, some reservation. From somewhere Grandpa heard. Asks if this is book about Anthrax in XXXXX pueblo. If so, he really feels for those guys. I look, can't make out words, just say yes. See pictures of pottery and crack pipes.

Now TV commercial. Some guy in amber satin dress shirt pulls elbow to bald head, says, This deal from just about now to just about end of Christmas. Another commercial. Woman talking slow, naive, and quiet, voice like Grandma J, but looks like cartoon stuffed person. I think about how voice overs created.

Now in line in empty, church-like room. Don't know other people, but Grandpa behind me. I say, "They've been looking all over for Grandpa."

Grandpa says, "Well, yes, your mom has said he's going somewhere soon. If you know what I mean."

I know now we were in line to see casket. I say, "Oh, I couldn't stand it, to see him dead."

Now feel the pressing of fingers on right side of face. At first afraid, but know it's Grandpa's spirit. Lean into it, hoping to stop being afraid.

Suddenly pull myself "out of" sleep, "sit up" in bed, cry, Grandpa! Now eyes really open (?), try to find clock, takes a second to actually roll head and eyes over to clock without strange blackouts. But at last roll head over and see time is about 12:17.

***

(Daytime paper journal entries.)

Five dreams remembered from last night. I'll write down the last two first, as they aren't written in the Ghost Book.

Dream 5

It was night. I was in a building or outside (?) with a whole lot of people. But in particular I was with some friends, just one or two, all unknown now. My old Los Alamos Americorps roommate B came up to us. He said something like, "Hey, Preemie."

I was happy to see him. It was a relief, because I hoped he could get me "off the hook" for not having been out on a firefighting crew for one of this season's fires.

B came right up to me and said, "Hey, man, too bad we didn't get to see you this year, but we barely needed any emergency hires."

I now looked at my friends as if to say, Now see? That's the truth.

Dream 4

It was a cloudy day. I was in some kind of playground or large yard in which there was a sandbox. I was there with my mom and my oldest nephew and possibly with my sister. My nephew sat under a brown-painted steel structure with a staple-shape, i.e.

It was like the monkey bars, except it seemed to have been made out of rebar and it was less than three feet tall. My nephew, sitting cross-legged on the ground, could easily reach up and grab the rebar.

Now I stood on one side of the bars and my mom stood across from me. We were about ten feet apart. My mom told me she was heading in for a while. I told her, "Don't go." I don't know if I also was going somewhere. But, regardless, I thought that once my mom left, nobody would be there to watch my nephew. I told my mom, "If you leave, nobody'll be able to stop him from grabbing those bars and electrocuting himself to death."

My mom said, "Oh, nothing like that's going to happen." She started walking away.

My nephew, hearing what I had said, reached up and grabbed a bar just to test it out. Nothing happened.

My mom got mad. She went over to the bars while my nephew held them. She yelled, "You don't believe this can hurt you? Well it isn't on right now. That's why you aren't feeling anything. You're lucky. Here. I'll give you a taste of what it's like."

She bent down and pressed a ping-pong ball-sized button in a brown box about the size of two outdoor power outlet boxes. My nephew jolted and then fell over on his right side. My mom acted surprised, as if she couldn't have seen that coming. My nephew just lay on the ground, unresponsive.

Dream 1

I was in an empty room, a really beautiful room, actually. It was maybe thirty feet by thirty feet by ten feet. The walls were white, stucco-like material with arches built into them, just arches for show, like fake hearths or places where portraits might be fastened. Over the "hearths" were mantels. The "hearths" were set up in the walls on something like steps about one and a half feet tall.

There were exits from the room, into fluorescent-lit hallways, I think, but I wasn't really concentrating on them. The tiles were brick red porcelain with black cement between. The light was reddish pink, dim, with undertones of dim incandescent.

I walked around in thong panties and a bra and something like a pink, sheer, babydoll outfit or some kind of sheer, pink robe type thing. My mom now stood up in one of the mantels in a corner of the room, like a sculpted sentry. My grandma P stood somewhere like this as well.

In between my mother and I, pasted on the wall, were huge newsprint ads for Target and Mervyn's. I wanted to look at these ads because I wanted to buy some girl clothes and panties. But I didn't dare look at the ads while my mom and grandma were up there. In fact I wanted them to get out of here so I could change into boy clothes and they wouldn't see me like this.

My mom and maybe my grandma were talking on and on, always implying that I should pay attention. But all I wanted was for them to leave so I could get changed.

Finally my grandma said, "Well, just forget him. He's so ungrateful, after all we've given him."

(I don't know why I said in the Ghost Book that my mother said this. I very well remember my grandma saying it.)

Dream 2

Don't remember beginning. (I have to hurry, too. I have spent most of this time in a daze.) I walked out of some cabin (?) in the woods, which was "some place far away" from my house. I was supposedly of great repute because I had walked this long distance to this place out of the kindness of my heart (?).

I was actually familiar with this mountain. I'd just walk up a tall, steep hill, get over, and the rest of the journey would be easy.

-- Ugh. --

Actually, I can't do this today. I have the dreams down pretty well in the Ghost Book.

Dream 3

As to the third dream, basically it was a dream that ended in my grandpa being dead and "visiting" me. He pressed on the right side of my face. I felt this vividly. I was afraid at first. But I was curious more than anything. I stopped being afraid. I pressed my face in toward the strange pressure of fingers.

The weird buzzing feeling of things got very strong. At some point things were so intense that I told myself I had to call out to my grandpa now if I were to contact him, or else he would disappear. I yelled, "Grandpa!"

I then "woke up" and rolled my eyes all over, "blacking out" before they finally landed on my bedside clock. It was like I kept "waking up" then "blacking out" as if that waking had been a false waking, just a dream-waking. But eventually the waking was true, at which point I got up and wrote down the experience.

(2/10/05) the $700 casa bonita train

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a house with JN from Morningside Park. She had received some kind of promotion. She was now assigned to monitor some potentially illegal activity. A man (a lecturer I knew in waking life from the New York Tolerance Center) who may have called himself the District Attorney came by to inspect JN's performance.

I was crouched somewhere, like I was cleaning a floor. The man caught sight of me, thought I was a drug addict, and determined he would follow JN and me to XXXXX to make sure I wasn't getting her involved in drugs.

JN and I were in the bathroom. JN was now a skinny, attractive girl. I was in some kind of lingerie, though I wasn't wearing anything like panties or lingerie bottoms. I had a huge penis, which showed below some sheer, black camisole.

We were now at the place. I can't remember this part.

I was outside, looking at a red-bodied subway train. I was happy because maybe I'd get to ride it.

(By this point in time in waking life, red-bodied subway trains were being replaced by newer, silver-bodied trains with white interiors and periwinkle-blue seats. I called them "ghost trains." And I was always happy whenever I got to ride one of the old, red-bodied trains.)

But as the red-bodied train got closer (as if coming round some small, rocky slopes) I saw it was more like an old-style railroad train, slow-moving, windowless, almost like a chain of clean trolleys.

The train passed by so slowly that I got to ask passengers questions. Where were they going? Somewhere up north (like this was the Metro North). How did they eat on such a long trip? There was "free" dinner. It was included in the ticket price, which itself was reasonable. Excited, I ran into some chambered cave like the white caves at Casa Bonita to purchase a ticket.

My mom sat with some folks in a chamber. She said, "Don't get too excited. The 'reasonable' ticket price is seven hundred."

I continued running. I thought to myself, Well, seven hundred isn't that bad. But I quickly stopped. I must at first have thought my mom had meant seven hundred cents, or seven dollars. But now I realized she'd meant seven hundred dollars!

I shouted, "Seven hundred dollars! That's awful!" I felt like all my money was slipping away.

I was now sliding down a tunnel slide that was still like the chambered, white caves at Casa Bonita.

(3/9/05) pathetic in cafe; two negligees; vindicators 3 and 4; shaved mustache

(Entered in paper journal at 5:25 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I must have been looking around before for some person, possibly a male. Now I walked into a restaurant that was full and bustling and had an air to it like a cafe in Jules and Jim but with the colors of a cafe in Un Coeur en Hiver. There was just a tight space of aisle. I walked toward the back of the cafe. Everybody turned and stared at me. I feel like everybody was saying things like, "How pathetic! He's looking for XXXXX at this point in time! And in those clothes!"

Dream 2

I was possibly a famous writer. I had been involved recently with an exchange of letters setting up encounters with a few of my admirers/peers during a writing conference of some sort.

Now I was walking around a huge complex, outside, up and down stairs and along balconies and lawns and courtyards, in nice, gentle sunlight. I saw one woman walking down a set of stairs from a glass-fronted area that looked like the main conference area. She looked at me, wondered if I was who I was, then continued on when I didn't speak some code I was supposed to speak to a woman of her description. I didn't want to avoid her -- it was just that I suddenly wondered if speaking with her wouldn't lead to trouble.

I was now walking along a concrete balcony behind a second woman. She had long, straight, blonde hair, pale tan skin, a ribbed, black tank t-shirt, and a long, folding-type skirt that was pale purple and white like a tie-dye, stippled like granite with flecks of black. She had a tight waist and a round bottom.

I didn't even know if she was one of the people I had arranged to meet with. (These meetings, by the way, were only supposed to be for discussions on writing.) I just wanted to talk with her so I could get her in bed. But as I advanced I grew more and more cautious. Then the girl's bottom just kept getting flabbier until I finally just turned away.

Now I was in some apartment/office, changing into lingerie: a sheer, purple camisole. I must have been about to put on panties. But I didn't. I saw a girl I knew by description. She wore the same camisole, as a skirt-dress, with no panties. She was tan, bronze-blonde, with a twiggy, muscular figure and a nice, round bottom.

As soon as I saw her I left the apartment, with some lingerie in my hand, and walked up to her. I said, "Are you who I think you are?"

She looked at me and said, "You're holding two negligees, just like you said."

She was now shocked by sexual attraction. She ran off. She said, "Please wait here. I have to change. I'll be right back."

I myself thought I should go change.

Dream 3

A woman came into some apartment/office where I sat at a computer. She gave me three disks. I had asked her for them, but now I couldn't remember what they were -- programs to install or files to download.

I looked at the disks. The first said "VINDICATOR #1;" the second, "VINDICATOR #2;" the third had "VINDICATOR #3" over "VINDICATOR #4."

I had "mentally" asked the woman what the disks' contents were. But she hadn't answered me yet -- it was actually like her functionality or presence had evaporated. And I just sat there thinking, What a fool she must think I am.

Dream 4.

I looked in the mirror. I had shaved my mustache. I kept noticing pimples along where my mustache had been until I had counted out eight cysts and large blemishes. I told myself, This is what you get for shaving your face. Now you'll just have to be patient until the hair grows back.

(5/10/05) crowded christian getaway; $150 scholarship

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I went to some party or convention-type getaway which I believe was Christian and possibly for universities. The building was like a hotel, very tall and wide, but also with the feeling of a tacky, thin housing complex. The convention/party took up the whole hotel.

I went into a room which was blue in the darkness, like it was lit by TV screens. The room was huge and lined with wide, rolling beds which different groups of friends lay on together. They all had things with them, like duffel bags, food, etc. It was like the beds would roll us all to the next part of this party.

I found an empty bed and lay down. I wore a purple camisole. Next to me was someone I didn't know, maybe a man. Behind me was a couple I didn't know. The lady on my side looked like my Los Alamos Americorps coworker and friend AL. She giggled at me and told me my look wasn't working, though my body was okay.

I told her I wished I could have shaved my face. She said, "Well, yeah. That's kind of bad. But it's also... your... smell. You should have showered before you put on that outfit. Now you're so obviously a man."

I thought, People are just going to laugh at me if I keep wearing this. So I went to change.

I don't know what happened next. But now I was in a full room, small like an apartment room, and bright. Everybody was cramming into the doorway to the crammed stairwell. They were all holding tickets or programs. I was trying to get out of this place altogether. Everybody else was trying to get to some big concert.

I worked through the crowd and got right to the doorway. Some guy I didn't know asked me if I was going to the concert.

I said, "Oh, I'm not sure yet."

He said, "Oh, but XXXXX is awesome! That's where I'm going. But isn't it great they give you a choice of concerts? XXXXX and XXXXX are also playing. You could go watch any of them."

I hesitated. I asked if I could see the program. I did like one of the other groups mentioned. I saw that they were playing.

I told the guy, "Well, I may go see XXXXX."

But he said, "No. You can't do that now. You'd have to have made different reservations." He showed me the program again. The other two groups were playing at venues halfway across the country or world.

I still hesitated about leaving, thinking I might go see the concert here. After all, they might be as good as XXXXX. But I decided still to try to leave.

(Continued entry at 4:50 PM. No location info given.)

I walked toward a mirror, still feeling foolish about having been dressed as a girl while looking the way I looked. But now my thought was more about how silly it was to have tried to look pretty while my face was so covered with acne. But now I saw that I didn't have much of a beard. And I was surprised by how nice my face actually looked.

I was suddenly (?) in a hotel room. Somewhere were tables full of peanuts and chocolate candies, piles. The dresser with the TV also had piles of these candies and nuts. I slightly remember having had handfuls of this stuff at some point, passing it around to people.

But now I had just woken up, as if from a drunken party. I woke to a text message from my mom saying my grandpa had died. I now definitely needed to get out of this place. I needed to get home for the funeral. I even think I was trying to get a hold of my mom, but I couldn't do it unless I was out of the hotel.

I walked out of the hallway. I saw my crew mate and friend MG. Then behind him went his girlfriend, who looked like my co-volunteer at my Flagstaff national park volunteer project, DD. They went into a room.

I thought for sure the girl was DD. So I followed them into the room. But when I got in, the woman was actually some tall, Asian woman. We had some conversation I felt was just a waste of time. But it also made me feel inferior. So I kept talking, just to make myself feel less inferior.

Dream 2

I walked into a United Parcel Service location. MM, my old boss from my UPS job in Santa Fe, worked there. I was coming to see him. I saw him. He was busy. So I went into the docks area under the pretense of seeing old sights, but really so I could just remain inconspicuous.

There were a lot of boxes. The place was actually a storage room with which I was familiar. Even the boxes looked familiar (i.e. despite the fact that, in waking life, I wouldn't have worked at or visited "this UPS" in a little under two years; so the "familiar" boxes wouldn't have moved in almost two years). The room, the whole dock area, was pitch black overall, with just some track-light spotlights throwing concentrated light on isolated areas.

I left the room and saw MM sitting just inside the docks area, by the door to the customer area, at a spotlit desk, doing something at a computer.

I asked him what he was doing. He laughed gently, like a teacher eager to give information to a naive student. He said he was working out a contest, the winner of which would receive a $150 scholarship. I wondered how a puny $150 was going to do a student any good.

(6/12/05) kid rampage; shitting rocks in the lingerie store; testing gun rights

(Entered in paper journal at 8:55 AM at Starbucks on 110th and Broadway in Morningside Heights.)

Dream 1

Either I or a kid was climbing or trying to climb up a smallish (four- or five-story) building. The building had a smooth face, like it was made, block-like, out of a coppery-grey concrete. I think I may have been the one trying to climb at first, and then it was like the view switched and I was on a far sidewalk, watching the boy trying to climb the building.

I felt like the kid was trying to get up the building to do something destructive to it. I was a guard for the building, so I had to stop him. I was bitter that kids could never stop trying to do mean things to the things I was protecting.

Dream 2

I brought some man into a board room, in which also sat some unidentifiable "good friend" of mine at a long board table. The room itself was wide and long, with wide windows and a blue-grey tint in the free air.

The man I'd brought in sat down at the head of the table while I sat by my friend. The man was tall, black, and very serious. He gave us some information, and then it was like he repeated it. In the midst of this repetition, though, it was like I was with my friend at a play.

We watched some heavy woman on the stage far below. She said some line or gave some monologue and then repeated it. I think it was supposed to be funny. The first time, it was natural. The second time, it was exaggerated.

Now it was suddenly like we were back in the board room, listening to the man finishing his speech. But my friend and I discussed how we liked the first, natural delivery of the woman's line/monologue better.

The man stood up and said, "Fine. You two haven't taken me seriously from the beginning. He didn't even get dressed up for this meeting. If that's the way you treat your bosses, then don't be surprised when you don't get anywhere in life."

I walked after the man down a nice, tall, wide hallway, telling him I was taking him seriously. I was trying, though, also to figure out why my friend and I had started talking abou tthe woman's performance out of nowhere like we had.

The man opened the door to a stairwell. I grabbed the door as he went in. I was about to tell him that I had at least dressed up (in my NYC Americorps "dress outfit" -- khakis and a red-and-white striped, button-up shirt). But I looked down to see my shirt was now unbuttoned.

I looked up, flabbergasted,, at the man as he walked down the stairs. I asked, "Has my shirt been unbuttoned all this time?"

He said, "Yes. Can't you take this meeting seriously enough even to remember that?"

I closed the door to the stairwell and walked back down the hallway. Now I was wearing a ribbed tank top. I looked at my reflection in a pane of dark glass. I was think, nice-looking, and I was just wearing a tiny, white tank top and green, satin panties. I may also have had breasts. I thought, Do I really look that nice? I had to find a mirror to confirm how I looked.

I was now going down an escalator. Downstairs I rushed through some shop-like area to the wall with bathroom doors. I couldn't decided whether I should go into the male or female bathroom. I was wearing some really short, satin robe with fur-like, white trimming and a leopard pattern.

For some reason I thought this was a unisex-looking robe, so I could (and should) go into the men's bathroom and look at myself in the mirror once everybody was out. But as I was about to push open the door, a tall, black man opened the door. I suddenly got afraid. I didn't want to be caught.

I guess I'd needed to go to the bathroom. I shit out a rock-hard, pine cone-shaped ball of shit. I tried to catch it in the robe, but the robe was too short.

The shop was now a lingerie shop. The ball of shit rolled all the way across the shop to the cash register. I ran and picked it up.

I'm pretty sure that ever since I had gotten into the shop I had been an Asian woman, but that now I definitely was -- even though I still thought I was "I."

I quickly picked up the shit-rock, hoping hopelessly that nobody would notice the shit-rock or me. I rushed back to the men's bathroom and into a toilet stall, where I tossed the shit-rock into the toilet and flushed as quickly as I could.

But as soon as I flushed I fell to my knees. I got sick. It felt and sounded like I was vomiting all over the place. But I couldn't see any vomit.

Dream 3

I was in some small, house-like building with a crew of folks, either my NYC Americorps program or my college improv comedy troupe. Some old man had been teaching us. Now he took us into a room of lunch tables and gave us a test.

We had finished the test. He said we had all failed because none of us had listened. He gave us another test. But as we took it I "saw" that the man had sneaked out and away, along some western-style hillside of grass and barbed wire,wood pole fence.

All my crew mates knew the man had left. They also knew that the teacher was going somewhere to get your guns, so that when we all walked out of the classroom he could shoot us. But we all had guns. One of us took the lead. We had to get out of the schoolhouse now and ambush the teacher before he reached full power.

When we got out of the house we were all ourselves and "in our clothes," but it was also like we were in clothes from the TV show Little House on the Prairie. We all crawled close to the ground and inched toward the fence. Somehow, we knew, the teacher could see us if we stood. If he saw us, he'd attack us. We had to catch him by surprise.