(1/29/06) drug dealer in flight school; wrong way, brother; ravenous ants; i just wanted him to die; go ahead and kill the guy; seal tank; why the fuck am i here

(Entered in paper journal at 11:24 AM at Starbucks near 77th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a basement hallway or elevator bank. Maybe a few people were waiting for the elevator, and maybe some got on and let the doors close before the rest of us could get on.

Now it was me and two women. We were talking about how slow the elevator here is, especially when we have to go up fifty floors.

The elevator opened. It was really small. The two women got in first. I stepped in. I felt like it was too small. I was about to get out, but the two women told me to stay inside, that we'd all be fine together.

It was like the elevator went on the outside of the building, in some pipe, and went around all four walls. First we went past the parking lot. We got up to the eleventh floor. There was something like a lawn and buildings "up there." A bunch of kids, maybe college age, were all getting ready for some kind of orientation.

I got off the elevator. One of the women said, "Why don't I pick you up here in my car every day?"

I said, "Oh, no. That's too much trouble."

The other woman was a little annoyed. She said, "She doesn't mean it that way. It's just that she goes this way every day. So why not pick you up along the way?" I agreed.

I went toward people sitting at picnic tables. It was a grey day. I thought, Why did I let them leave me here? This is the eleventh floor, and I'm looking for the fiftieth.

I jumped in the air and flew a little bit. I landed. But I didn't really believe I could fly like that.

I walked toward the college kids. I thought, Oh, I don't want to go through this crap again with mean kids. I'm not a kid anymore! I figured I'd fly out of their field of vision. I did.

A couple guys noticed me. They looked annoyed like they were scheming to pull me down. I wanted to look more normal, but I didn't want to stop flying. I didn't know if I could start again once I'd stopped. So I flew really low, almost so my belly touched the ground.

I flew low behind a guy who was sitting at the picnic tables. The guy was talking on a cell phone. He said, "Yeah. That kid" (he meant me) "is a drug dealer. I'm sure of it. Keep an eye on him."

I got freaked out. I tried to fly upward again, but I was stuck. I lifted only high enough so I could put my feet on the ground. I walked toward a little fountain and lawn area with some marble benches and gates and a marble statue of a man in the center of the fountain.

I was upset that I had been accused of being something I would never be. I thought, Isn't this flight school? How do people like that asshole get in here? And why do people get mad at me for flying?

I wasn't quite to the fountain. I was already feeling really defensive. But then a bunch of white kids sitting by the fountain all turned and glared at me like I was a pussy. So I "showed I could fight." I jumped way high, maybe ten feet in the air, and did back flips with my arms stretched out.

I kept tight while I did them. I wondered why this would show I could fight. I even lost track of the people I was trying to prove myself to. I wondered how long I could keep up these back flips and whether they were going to get me flying again.

I jumped again. This time in the middle of the flip I felt extra energized. I felt like I was being pulled through an electric tunnel. I was still where I was though. I thought, Here comes the fight again. I can feel it. It's the power!

But now I opened my eyes and I was in bed, naked except a pair of panties. I thought, In some way I knew it was all a dream. But now that I have the power from the dream I can bring it here.

It was lightning and thundering outside. My room and my bed were very large. I only had a sheet over my body. I was rolled in a ball on my right side (?).

I closed my eyes and told myself to levitate. I thought, If you can't levitate, at least pull yourself back into a dream where you can levitate. I closed my eyes and concentrated wildly, like I was driven by the lightning. At some point I felt my body levitating, my back and bottom, just like I was rolling forward.

I thought, I must be entering into a dream again. I got too excited. All the closed-eye-focus dropped. My eyes opened. My body dropped to the mattress. I thought, I can't prove my body lifted at all. I may only have been dreaming the whole thing.

I tried to sit up. But I could only get so far. I didn't have a sheeet on me, either: just a long, silver band or string, like a thin chain of a necklace, noded with very occasional, thin, silvery beads and silvery rings, the rings certainly not more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter.

The band went the whole length of my body. In one way it felt good -- sensuous. But in another way it felt like a trap.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I stood outside an American-Victorian-style (?) building at the top of a sort of steep slope of grass (maybe a park lawn) that was littered with yellow leafs. The building was stately, short, with a nice, pale portico, and a body of red brick. This was where I worked.

I had stepped out for lunch. Now, heading back, I got a call from my brother on my cell phone. My brother said, "Why not take a car ride with me? I'll take you back to work."

Now my brother was walking beside me, on my right side. Now we were in my brother's vehicle, an SUV-type vehicle, tan, with a pale cream interior. I'm pretty sure I was on the driver's side. But my brother was driving.

My brother drove us really fast down a suburban road with a median, like Louisiana above Montgomery in Albuquerque, except a lot sunnier and happier. There was something very lovely about it: undertones everywhere of baked orange and tan, like on cliff walls in New Mexico.

As we drove toward a downward slope of road, I told my brother, "What are you doing? This isn't the way to my work! Where are we going?"

My brother said, "Oh, Don't worry. You aren't going back to work today."

I thought, He knew all along he was going to do this to me! Even if I got out of the car right now, I couldn't get to work even close to on time.

My brother said, "We're going somewhere I need to go. Why does it always need to be about work for you?"

I thought, It's not. But right now I've just started with work. I need to make a good impression.

My mom called me. She asked where I was. I said, "I'm with my brother. He picked me up in his car and now he won't take me to work."

My brother had turned the car around and was taking me back to work. I could tell he was both angry. I felt bad. I wanted him to understand, I wasn't doing this because I didn't like him or want him around. But I had to do my work for now.

Dream 3

It was night. I was on a sandy shore. The moon was enormous. The ocean or sea seemed more abundant than usual. I "remembered" I had been here before and seen seals. The "ocean" wouldn't wave: it would swell and sink. The water was a slimy, slightly glowing, dull-fluorescent green, like the brightness on a TV turned down to 1 or 2.

I walked out to something like a handicap ramp with rusty guardrails right at the edge of the water. Now it was like I was at the top of the wall overhanging the water. As the water swelled again I saw three seals' heads skimming above the slimy surface of the water.

I thought, See? You can see them without having to get into the water like you did before.

But the water swelled more. First it just lapped up onto the concrete. Now I was floating in it. The water felt great. It was as viscous as regular water, but a bit warmer.

There were a bunch of seals swimming around me now. "Remembering" again, I thought, As long as they don't get face to face with me I'm fine. I felt a couple of seals swimming up against the soles of my feet. It was so magnificent to be around all this.

But now my "memory" came back. I "remembered what had happened to me. It had driven me completely mad. I knew I had to get out of here before I went mad again.

I swam toward a stone wall, like I was in a canal. I was thrown out onto the beach. Looking out (it was now daylight), I thought the ocean looked like a "bog" (marsh?) at low tide, with muddy pools of water everywhere.

I thought, Something about the water? Was it that I don't have enough power to be in the water yet? I hoped that wasn't it.

Even though it was daylight, it was still night, and some of the things I saw were like I saw them only by the light of a flashlight.

I knelt down. The ocean was "back to normal." The beach was pebbly. I saw a fiddler crab. It climbed up on my knee and pinched me so that I bled. It ran off. A drop of blood dripped onto the sand.

It was daylight again. Ants from a nearby anthill came out, maybe fifty to one hundred of them, and devoured my blood in a fraction of a second, creating in their ravenous frenzy a little, square-like ring around a pile of sand.

I was amazed: the ants had just fizzled over the blood and erased it from existence. I thought, If I bleed more, they'll eat right from my wound. They might even consume me.

I thought of walking away. But I didn't know whether I could get away now.

Dream 4

I sat by a window on a hospital bed. I was a doctor. I was naked except for a pair of panties. I was knelt so I leaned against the window.

I was waiting for a black man my friend R had treated nicely and I had treated mean. I didn't really like the man. But I didn't want to be known for having treated him mean. People could think of me as a racist for having treated a black person mean.

As we waited -- there were a few other people in the "hospital," and this was probably the emergency room, I started quoting out facts about how much things had progressed for black people and how black people were working in good places more than ever now, but how it still wasn't enough. By this I meant that black people were still being treated unfairly and that there was still a lot of inequality.

Now the black man lay on a bed. He was thin and dark. he was unconscious. But he still looked angry and defiant. He had tubes sticking out of his mouth. I was pounding his chest like I was trying to resuscitate him, even though I couldn't care less whether he died.

I called to him, mostly to appease him by flattery if he were even only half-conscious, "Please! Please, get up! Don't give up so soon! We need you here!"

But, really, I just wanted him to die.

Dream 5

A tall, white man who looked like a skinhead had done something bad to me. Now he had come to "my house." He wasn't wearing a shirt. He may actually have been completely naked.

I enticed him into the place. I somehow lured him into the kitchen, which looked like my aunt P's kitchen. I started beating the shit out of him. Eventually I had him so subdued that I hung him back-down, into a garbage can, so from his waste to his head he hung downward into the can. I then began pouring all kinds of liquor onto the man, mostly sweet, reddish stuff like Campari. I also kept throwing liquor bottles at the man. I got angrier and tossed more stuff at the man.

The man was now totally pummeled. I stuffed him into some small space.

Now my friend R came in. we both walked out of the kitchen and into the dumpy but empty living room. I looked at some frail shelves that stood on the floor.

R's girlfriend L came in. R said, "Well, we're heading out for a date."

I, trying to be discreet, said, "Oh, um... Should I, with the guy, I was thinking of finishing up." By this I meant that I was going to dismember and kill the guy.

R said, "No. Just keep him in there a while. And when we get back, you can let him go. I figure that ought to teach him enough of a lesson."

I was disappointed. I figured that as soon as R left I'd just go ahead and kill the guy.

Dream 6

I was walking around in a nice place that reminded me of Denver in "the old days." It was all so nice, and I had never been aware that everything good about Denver had all been so closely located.

I walked up to an exhibit of seals. I wondered why I hadn't realized this was here before. I could see the seals right here!

There were two or three seals. Their pool was upside-down "T" shaped with a small island in the middle and a couple anthill-like "columns" on the sides. The concrete sloped up to brick and then to iron fence.

I was afraid at first as I came to the exhibit fence. I knew there had always been a sign on the fence of a dead seal's stomach that had been cut open to reveal that it was filled with pennies. The sign had always disgusted and saddened me (in waking life) whenever I went to the zoo as a child. It was so sad to think of an innocent seal dying because of the pennies it had naively eaten. But it was also so disgusting and unsettling to see a sliced-open stomach.

But when I got up to the fence, I didn't see the sign. Without having to look at the sign, I simply triumphed in watching the seals play around. They were coppery brown and happy. Again I thought to myself, This place is so close! I never knew!

But now I saw how small the pool was. I thought, These seals can't be happy. They must be miserable. The seals seemed to swim into hiding.I scanned the pool for them. I then noticed how shallow the pool was. And in the corners of the pool was human debris -- things like cigarette butts, etc. The more I looked at this place, the more I realized this was an awful place for seals to live.

I saw one seal dart out from a corner. I looked toward that corner. Under a ledge of sorts were maybe three other seals, maybe more. One adult lay with her back against the wall. Two smaller seals were up by her. There may have been another adult seal.

At first I thought the baby seals were suckling. I did and didn't want to see that. Then I saw they weren't suckling. They were trying to get the seal back to life. The seal's stomach was split wide open. I can't say whether the seal was alive or dead. I was afraid to look.

Dream 7

I stood outside a beautiful building Then I went inside. It was a library/museum. It was so wonderful. The exhibits were busts of famous people. At first I saw a bust of George Bernard Shaw, like the one by Rodin. I was excited to see it. I walked up to it.

In a moment I was somewhere else, like everything had started all over again. I tried to find the bust again. I couldn't find it in this room. So I walked into another room off to the right. I saw a "bust" of Shaw, which actually looked like strips of Shaw's face abstractly, or in an almost skeletal way, brushed together. I was excited, but skeptical. I couldn't believe this was the bust I had seen previously.

I looked back into the first room. There was a "bust" that was made out of some cheap-looking, plastic-like material. But once again I was excited to see it. I walked up to it. It looked like some computer-cartoon version of Shaw. I was a little disgusted, but I tried to act impressed, just to lift my own spirits.

I walked along a strange series of strips that went in a huge oval. They were like shelves with nothing on them but pictures and displays attached to their tangents. Each cluster of displays was devoted to a different celebrity. None of the celebrities was too impressive.

I stopped at the display devoted to some black female model. I wasn't interested. She looked completely average and unprofessional in her photos, which were like photo's of any girl's cheap prom. There was some typewritten stuff about the model's "big day(s)" being a model and how she was afraid it wouldn't work out, but then it did, and "how fun!" and "I always knew it!"

I looked behind the weird race-track-like or Saturn-ring-like shelves, to an oval of desk/counter space. The woman whose display I had just reviewed sat at the desk. She was now kind of overweight and average-looking. Some woman stood by her, talking to her about how "excellent" it was that the woman had been a model.

The ex-model said, "I've gotten so fat! I can't believe it! I need to pay more attention to what I eat."

The ex-model had a bunch of desserts by her. The woman (white, blonde, middle-aged, somewhat in good shape) was fingering one. The ex-model said, "Don't be shy! If you want a dessert, that means your body needs it. That's what I say! Don't be afraid to take it."

I stood there staring at this scene and wondering why the fuck I was here.

(11/12/07) museum flood; brother stabbed; superfriends jealousy; housecleaning lover

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in some place like a monastery. My brother had come into the room I was in. He had come from outdoors. I walked outdoors. I wore a robe like a monk's robe. I walked out into a large, covered walkway of sandstone. The walls (especially at the corners, which were like towers or guard-stations) were thick, with wide "windows" showing a desert-like area of tan hills beyond. I was barefoot and the stone chilled my feet. The light was blue like late afternoon or early morning.

I turned left at a corner. I was afraid of a mountain lion attacking. Something strange was happening on the walls -- it was like Roman figures began to appear in relief.

At another corner I made a left turn. I walked into an inside room. It was a "museum exhibit." But the walls and floor were strangely shaped, as if we were inside a cave. The place was red-brown, like sandstone and clay. On the lumps, mounds, and columns on the floor were art works like frescoes and mosaics, all in a Roman style.

I became afraid, as if a spirit were materializing in this room. I started running. I ran through glass doors and into another "exhibit" room. This room was modern but dark. All the art pieces, which hung from ceilings, stood on weird stands coming out of the floor, or stood at weird angles to each other,were closely but elegantly lit by one light. There was a jeweled feeling to it all.

I was even more afraid of the spirit materializing, so I ran out of this room, too, through another series of doors. This area, I knew, was the front area, the visitors' center (as if this were a national park). Other workers would eventually show up, and then I wouldn't feel alone and afraid.

The room was large, with twenty-foot-high, white walls, red-tile floors, and two aisles of long document-display cases on either side of the front door. Before the front door, to my right, was a long, black mat that led to the front desk, which was to my left.

Two people walked in. The one in front was a Hispanic woman, maybe twenty-five years old, with a green shirt, black pants, and long, black hair. The other person was a tall, white man, rather nondescript. I figured the two people were together. I thought, These people must have some questions for me. Let me answer them. But when I faced the woman to ask how I could help, she turned into my grandmother P. The man vanished.

My grandma was a little rude and impatient. She asked, "Where do I have to stand from here to see the Hudson?"

I said, "This is the East Side. You can't see the Hudson from here."

I showed my grandma a map of where we were. Seeing the map, and how the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers was near here, I said, "Well, I guess technically you can see the Hudson."

My grandma said, "That's what I meant -- where the Hudson drops into the East River. Which way do I have to stand outside to see it?"

I said, "You'll see a big ship outside. Go stand by that. Turn left."

(At this point in my journal, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed writing from the Starbucks on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue at 6 AM.)

My grandma went outside. After a second I followed here. It was dark outside. The whole area outside was like a dock. It floated up and down with the waves. A large, white ship, like a cruise ship, stood in the distance.

I looked to my left. The woman (?) stood near the edge of "the dock." The full moon stood about twenty-five degrees in the horizon. I thought I should warn the woman about the waves. They sometimes submerged the dock entirely. Something bad might happen to a person who went too far underwater with "the dock."

The dock started going underwater. At first I ran toward the dock to warn the woman. But then I had to swim. I grabbed the woman. The woman was like an empty shell.

I swam back to (what was now) "the house." The house looked like a small, suburban house. I pulled myself and the woman up a staircase like a staircase out of a swimming pool.

My brother opened the door. There was a good light inside. I could only see my brother's silhouette against the light. I wondered whether the house would even survive. As the waves rose, they seemed to be pulling everything under.

Dream #2

It was late night. I was possibly coming out of a restaurant. I got a call from my brother. He told me he was finishing up at some arcade. He wanted me to pick him up. He implied that he wanted me to give him cab fare to get home.

I told my brother (assuming that he lived around Houston Street in Manhattan), "I can meet with you and give you a subway ride when we get down into the station together. But I'm not taking a cab home and I'm not giving you cab fare. So do you want me to meet you?"

There was no answer. I said, "Yes or no?" Still no answer. I thought, Oh, you jerk. Don't try to intimidate me. I hung up the phone.

I was now close to the arcade. The street was dark and close, but there were stores with bright, fluorescent light and sharp, white walls. I walked into one of the stores when I saw a troublemaker kid who might have known my brother. He stood at a shoddy, white desk, speaking with a security guard. The kid was short, fattish, possibly Mexican. He wore a pale blue (Denver Nuggets?) jersey with a white t-shirt underneath.

From the kid's rude comments to the security guard I could tell that my brother had been stabbed and was hurt pretty bad. The kid was either trying to get help form my brother or was bragging about how his (the kid's) friends had hurt my brother.

I ran to some other place, then through a long, white-walled (walls thin like scaffolding) tunnel to a bright, white-walled room like a waiting room for a cheap office. The whole place felt grimy and messy. There was another security guard's desk.

My brother lay on the ground. He held a pair of child scissors (green handles) in his left hand. He had been stabbed in his right breast with the scissors. Then he'd had the scissors put in his own hands, to look like he had stabbed himself. Two shortish, fattish, Mexican boys knelt over my brother's legs. The boys were either my brother's friends or the people who had stabbed him.

The hole in my brother's chest wasn't very bloody or very big. I thought, At least he wasn't stabbed in the heart. But, still, he lay as if he were dead. I thought, This was going to happen sooner or later. Why did he always put himself into situations where this would happen?

I knelt by my brother's head and called either the police or my mother. As soon as I had finished dialing, my brother opened his eyes. He tried to sit up. I held him back down. I said, "You'll hurt yourself even more if you try to move."

At this point I might have seen this room completely dark, except with a fire-ring built where my brother had been. An older Mexican/Indian boy sat, with his younger brother to his left, before the fire. Both boys were wrapped in robes or blankets, almost like women.

Dream #3

I stood on the roof of a tall building. The sky was dark blue, like at very early morning. Most of the buildings around me were on fire. Some buildings were falling. I flew over the city, seeing its grid of charred ruins.

Now, on the ground, I saw things as if I were in an old SuperFriends cartoon. Five characters stood at the foot of an escalator: a Superboy/Robin character, a Superman/Lex Luthor-Robot (???) character, a long-haired Superman character, and a Superdog character.

Something thoughtless the Superboy character had done had caused all the destruction. The Superboy character felt very bad. But he now said, "Well, what will our mission be next week?" (As if even the heroes understood that these episodes occurred weekly.)

I thought, Next week? How stupid do they think kids are? The whole city's destroyed. What are they going to save next week? Or is the city going to be magically rebuilt?

One of the Supermen said, "I hope you learned your lesson."

The Superboy said, "I have. If I had't let my jealousy of your relationship" (with Wonder Woman?) "get out of hand, none of this would have happened."

The whole team now did their characteristic exit, up the escalator, which moved them through the air, along the upper levels of corridors of (now intact) skyscrapers, and then through some weird "interdimensional portal." The credits were rolling during this exit scene.

Dream #4

I was in "my bedroom" with a woman. I was naked except for a pair of panties. The woman pulled out a vacuum from a closet and started cleaning my bedroom. She cleaned of a heater by the window. It had roach droppings all over it.

The woman pulled open the curtains. It was dark outside. There was a huge, wide building across the street. We must have been up on the fifteenth floor of this building. I hid behind the bed so nobody in the building across the street would see me, a boy, dressed only in panties.

I asked the woman if she would close the curtains. She said, "Not while I'm cleaning house." I was a little annoyed about that. Nevertheless, I felt thankful that the woman was cleaning the house, and that she was not afraid or ashamed to touch the parts I had let get too dirty.