(1/20/08) art-books-feces; psychology: earth, cults, flying saucers

(Entered in paper journal at 8:28 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with my grandfather and a couple other family members in a room, like a small museum. I was looking out the window. The scenery outside was moving, like I was in a car. The scenery was like a cemetery. My family members and I were talking about how the exhibit we had seen was disappointing because it didn't employ the principles of recycling. Because of this, we argued, the exhibit lacked feeling.

We "passed" a hill that looked cut-away or sectioned so we could see the roots of the grass and a nearby tree. Something like a red glob or ball rolled along the hill, then merged into the ground. This, my grandfather said, was the one work of art he liked, because it employed the principles of recycling. The ball reappeared from the sectioned area of the hill and rolled down the slope and across the road, as if it were willfully coming toward the building, and toward me in particular.

We all looked away from the window. My grandfather said we were getting ready to leave. I now sat on a tall chair like a swivel chair that was as tall as a library or ladder, with rollers or wheels at the bottom. The room was warm and warm-colored.  In the corner of the room sat an old man who looked like the old version of the Tim Roth character in Youth Without Youth. He was like the curator of the museum.

The room was small but very elegant, modern. It was understated, except that on the walls were all kinds of art works and artifacts. A lot of them had the appearance of geode slices: the glassy, ringed, vivid-colored look. There were also a couple of tall, thin bookshelves along the walls.

Everybody else had pretty much left. I was following them. But I had to linger to see some of the items on the wall. There was something about their ordering which didn't seem completely satisfactory. But the pieces themselves were quite beautiful. Nevertheless, I felt bad liking the pieces because my grandfather had just commented how the pieces had no artistic quality.

I was still moving through the room on the tall chair. I went out the door, which was apparently tall enough to allow the tall chair through! I turned back before closing the door. I told the man in the corner of the room, "Goodbye, and thank you, Dr. Neuman." The man might have been reading a book. He waved very slightly, but kindly.

The door closed as I thought, Is that man's name really Neuman? I now saw a green and brass (?) nameplate on the door that said "Dr. Ed Neuman." I rolled (on the tall chair) down a ramping hallway to catch upp with my family.

I was now in a basement with my mother. I was standing on the floor, no longer sitting in the tall chair. My mom and I were heading toward a front door, but we were waiting for one or two more members of our family to catch up with us. In the meantime we were picking up and reorganizing a bunch of books that were on the floor.

I held some one-word-titled book by Mario Puzo. The cover was black, Puzo's name was lettered white, and the title (beginning with the letter "c"?) was lettered red.

My mom and I were talking about my grandfather, who sat upstairs, as if he were now sitting in Neuman's place. My grandpa was too sick and tired to see us out of the building, but he had been very happy to see us. After seeing us, he even felt like he had more energy.

My mom said, "We should tease him and tell him that if he has so much energy he should come down here and help us rearrange these books! No, I'm just kidding. We don't want him to feel bad or obliged. If he did come down here, the physical work would really hurt him."

I sat on a couch piled with books. Before me were books. I held a book in my hand. My mom may still have been talking. I looked at the book's binding. The top gave the last name of the author: Ligasa or Lisaga.

A band below the name showed a painting of a woman like Liberty in Delacroix's painting of the French Revolution. The woman was charging forward and carrying a flag. But she was looking backward, as if calling the troops, instead of looking forward like in the painting.

I looked at the back of the book, mainly because I somehow caught the name "Freud" on the back or the binding of the book. Apparently the book was by a Latin American author, and was thus acclaimed. The description of the book went something like, "A Native American is wounded in the war" (World War I?) "and looks back on his life. The works of Sigmund Freud have put forward the idea that a person's experiences of his past are not linear but move back and forth through different time periods."

A boy who was supposed to be my second oldest nephew sat to my left. He was a black boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. My mom said something like, "He's finally having less trouble going to the bathroom."

My nephew told me, "I go to the bathroom every morning. I know the pieces of poop when they come out of me. I even know their names. But I'm not like other people. I know their names before they come out of me. I meet them at night. I see them, and I know what shape they'll be. I tell them, 'XXXXX, you aren't going to stay in me! You are going to get out!'"

I could tell my nephew was afraid about having to do this, but that he was proud that he was able to do it. He seemed to need urgently to tell me about this.

We all headed out into a hallway which (now) led to the front door. The hall was white, perhaps with marble floors and walls and a red carpet.

Somewhere there might have been a weird, futuristic-looking altar-type structure, very tall, made out of an aluminum-like substance. The legs were tin rods that supported a wide "bowl" topped with a flat disk that had a hole in its center. This "bowl" was filled with my nephew's feces, as if each piece he had gotten rid of were saved here and treated as sacred.

Dream #2

I was looking through a list of courses to take at a college like a community college. There was a specific philosophy class I wanted to take because it seemed to discuss issues I had currently been involving myself in. But I saw that there was a prerequisite course to this course. I thought, Why should I have to take a prerequisite? I'm not taking this class to get a degree. I'm just interested.

But I looked at the prerequisite course anyway. It was called "Psychology: Earth." It was a short course and was done by video. I now saw that after this course I'd have to take even another course before I could take the philosophy course I'd wanted. This other prerequisite course was called "Psychology: Cults and Flying Saucers." It was also a video course.

(3/23/08) machine gun trampoline; suicidal woman; seeing old friends; zombie city fair

(Entered in paper journal at 9:08 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

Possibly a vision of a man in a car. The man may have had no hands. Then a man on a ship, possibly talking on the phone about making a shipment of gold. The scene switched to the man on the other end of the line. He made some comment like, "You better make this shipment snatchy."

The man looked like a white crook from the 1970s. He wore a multicolored, striped suit. He was in some kind of crowded area, like a small warehouse. Behind him was a thin man at a desk, facing the wall, his back facing the man. The man at the desk wore an outfit like a policeman's uniform. He had close-cut, black hair. He may have been "played by" Tom Hanks. The first man and the Tom Hanks man were both cops on an undercover mission.

The first man hung up the phone and walked over to the Tom Hanks man, who said something in a gruff voice. I was impressed that Tom Hanks was using a voice so different from his natural voice.

The scene switched. The Tom Hanks man was now (also?) the man with the missing hand. The man was now only missing one hand, not two. A crocodile had bitten off the missing hand. The man was in a room which had water up to about knee-depth. The crocodile was swimming around in this room.

The man had a machine gun. He found the crocodile and fought it, yelling things like, "You want to try and take my other hand? Take this!" The man shoved the machine gun into the crocodile's mouth and began shooting.

There was now a scene like at a circus. There were two large trampolines. A clown was jumping on the left trampoline. He was doing "difficult tricks," which were mainly just jumping and twirling, no flips or anything.

The Tom Hanks man said, "Now they" (the people who funded the circus?) "want to make the trampoline fabric even thinner. But it's barely wide enough to prevent accidents even now!"

I looked at the trampolines. Instead of the fabric being the entire circle, there was just a thin stretch of fabric in the center. The rest of the circle was just a frame of springs.

The jumping clown landed just off the mat and fell in the springs. He untangled himself from the springs and stood on the ground. I knew that the clowns were already learning how to jump on fabric this thin and could actually learn how to jump on even thinner fabric.

Dream #2

It was the late 1800s or early 1900s. I stood before a woman like the main woman from the Francis Ford Coppola film Youth Without Youth. I held the woman's hands in mine. The woman's eyes seemed enormous somehow. The woman told me she wanted to kill herself.

Dream #3

I was at the house of my friend R and his wife L. We stood with something between us, something like a model of a spacecraft from a science fiction movie or even a long ship like a Viking vessel. I hadn't wanted to come to R and L's house, and I especially hadn't wanted to meet with R and L, but I'd had to retrieve something I'd left at their place.

I was speaking with R and L and acting cheerful. But I was upset that I'd even had to start speaking to them. I was leaving now. I walked down a straight, long flight of steps that got dimmer and dimmer, lit only by the light of R and L's apartment. Either R or L told me they hoped I would come back soon. I knew my feelings of obligation would probably make me come back.

Dream #4

I was traveling with a group of people. There were a few carloads of us. Zombies had overtaken America, presumably. We were driving from town to town, avoiding zombies as well as we could.

It was dark night. we were in an abandoned town. We were running low on supplies, but apparently we would take new supplies from each town. And even though we were running low on supplies, our cars were full of things we needed.

Some of us found the setup of a city fair. Some people in the group managed to turn on a lot of the rides. I stood outside the whole thing with a couple other people, watching the people ride the rides. The place was full of warmth and color. I thought, Let them have their fun. Things have been fun. They'll probably just get tougher. Let these people have fun while they can.

Suddenly jets flew at us from he horizon. The military spotted all our lights and thought we were zombies trying to lay some kind of strange trap. they dropped bombs on us. I didn't see the bombs. Instead I saw as if I were facing two people watching the bombs drop. I could tell the bombs had hit one or two of our cars. I felt a wave of despair. Not only did we just lose some of the things we needed; we also lost one or two of our only transportation sources.

Another series of bombs dropped. They hit the city fair. A final series of bombs destroyed a house from which we had hoped to gather supplies.

It was now daytime. We were driving through an abandoned (?) large city. We drove through an office park, past a long lawn-island, and through a multiple intersection of roads and building parking lots. We approached a building which may possibly have had an old courthouse look to it, though it may also have partly been a modern office building.

I thought about a police officer we had been dealing with -- a "Mr. (?) Simms." He might have been a zombie. But somehow we were also working with him to prevent ourselves from being thought of as zombies. I knew there would actually be trouble if we kept dealing with him.

I thought back to the last time we'd seen the officer. We'd dropped him off at a building like the courthouse. He'd been in a very weird state, almost like drunkenness. I was sure now that he had in fact then been becoming a zombie.