(2/12/09) assignment from boss; guns make zombies

Dream #1

I sat in an "office" with my old boss BS. The office felt more like a bedroom with a desk and messy piles of paper everywhere. The room's atmosphere was like that of the room I'd had in a double-wide trailer I'd lived in at a National Park in New Mexico. It had bluish-grey light, thin, fake-wood walls, and a cold feeling all over.

BS asked me either to help him take care of something only I could take care of or to look at some of his most recent reports. If BS asked me to look at his reports, it would have been because he'd finally used some of the ideas I'd had about the stocks we were doing research on, but he didn't want to tell me that directly.

Dream #2

A lot of scenes I don't remember, involving a group of masculine, kind of redneck-like, lesbian women. The scenes took place on bright, hot days, like in the summer, possibly somewhere down south. They largely took place in or near trailer-houses with yards full of neglected, overgrown, tangled vegetation, garbage, and mechanical scraps. There may have been some apocalypse which killed people or turned them into zombies, or else there would soon be an apocalypse like this.

Now there were three women in a house. They were in a bright-walled, extremely cluttered room. They were apparently training on how to use some new guns they'd gotten. I wasn't in this scene at all. It wasn't like I was watching a movie, but more like everything was just there without me.

One of the group of three may actually have been a man. He/she wore a drab, green t-shirt, a similar trucker's cap, and eyeglasses. Another girl wore blue jeans and a white, ribbed tank-top.

Some other girl (a fourth) said she didn't want to learn to use guns. For some reason I agreed with her. I felt like using guns in this situation would also turn people into zombies.

The girl walked out of the house. The boy/girl in the green called after her as the three girls walked out of the house. He/she said, "Have it your way! Who knows? Maybe once we've learned how to use these guns we'll just come shooting you!"

The other two girls said, "No, no," to the girl/boy in green, as if to calm her and stop her from saying foolish things.

The boy/girl now shouted, "Or, I mean, maybe we'll come shooting zombies to protect you!"

NOTEBOOK 19 - 2/17/09 to 4/6/09

As I began this notebook, I had only been out of work for about three weeks. As I'd mentioned in other posts, I had been let go from a job, though, technically, I hadn't been officially laid off. I was still on the payroll, receiving paychecks, for three months -- as long as I didn't secure any other employment. Basically I was given a three-month paid vacation.

I was surprised to see how the dreams at the beginning of this notebook reflected my worries at this time. In two of the first few dreams, I have to prove to people -- a group of thugs in one dream, my mom and family in another -- that I am of consequence, that I am somebody, and that I have achieved something in my life.

I really felt like, when I was laid off from my position, it was the end of whatever I'd been building for myself. The only thing I'd be able to do from then on, I feared, was prove who I'd been, and give that as a reason why people should think that I was, in the present, somebody worth respecting.

It's also interesting to see how often the CEO of my company appears in these dreams. I felt, at the time, like I was close to my CEO. I spent a lot of time, of my own accord, in meetings with high-level people at my company. And it was my goal to get close with those high-level people and, I hoped, with the CEO, eventually. These dreams may have been my way of unbinding myself from my ambitions, or of fulfilling my ambitions through my dreams, because they would not, obviously, ever be fulfilled in waking life.

I also feel like a lot of these dreams have an interesting color to them, which has been lent to them by the subjects I was studying. At the time, I was studying and compiling subject matter for a screenplay. Toward the timeframe of the end of this notebook, I had probably started writing the screenplay.

My studies for the screenplay had actually begun in early 2008, when I'd immersed myself in studies of imagery I'd experienced in my dreams. I'd attempted to write the screenplay in early 2008, in fact, based on what little I'd studied. But the attempts were pretty lousy.

With the free time I'd been granted by my job, I was able to devote myself fully to studying. I threw myself into studying with a devotion I hadn't applied in perhaps four years. My life became devoted to my studies, like it had been when I'd first moved to New York City in 1998.

While I felt the life I'd been creating for myself, with a business career, dying pathetically, I probably also felt my old life, the life I'd idealized in my earlier years, the life of a scholar and artist, resurrecting. That mood, as well as the imagery I was studying, most likely informed a lot of the mood and imagery of the dreams of this notebook.

I make it all sound like it's so important. But obviously it isn't. I mean, look at me now. Who am I? I really am nobody.

(2/17/09) troublemakers at slumber party cafe; astral hallway encounter

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at Starbucks at Twenty-ninth Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I came into a cafe which may have been on a narrow corner. The place was more like a bar, but it also had grey-white carpet. The walls and bar may have been black wood. My family all lay on the floor, under blankets.

A pretty, blonde girl stood behind the bar. She said, "Looks like your family was going to meet you here, but they decided to sleep here after all."

I may have looked around to see the place full of people sleeping. I thought, It must just be a popular thing for people to sleep here like this.

I may have started walking up a staircase that had a view (to my left) of the "cafe" below. I may have been talking with my mom, possibly about what  nice place this was.

Somehow, possibly by a radio, we heard that some killers on the loose. My mom said, "We need to protect everybody."

I walked back down the steps and to the front door. I said, "Well, the first thing we need to do is lock the front door." I may have locked the door and then walked back up the steps. Other people may have been waking up.

Now three or so people, like the adults in a troublesome, low-income family, walked through the front door. I knew they were no good. I thought they might have been in my brother-in-law's family.

I didn't know how these new people had gotten in. I had locked the door so nobody could get in. The kids were politely saying hi to the new people. I wondered if the kids had let the new people in.

The people had mock-innocent looks on their faces, like they were looking for precisely the right place to cause trouble. They were about to head through a door to the kitchen.

I hurried down the stairs and stopped the people right in front of the door. My mom may have come out of the kitchen.

I asked the people who they were. They looked up and away, walking somewhere else. I stopped them again. This time they may just have been two men, maybe Italian, wearing bright green and purple suits (like the red suit Screamin' Jay Hawkins wore in the movie Mystery Train).

I grabbed one of the men by the lapels and let him go. He stopped. I said, "Tell me who you are! I know you think I'm nobody, that I'm just some kid that you don't need to worry about. But I'm somebody! I am -- or, I was..." My speech drifted off as my mind began to wander a bit. "... a researcher, a stock researcher... on Wall Street."

The man I'd grabbed nodded and said, "Oh, is that so?" like he liked me and didn't want me to feel bad, even though he knew that what I had been didn't matter anymore.

I physically wandered off now, still kind of talking to the people, like they were troublemaker friends of mine, whom I liked and looked up to but really didn't want around me anymore.

Dream #2

I was in a living room. I lay on the floor in golden sunlight. The room was like in a double-wide trailer. I lay on my stomach with my head pointed toward a small TV that stood on an unstable tray, like the trays people would eat their TV dinners from while sitting at a chair in front of a TV.

I lifted out of my body and was floating at a strange angle so that I couldn't really see anything around me. It took me a few seconds to realize I was out of my body. I thought, If I'm out of my body, I shouldn't just hang here in one place like this. I should try to go somewhere.

I tried to move, but as I did, I was pulled more and more back into my physical body. I told myself to relax and try to move.

My vision went dark and I felt a lot of rushing all over my body. I was in a lying position, on my back, so I thought I was back in my body. But I thought, If I were in my body, I would be lying on my stomach (at this point in my life, I generally fell asleep lying on my stomach). I also thought, Even if I'm in my body, I'm still feeling strange sensations. So I might as well relax and pay attention to them.

I was now floating, in a lying position, on my back, feet first, down a dark hallway. I flew just a few inches above the ground. The hallway had dark walls. There were a lot of doorways, and warm shafts of light glowed from each one.

I stopped flying at a doorway. A woman who may have looked like my mom sat on the floor in the doorway. The woman sat cross-legged and may have had a child in her lap. The child may have been nine or ten years old. The woman may have been wearing blue and red robes, like the robes a woman would wear in a Renaissance painting.

(2/18/09) airplane flight and murder; walking on hands

(Entered in paper journal at 8:58 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I needed to get somewhere. I was pretty sure I'd be late. I would have to take an airplane. But I'd heard the airplanes weren't flying, for some reason. But now I was on a private jet. It lifted off very quickly. It was as if it lifted off by tilting its left side upward. We were high in the air. I found this hard to believe -- I really thought that all airplanes weren't allowed to take off.

I sat on the left side of the jet. I sat near the back. There were just a few other passengers on the plane. The interior of the passenger area was grey and dim.

I looked out the window. A gigantic passenger jet was right beside us. We steered under the jet as if it were just a normal part of flight. Another huge passenger jet flew past us, either going straight up or straight down. It was an American Airlines jet. Its underside was gleaming, polished, mirror-like steel. I knew this plane was going to crash.

We were over an ocean. It was now like we were flying low. I could see down to the water. A plane like a gigantic military prop plane floated with its top part out of the water. The only thing I could see were the wings each of which had three propellers. It looked like a blue whale being pulled out of the water.

We had now landed. I owned this jet, apparently. I walked to the front and down a couple of steps. I turned to face some man, with whom I was here to do business. To my left, at the top of the steps, was the pilot, who looked a little rough, grizzled, overweight. I discussed the details of the day with the man and then asked the pilot if he could find a suitable time for us to leave.

I now stood in front of a shack. It was a sunny and hot day. The shack looked yellowish and in decent shape, though the porch may have been greyish and dumpy. The front yard was all barren. I stood in a muddy circle with a shallow layer of something like water or sugar-crystal-like slush.

My brother stood in front of me. A couple messy-looking white men stood off behind my brother and to my left, probably by a pickup truck. My brother was crying to me. He had a very sad face, like he was apologizing, as if he thought he'd disappointed me all his life.

My brother said (holding up his right hand, back-side to me, sideways, in front of his forehead, with his last three fingers extended and his forefinger and thumb bending and touching to form a circle), "There were two of them. But I only killed one. One, two three."

I knew I'd have to turn my brother in for murder. But I also wanted to show him that I loved him despite what I had to do.

Dream #2

I was in a dim kitchen, facing a refrigerator. There were a couple small children aimlessly, quietly walking around. A woman stood to my right. She may have been "my mom." She opened the refrigerator door. The fridge was full of garbagey stuff wrapped in brown, plastic shopping bags.

The woman apologized to me for something. I looked at her. She was tall, tan, blonde, with long hair and pale blue eyes. She looked like a girl who used to be skinny but was now quickly getting fat. Her arms looked skinny, but from her rib cage to her hips she looked distorted -- not fat, but widened, as if her body were widening out before it rounded out. She wore a top that wrapped around her breasts and then behind her neck. It might have been attractive when she was skinny, but not now.

I sat out on a field on a hillside. Behind me, upslope, was a large vegetable garden. All around the garden the hillside had pale green grass, golden with light dew and pale morning sunlight. Beside me sat a couple of women. One of them may have been my mom as a younger woman -- less overweight, with short, dark hair. She reminded me of my somehow of my mother's mother. The other woman was very beautiful. One of the women was talking about how she was becoming a lesbian and how she was becoming attracted to the other woman.

I was now "walking" around by propping myself up with my hands while I was in a asitting position with my legs straight out.

I was acting like I was "walking normally," which was supposed to show I was unaffected by what the woman had told me. But I really couldn't walk normally. I "walked" along the bottom of the vegetable path to the right side, then up to the top and over to the top left corner.

There was a chain-link fence around the area with the vegetable patch. The fence was maybe ten feet high. My mother (more like at present) stood there. A few of "my nephews" were playing around her. Some were outside the fence. My mom was letting them in. One of them, maybe my second oldest nephew, showed me or gave me a toy like an action figure.

Something about the situation was very upsetting to me -- perhaps everything seemed dirty and sticky, and I didn't like it. I started climbing the fence (which my have had barbed wire at the top), oping I could jump over and escape for good.

(2/19/09) butt imprints; baby alligators

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Forty-third street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a big room like a restaurant or a stage version of a restaurant. There may have been two levels. The walls and floor were brown, but brown like pale brown paint, not like wood.

There was a pool table somewhere. I may have been plaing pool with a few tough-looking guys. At some point I may have bent over to make a shot (or because I was afraid of something and was trying to avoid it).

My bottom hit agaisnt the wall. Some of the tough guys, ho were standing behind a bar, but standing up a couple feet, as if they were on a small stage, gradually began making comments on the marks my bottom had left on the wall. The gradual comments became laughter.

I felt ashamed for having let my bottom hit the wall, which I felt was a very feminine thing to have done. I looked at the wall. There were two circular marks on the wall -- separated, with some wrinkling around them, so the marks looked like archaic "drawings" of owl eyes.

I wondered how my buttocks could have made such an image -- especially now that I had gained weight. It looked like the circles were made by the tops of my femur bones -- like I was so skinny that the tops of my femur bones were poking through the flesh of my buttocks.

The image was now projected, large as a movie screen image, on the wall behind the tough guys.

Dream #2

I was in a wide and spacious, but low-ceilinged, room. The light was dim, as if at the edges of the room were wall-height and length windows which let in the only light in the room. The feel was like (my conception of) the interior of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water house -- stone floors, polished, and sparse furniture. But it also felt like some kind of kitchen or school area.

There were people all over, of different ages, probably up to their late twenties. We were all taking care of different tasks, like school projects. I sat a little off to myself.

There were blankets scattered near me, and maybe all over the room. Before me was a little box, like a dog's bed for inside the house. But there were "baby alligators" in the bed, under some small, soft pastel-colored blankets. The baby alligators were green, almost plastic-looking. Their heads were wide, maybe three inches wide and four inches long, and their bodies, including tails, weren't much longer. There were maybe three baby alligators.

A woman, who was like our teacher, had walked away from me. She may have looked like a zookeeper, with a tan shorts-uniform. She may have had pale skin and short, feathery, red hair (like brown hair dyed red). I may have resented the woman, like I'd resent some worker in a mental hospital who didn't think I, as a patient, was of any consequence.

I wasn't left with any instructions, and I didn't have any idea whether I was supposed to wait with the baby alligators or if the woman was coming right back, so that if she returned and saw me here, she'd accuse me of being lazy for just sitting around.

I looked up. Now, instead of there being a ceiling, there was a strange structure of framing that reached up pretty high. It occurred to me that one of the baby alligators had been lost. The woman was going looking for the alligator. But now I knew the alligator was at the top of structure, which was mattress on a structure like loft bed.

I climbed up the structure. The sky was blue and the day was warm. The structure was made up of things like sheds, bedframes, roofs, and ladders. All around the structure was a run-down area of weeds and trees, like a back lot or an unkempt backyard.

I climbed up one last ladder and was now on the top mattress. Laying, I scooted to the very edge of the mattress and peered over. Below me was a city scene, as if I were at the top of a very tall building. I got a little giddy. But the alligator wasn't here.

Now a group of people were calling for me. I looked down the structure, to the house (maybe one hundred feet below, at most). The house's ceiling had a big, rough hole in it, from which this junk structure seemed to spew.

The woman and a few other people, including some pale, hippie-like guys, all stood looking up, calling for me. One of the guys was shielding his eyes from the sun with his (right?) hand. The guys now called out to me, "You dumb ass! You were supposed to wait down here! All the alligators are down here! What the hell are you doing way up there?"

I could see that the woman cradled a baby alligator in a pastel blanket in her arms. I felt like an idiot -- I was supposed to watch the baby alligators after all!

I climbed down the ladder. I was almost to the bottom of the ladder when the bottom end started pivoting upward. I knew that the ladder was only connected to the structure by a pivot point in the middle. If there wasn't a balance of weight, the side with more weight would pivot down, pulling up the opposite side. For some reason (even though I stood on the bottom of the ladder and nothing else was on top), the bottom end had less weight and was pivoting upward.

My end now stood high in the air, a few feet (in arc) from the mattress. I looked down. It was a long was down, like from the top of a skyscraper. But the way down was all composed by framing, like that of the bridges for subway trains when they go above ground.I got extremely giddy again -- so giddy that I woke up with the shakes.

(2/21/09) addresses and numbers

(Entered at 7:55 AM on 2-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at a party (?) in a big ballroom. The walls and columns were white, and the room was dimly lit, as if by candles on a wall. I was bowed over a small table, my back to the mingling crowd. I was looking at a phone book, possibly trying to find my next destination.

My old friend R came up behind me, his face a little too close to the back of my neck. I could tell that R had been drinking.

I remembered having asked R here, as if we'd met again and I had asked him, by compulsion, if he'd like to come here. I had hoped R wouldn't take me up on my offer. It had gotten late, and I'd actually thought R wouldn't be coming here after all. But now that I was wrapping up here and getting ready to go to my next place, which was far more important to me, R had showed up here. Now he'd probably want to come with me to my next place as well.

I stepped away from the phone book. R said, in a slimy voice, like a stalker, but trying to sound funny, "You'd better watch out for those things, man. I hear they got addresses and numbers in 'em."

(2/22/09) risky flirtation

(Entered in paper journal at 1:44 PM at home.)

Dream #1

I was in the backseat of a car, on the driver's side. A pretty, youngish girl sat on the passenger's side. A man, mature-looking, maybe a few years older than I, drove. The girl had tan skin and blonde and brown, crimped hair pulled up into a loose ponytail. The girl was very thin and probably dressed in a somewhat loose, white, sleeveless blouse and a blue miniskirt. She was a little like a thug's girl or a street girl.

The girl acted like she liked me. We started cuddling a little bit. I thought it would simply be troublesome to get involved with this girl, but I thought since she liked me and she was pretty, I might as well be with her.

We now sat in a room like an office. The office may have opened directly out, where a wall would have been, to something like a garage or a warehouse, which also opened out into the sunny day. The woman and I sat on a desk or on a shelf which was slightly grimy and may have had a stray can or two of something like paint or motor oil on it.

The woman got up to go take care of something for a second. The man called to me. To my right, the office opened, again, where a wall would have been, to a short (but steep?) staircase down to another small, dumpy office like this one. The office belonged to the man who had been driving the car. The man sat back in his chair before his desk, which may have been empty except for a couple stray pencils, and had his hands behind his head.

The man said, "I wouldn't go too far with this girl, if you know what I mean. You already have XXXXX (my girlfriend), and you don't want to hurt her feelings."

I thought that was true. But then either I knew that when the woman came back I'd pick up where we'd left off, or else the woman did come back, and we did pick up where we'd left off.