Mark
Allen's Dream Journal
*note:
Date of dream entry refers to day before,the date of the night I went to
sleep and the dream I had into the next day's date.
archived dreams:
July,
2000 - August,
2000 - September,
2000 - October
2000 - November
2000 - December,
2000 - January,
2001 - February,
2001 - March,
2001 - April,
2001 - May,
2001 - June,
2001 - July,
2001 - August,
2001 - September,
2001 - October,
2001-
November,
2001- December,
2001 - January,
2002 - February,
2002 - March,
2002 - April,
2002 - May,
2002 - June,
2002 - July
2002 - August
2002 - September
2002 - October
2002 - November
2002 - December
2002 - January
2003 - February
2003 - March
2003 - April
2003 - May
2003 - June
2003 - July
2003 - August
2003 - September
2003 - October
2003 - November
2003 - December
2003 - (took a break from mid-Dec '03 - mid-March '04) - March
2004 - April
2004 - May
2004 - June
2004 - July
2004 - August
2004 - September
2004
NOTE: A viewer of my cam recently interviewed me about my Dream Journal to mark it's second anniversary. To read the interview, click here.
10/7/04
I seem to be living inside
an old pier warehouse (like the kind that used to exist on the Chelsea-area
piers in the 70's and 80's). There are many apartments built into the space,
and I seem to have just moved into one with my old Dallas/NYC friend Ray,
and we are roommates. I think it's his space and I have moved in. It always
seems to be nighttime in the space, and you can see the blurry lights of
the city through the large glass windows in each room. All of the room
have one wall that is all frosted glass (the kind that has wire mesh inside
of it) that kind of tilts out when you turn a lever. The rooms look old,
but painted new white, and many of them have light beige industrial carpeting.
Some of the floors in the room are dark stained Mexican tile.
I get the sense that
I am visiting Ray or have just moved in with him... it's unclear. At one
point, Ray is sleeping in his bedroom and I go outside of the building
to take some photographs. It is snowing outside on the street and I am
taking pictures of all the yellow streetlights casting blue shadows on
the snow, and all the patterns of dirty tire tracks.
Then I am back inside
the apartment. A whole day seems to have passed, but it is still night.
It is time to go to sleep and both Ray and I are going to bed. Ray says
to me suddenly "Mark, we have been friends for a long time and have
had our ups and downs but I think you should sleep in my bed with me."
So I do. While I am sleeping next to him, I have a dream (within this one)
that I am talking to some Mexican guy in the locker room of a gym, and
we are talking for so long that the gym starts to close and we both have
to leave. Then we wake up and suddenly there is this woman that seems to
be living in the apartment with us. She is kind of small and slim with
brunette hair always pulled back into a ponytail. She has a little blond
girl with her, her daughter I think, who looks about four or five. The
woman is always running around from room to room trying to set up these
tables of lavish food arrangements, like catered party spreads or something.
Suddenly I get the impression that this is actually her apartment, not
Rays or mine, and we are visiting her. For some reason, Ray and I are only
allowed to occupy a room where she has just finished setting up a lavish
food spread. Even if we want to use the room for it's specific function,
like go to the bathroom or sleep in there. We aren't allowed to touch the
food once we are in the rooms. So Ray and I just spend time in each room
sitting and talking and talking. At one point, the woman comes into one
of the rooms with the food and us, she has a big cardboard box in her hands
and is holding a ruler in her teeth. She says "OK you guys you need
to get out of here I need to start filming."
10/8/04
It is late at night, and I
am in NYC, Soho I think. There is some building that I am visiting someone
in. It is a long building that takes up a whole block, and it is an elongated
oval shape - sort of. It looks like a building from the 20's or 30's maybe...
at some points I think it may even be shaped like a cruise ship. It has
long strips of windows that wrap around it's entire surface horizontally,
like shiny ribbons.
There are very few
people around, and I am alone on the empty sidewalk as I open the big glass
doors to enter the building. As I do, I realize that it is a party I'm
attending inside the building, and Vincent Gallo is the host. I
walk into the lobby and it's a really grand space, like a lavish hotel
or the main NY public library or something. Marble, wide staircases and
everything, except the lights are out so you can only see by the streetlights
shining in through the windows. Soon I realize I'm back out on the street
again and I am entering the building a second time, and Vincent is out
there, inside a cab with the door open, filming with a little super-8 camera.
He's kind of "sending" thoughts into my mind, like directing me, telling
me "Make it more real, go slowly..." and stuff like that.
Then a slight scenario
shift: I seem to be upstairs in the uppermost part of the building, and
instead of a party, I find my family is there. Also, the top floor
of the building seems to open up or lead out into a kind of suburban area
of another location in the United States. It is daytime there and seems
to be another time altogether. The area is kind of flat but also lush with
trees and there are lots of businesses like fast food restaurants at every
intersection. Me and my family walk out of what looks like a very modern-looking
hotel, which is kind of in the shape of a large church made of white stucco,
and has these colored neon light strips on parts of it. - anyway we decide
to go wandering around the neighborhood. I guess we are all on some vacation
getaway here or something. We all start walking around and soon I loose
track of my family and find myself alone. I decide to make my way back
to the hotel and just wait for them there. After a while I realize that
I am lost and don't know where the hotel is. I keep looking at businesses
like Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken and trying to remember if we
had passed that particular one on our way away from the hotel. I realize
I'm really lost. Soon I decide that maybe I'll just find one of the fast
food places that is open 24 hours and maybe "live" in there since I can't
find the hotel or my family.
Then a scenario shift
again. I am back in the NYC Soho building, it is night, the same night
as before, and I am wandering around looking for the party again. I soon
find some kind of party inside of a room that doesn't look like a NYC apartment
at all, but more like the inside of a large, victorian-style two-story
house, with hardwood floors and antique furniture. There is a party there,
lots of people milling around and talking and having drinks. My old Dallas
friend Charlotte is there. We are talking and suddenly she looks
at me and says "Oh wow, we have run out of drinks. Mark can you run
to one of the other levels of the building and get another tray of drinks?"
Soon I realize that I'm kind of working at the party as a cocktail waiter.
I run out of the apartment and am back in the dark marble hallways of the
Soho building, looking for a tray of drinks... which I think might be a
tray of Jell-O shots. I soon come to this one area of the building that
is brightly lit, and I realize that is the elongated cabin of a passenger
airline. It is very crowded, there are people sitting in the seats and
also standing up in the aisles. I see that it is dark outside the windows
of the plane, and I can tell that it is night outside. I hear and feel
the hum and vibration that I am indeed now on a plane that is high in the
air. I look around and see that everyone around me is Japanese. I also
see a lot of the writing on stuff on the airplane is in Japanese, so I
somehow know that I am in a plane high over Japan. I walk backwards, weaving
as best I can through the crowded isle, to where I walked into the plane.
I see a wide stairwell lit with amber lights that I know leads out of the
airplane and back into the Soho building. There are so many people standing
on the stairs, facing in one direction, that it is hard to make my way
down. Soon I look up and see a movie being projected onto one of the walls
of the stairwell, and I realize it's a little movie theater, where passengers
of the plane can watch a movie while standing on the stairs. The film seems
to be Japanese, and looks very erotic. All the Japanese people are standing
and watching the film very intently. I make my way through them and down
the stairs.
I go back up to the
top level of the building again, and instead of a party, or my family,
I am on the top level of a huge ship that is going through the waters of
somewhere in Scandinavia. The sunlight is glimmering off of the sea surface
and is very blinding and beautiful, and the cool air is whipping through
our hair as we glide along. I can see off in the distance these large whales
that are being pulled along the back of the ship, attached with large ropes.
It seems friendly and humane, not like they are being hunted by us or something.
There is some woman there on the ship, who has a small son, who I seem
to be "working" for or something. I almost feel like I am here on some
sort of work exchange program or something, like it's temporary. I think
to myself as I look out into the water "I should have brought my camera
with me to take pictures of all these fantastic places I'm visiting, how
will anyone else know I've been here? Or even believe me when I tell them?"
Then suddenly I seem
to be back inside the dark building, still kind of wandering around again.
I stumble upon this one room that is all lit up in red lights. I see Amy
Sedaris in there and some camera people, and I realize that this is
the set of Jerri Blank's bedroom, and they are filming the "Strangers With
Candy" movie. I look around the room, which is oval shaped and has all
kinds of props hanging on the walls that were used in the various TV series
versions of the set of Jerri's bedroom (which I recognize). Amy is dressed
as Jerri and is on the bed and is wrapped in a sheet, on top of the Orlando
character. She is singing a song to Orlando, like the film is a musical.
The room has that weird, hollow, echo-y sound where a song is being piped
into the room via speakers and the actors are lip-synching it, but you
know when it is edited in the final film it will look much more "real."
There is some tech woman with scraggly, long dark hair and big glasses
kind of watching what is being filmed. She says to me "All the sets
on the 'Strangers With Candy' movie are lit up with a different colored
lights."
I am then out of that
room and am leaving the dark building. I walk outside onto the sidewalk
again, and it is still nighttime and desolate. I see two people dressed
in 1930's-style suits and hats (a man and a woman) walking into the building.
I turn and walk east, towards home, and I soon see Vincent Gallo poking
his head around the corner of the building, kind of half-heartedly hiding
from me. I see he is still holding the camera in his hand. He kind of "sends"
a message into my head which is "I got all that on film."
10/9/04
No dreams.
10/10/04
I am in this weird place
that seems to be the area of 11th St. and Ave. B (one of the first neighborhoods
I lived in, in NYC) and also my college town of Denton, Texas. The two
kind of meld into each other. The one characteristic they share though
is that they are both here and now, and I am visiting them in the present,
seeing how much they have changed since I've been there.
At one point I seem
to be in this brand new apartment (part of a complex) and I have a repairman's
tool belt on. I have poked holes in the drywall and am repairing this girl's
electricity. I have all the wires out and am trying to fix it. The girl
is actually someone I knew in college, but who's name I forget. She was
a lesbian and was really heavily into athletics. I keep thinking I need
this certain part to fix the wires, and I keep getting on my cell phone
to call some hardware store to find out if they have the part. I find out
that they do, and that one of the employees of the hardware store is going
to actually bring it to me at the apartment. I tell the girl this and she
gets really excited. She says "Oh that's my friend! He works there!
Oh he's bringing it? Good! I love him and can't wait to see him."
Soon the both of us
are hanging outside the girl's apartment front door, waiting for the guy
with the part to show up. It is sunny outside, but fall in the Texas-sense
of fall. It's very windy and the wind is blowing through our hair. I can
see this massive graveyard that is on the corner of Eagle St. and S. Carroll
Blvd., in Denton, which seems to be right across the street from her apartment.
Finally the girl points down the sidewalk and says "Here he is!"
and she runs off and meets him, far away from me. He looks like a very
old man and is carrying what looks like aluminum siding.
Then suddenly I am
in an area that is more like Ave. B and 11th St. in Manhattan, although
it still is sort of Denton. I am walking around looking at all the old
junky storefronts, and seeing the new kinds of businesses they have turned
into. I keep walking into and out of them, and it seems like a lot of them
have turned into weird, dirty, bohemian-ish coffee houses with band flyers
posted all over the bulletin boards in the entryways. I am thinking "How
many places like this does a neighborhood need?"
Then I seem to be in
front of this really old store front... kind of art deco looking with curved
glass windows and this foyer that almost looks like an old theater marquee...
the walls are made of intricately inlaid tile. I am with a girl with long
blond hair that I do not know. I look at this sign posted right inside
the swinging glass doors of the store, and it says "THE ENDLESS MUSEUM
OF STORES." I walk in and see that there are only two very small passageways
inside the business, like a little rat's maze, very cramped. One leads
off in one direction, and the other leads in a different direction. The
entire surface of each tunnel, and everything inside, is made of the same
antique, inlaid tile as the outside. It's very old looking... also very
strange. No one is around, and whatever the museum or store or whatever
it is that it does seems to be self-serving. I look back at the blond girl
who is poking her head in the door and she says "I wouldn't go in there
if I were you!"
I decide to go into
one of the tunnels and I get down on my knees and start crawling through
it. It's kind of dark but I see some kind of yellow/orange flashing strobe
light-like thing happening near the end. Soon that light seems to become
overwhelming and blinding... so I back out and go outside the store's front
door and tell the blond girl what it was like. I then tell the blond girl
"I'm
going back in!" and I do. I crawl into the same tunnel and notice now
that the entire tile walls of the tunnel are flashing in that same strobe
yellow/orange blinding flash. The strobe light seems to overwhelm your
entire field of vision, and cause the orange and yellow-ness to burn onto
your retina so you only see spots in front of your eyes. The deeper you
go into the tunnel, the stronger the light gets. I soon realize that the
light is exactly like the light you experience when you look at a Dream
Machine (which I had done recently) with your eyes shut. I keep crawling
deeper into the overwhelming light and now all I can see is total white-ness.
Soon... *bam*
I am suddenly back inside the girl's apartment where I am trying to fix
the electricity. I'm on her carpeted floor on my hands and knees like I
just crawled out of the tunnel. I'm back to the beginning of the dream
and we are still waiting for the guy from the hardware store to show up
with the part.
10/11/04
I am "watching" something
on cable news about how it has been passed into law that people have to
have large magnet rods surgically implanted into their thighs. It turns
out everyone in America, every age and race and sex, must get this operation,
which is funded by the government. The police will be walking around with
these weird x-ray slide ruler things (that look like an old-fashioned slide
rule but with a weird laser pointer on the end) that they can use to point
at your thighs and determine if you have your magnetized rods implanted
in your thighs, and they are at the legal distance (in inches) from the
skin on the back of your legs (which seems to be important). I am watching
and wondering when I'm going to get this operation.
Then some time seems
to have passed and I am still kind of "watching" TV and I see this thing
about the presidential administration (which only seems to exist in my
dream and seems unrelated to any real one). There is some kind of scandal
going on where the administration is being investigated for trying to make
laws in all 50 states that would make it mandatory for all toilet seats
to be made of steel.
10/12/04 - 10/13/04
No dreams.
10/14/04
I am in some restaurant that
has spanish-style arched walls made of adobe-colored stucco, and the floors
are strangely made of white drywall. When you go into the restaurant you
have to take off your shoes so you don't crush the delicate drywall, and
also so you don't step in a spot where there isn't a wood stud or 2x4"
holding the floor up. It appears that there is a floor beneath the restaurants,
and the only thing separating it is a layer of drywall and some 2x4"s -
just like (kind of) up in the attic of a new suburban house. There are
even these bar things (being held in place by chains that seem to connect
to the ceiling), kind of like gymnastics parallel bars, that you can hold
onto under your armpits and guide yourself along so you don't put too much
pressure on the floor - they are kind of like those things people with
spinal injuries use to help them walk during physical rehabilitation. The
tables in the restaurant, which are low and you sit around on the floor
at, are these weird things that kind of look like a table but also look
like an elaborate bird bath. The entire surface of the tables is covered
in little bits of colored tile (like the surface of 'THE ENDLESS MUSEUM
OF STORES' in the 10/10 dream). In the center of them is a raised part,
kind of like a little volcano - and in the center of that is a hole, and
food comes out of the hole and kind of tumbles sloppily down the surface
of the tile-covered volcano-looking thing and onto the outer flat part
of the table. Customers who are sitting around the table then scrape the
food off the table part with big pieces of pita bread. It's pretty messy.
The restaurant is pretty
full with people I don't know, and everyone is kind of carefully walking
along the floor or guiding themselves along the bars or sitting around
the weird tables scraping food off the tile with pita bread. At one point
I kind of "see" that the holes in the center of the raised part of the
table also act as the restaurant's toilets. I kind of see in my head this
guy pull his pants all the way down and take a piss into one of the holes
of the tables - and it's a table that no one is eating at. Everyone in
the restaurant acts like this is totally normal.
Then I kind of "see"
into one of the holes in the middle of the tables, and as I look down into
it, I see on the floor beneath the restaurant there is a very nice suburban
living room with pumpkin-colored carpet and white furniture. I see a bunch
of women down there dressed in very nice clothes. There are also a lot
of little girls in nice Sunday-school type dresses and black shoes. They
all seem to be having a nice tea party or something, with nice china. I
also see little pens that contain little animals like goats and sheep and
stuff - like one of those weird little petting zoos you see in malls. The
women are having their tea party and all the little girls are running around
excitedly petting the animals and stuff. I also notice evidence of long
tubes or conduits leading from these holes down through the living room's
ceiling and onto the floor and then off to somewhere in the house that
I can't see. The atmosphere in the two rooms is obviously markedly different.
Soon I am leaving the
restaurant, and even though I never ate, I go up to the host/cashier woman
- who is young and has long, straight blond hair - and get my bill. She
prints out this little receipt on a little strip of white paper. I look
down at the receipt and in badly printed blue ink, below the numbers, it
has this phrase that says something like "AFFORD THE TOPS FUND!" or something
like that. It's then that I know that this means that every time you pay
your bill at this restaurant, a little bit of the profit goes towards helping
the place afford a ceiling. I suddenly look up and see that the chains
holding up the guide bars, and also some tubes and conduits like I saw
in the living room below, seem to stretch upwards and fade away way up
into darkness, there is indeed no ceiling. It looks like I'm looking up
inside a very dark, large circus tent.
10/15/04 - 10/16/04
No dreams.
10/17/04
I'm kind of "watching" some sort of game being played by some people on the lawn of a giant house. The house is like an old, white mansion and the yard is huge... several acres. It is fall and the grass is dead and the trees are bare. All of the people (none of whom I know) are sitting on the front steps of the front porch and are watching as each of them takes turns running out into the yard and confronting what looks like a small, skinny dog in some sort of weird costume. Every time someone runs out to confront the dog they seem to be genuinely scared, and as soon as the dog begins to chase the person back to the porch, they run really fast as everyone cheers them on. As soon as the person gets back to the porch, the dog stops chasing them and slowly walks back to the middle of the yard to wait for the next person. It's hard to tell if the dog creature in the weird costume is the family dog, or if it's just some sort of creature that lives there in the yard for some reason. Four people have had turns so far, all of them have made it back to the porch, breathless and terrified, without being "caught" by the dog. It is then the fifth person's turn. That person get up and runs to the middle of the yard. The dog growls and begins to chase them. Instead of running though, the person just kind of slowly meanders back to the porch at a slow pace. This kind of catches the dog by surprise, who then slows down and kind of walks along side the person and lets them pet it. The dog and the person slowly walk back to the porch as the dog pants and is friendly and lets the person pet it. But the dog doesn't go all the way to the porch. Then I kind of "see" close-up on the porch, and one of the girls looks out and says "The key is to be the dog's friend." Then I look and see that the dog creature had a human skull mask on.
10/18/04
No dreams.
10/19/04
I am working in an office
with white tile floor and white cork ceiling with fluorescent light panels.
There are lots of desks in the room, and no cubicle walls dividing each
desk area. It is daylight outside. The woman that was sitting on the porch
and said the last line in the 10/17 dream (above), has re-appeared in this
dream, and is working at the desk next to mine. She has very thick, straight
black hair cut just below shoulder length. She is wearing a turtle neck
sweater and a dark blazer, and what appear to be gray polyester stretch
pants. She's always looking over at me and smiling, and she has big white
teeth and a pretty, kind face. She also keeps looking down at the keyboard
of her computer and typing. It seems to take a lot of concentration for
her to type... her face looks very frustrated and frantic when she is typing,
which is a contrast to how she looks otherwise, which is very calm and
friendly.
I soon become aware
that there is some kind of killer on the loose in the office. The killer
wears a black ninja suit and a black ski mask. As I become aware of this,
I can kind of "see" the killer hanging around the water cooler in the hallway
outside, his attempt to hide behind the cooler seems more comical than
menacing.
At some point I look
outside the office window by my desk, outside is overcast and there is
green grass next to the sidewalk by my window. I see a train conductor
standing out on the sidewalk outside (we must be on the ground level) acting
as the doorman and letting people into the building. For some reason I
"know" that the office building we work in is made up to look like a train,
even the outside. And I know that every once in a while, actors dressed
like train conductors come around to our desks and collect tickets, in
addition to the actors playing train conductors outside, that blow whistles
every once in a while and yell "All aboard!" I also know that
sometimes the sounds of a moving train are piped in through speakers in
the ceiling, and I also know that there used to be this elaborate system
of vibrators imbedded in the floor (which made the ground feel like the
floor of a moving train), but that the company stopped using them because
they were expensive to run and kept breaking down. It's like some kind
of "theme" building.
At another point I
look over at the desk of the girl next to me. She is not at her desk. I
see on her desk a copy of a paperback book, that is very worn, and has
these really strange black leather gloves sewn into the front and back
cover of the book. The gloves are in the position they would be in if you
were wearing them, and holding the book to read it, it's like you have
to wear them in order to read the book - which is weird because it seems
like you would have to work your hand out of one of the gloves each time
you wanted to turn a page. It's then that I realize that the reason the
girl always looks so frustrated and frazzled when she is typing at her
computer is because she is not working (like she is supposed to), but is
secretly reading the weird book. She looks that way because the gloves
imbedded into the cover are indeed a pain to get your hands in and out
of constantly, and maybe are not the right size for her hands... since
it does indeed seem like an old, used book. I look closer at the book's
cover and see that the graphic design has a very colorful, 1960's-style
design (yet the black leather gloves sewn to it seem relatively new). The
cover is very worn. In an elaborate yellow typeface on the book's front
cover, I see that the book's title is "BEINGS WHO DON'T RESOLVE."
10/19/04
I am on a road trip, driving
around the US in a car I rented. I am on the trip to "get away" from NYC.
It seems to be summer. I think I am in Texas, somewhere near Dallas. I
have parked my car in some dirt and gravel parking lot and am wandering
around a very busy road. The road has lots of businesses along side it,
like restaurants and car dealerships. Each business has a big parking lot.
I see a lot of those plastic rope things with color triangle flags on them
that signal new businesses or special events. They are flapping in the
wind. It is daytime and very sunny. At some point I am walking along a
side street that is less busy and has lots of businesses side by side,
with no space in between the buildings. I enter this kind of pink stucco
doorway that has a sign out in the front in the shape of a duck. I think
the place is a diner. I walk in and it looks like an old diner in an old
building somewhere in a small town in Texas. There are lots of old locals
in the place eating at tables. They mostly look like seniors, and are very
local.
I wander to the back
of the place and see that it has this enormous back yard... which is a
large grassy meadow surrounded by trees. I walk back there and it is very,
very peaceful and beautiful. There is a line of trees kind of surrounding
the grassy part... far in the distance, and then even beyond that there
are other groups of trees that look very strange and beautiful... really
alien/underwater-looking trees with weird above-ground roots and pink and
white fluffy flowers on them. I am standing there taking in all the beauty,
and the breeze is blowing the grass and leaves. I am thinking "I can't
believe there are beautiful parts of the US out here, and I am trapped
in NYC all the time." Suddenly I see there is another small white building
on the property, a little white house I think. I see a very overweight
black woman standing in the grass and for some reason I know she is retarded
or has mental problems. I get this weird impression that this yard is somehow
part of a mental hospital facility.
I suddenly realize
that it is becoming dusk. I look over at the black woman again and I realize
she has transformed into Natalie Portman. Natalie walks over to
me and says "hello" and then walks to the middle of the meadow and gets
out an ironing board and starts ironing clothes. I feel like I should walk
over to her and tell her that I sat next to her in the audience at that
Mcauley Culkin play back in NYC, but I don't. I also get the impression
that she doesn't want anyone from NYC to know she is here.
I lay down on the grass
and look up at the sky and feel incredibly peaceful. Suddenly I realize
I am not in Texas at all, but am in Tennessee. I think that I can probably
get in my car and go visit my friend Tony. Just then a little dog
comes over and starts sniffing my hair. Also, Natalie walks over to me
and hands me a cooked spaghetti noodle, like for me to eat. I have the
wet noodle in my hand and am wondering why she would hand it to me. The
dog reaches over with it's mouth and chomps on the noodle. I let go of
it and let the dog have it. Suddenly I realize the dog is not a dog at
all, like I thought, but is a chimpanzee. The chimp takes the wet noodle
in his hand and rolls over on his back next to me and starts masturbating
wildly. I'm like "Eeeaaauuugghhh!" and I get up and walk away quickly.
I walk back through
the meadow towards the diner, and I come to a gravel parking lot area that
has lots of very strange cars parked in it. They look like a cross between
a Rolls Royce and a european Smart car. I see all these people that look
to be about in their twenties, getting out of the cars and unpacking luggage
and sometimes working on the cars. Some of the people are dressed in very
trendy clothes. I look at all the people and I get the impression that
I knew them at some point from NYC, or maybe even from college. I look
at all of them and am amazed at how young they all are but seem so sophisticated.
They seem to have a lot of money. They have their own cars and are able
to drive to this remote area for a vacation. It's then that I realize this
diner, or at least the back of it, is a special vacation resort. It's intended
for people that live in NYC and want to get away from it all. It's specifically
designed for that - it is very popular amongst people in NYC and very trendy,
but also very secret.
I walk back through
the diner and look at all the local seniors and wonder if any of them ever
get annoyed with all the trendy New Yorkers coming to eat in the diner
(since it's so close to the resort). I walk out of the diner and look at
the front of it. I think to myself that I should pitch a story idea about
this unknown resort to The New York Times. Then I realize that if I did
contact this place, they would not be interested and would probably just
brush me off and say "We don't want any press." I walk along side
of the road back to my car.
10/20/04 - 10/25/04
No dreams.
10/26/04
I am in a location that
seems like Coney Island. It is daytime and sunny but seems to be fall.
I seem to be trying to get into this giant old house that is abandoned
and boarded up. I am with some people but I don't know them. We keep having
to break boards and little pieces of glass to get into the giant old house,
but we finally make it in. We get inside and everything in the house is
falling apart and covered in ivy... but it's very large and impressive.
Probably three or four stories. As we look around, I realize that the house
is actually this very old fashioned, wooden, abandoned roller coaster that
has somehow been converted into a giant house... and then used and eventually
abandoned again. You can see where the old metal tracks literally go through
rooms... and how the shape of the ride kind of dictated what the shape
of the house would be.
Soon we are exiting
the house from where we entered it, through this hole. We get out and I
see my mother walking away from the house. She's saying "I'm
going to the grocery store and will be right back, you boys don't cut yourself
in our new home!" and then she's gone.
Then some time seems
to have passed and I seem to be hanging out in a fast food restaurant like
a McDonald's or something, that is just down the street from the old roller
coaster house. The walls of the place, and the employees uniforms, are
bright yellow and red. There seems to be a lot of people there that I am
friends with, but I don't seem to recognize anybody. We are all just kind
of hanging around the back. I seem to keep doing this thing where I put
my elbows on one of the tables and put my hands up to my head and rest
my chin on my open palms. I keep doing it over and over and smiling at
people, and when I do it I can feel my hair on my chin touching my hands.
Soon I look over at the sales counter of the place, and see that people
aren't buying food... but seem to be buying these weird kind of paper origami-looking
sculpture things that are made out of construction paper that is the same
color as the walls and employees uniforms. The employees are handing each
person up at the counter one over the register as they pay. The weird thing
is that the sculptures seem to be animated... like I see them squiggling
and moving like they have been drawn animation-style over live film or
video.
10/27/04
Tomorrow...
10/28/04
I am walking around
at night in a part of Manhattan I don't recognize. In fact, it looks like
some suburban, water-side port town. I seem to be near the water, and near
an area that has lots of houseboats docked, and bridges and little decks
that lead out to the boats. Some of the boats have their own little grassy
islands that they rest on, just a few yards out from the shoreline. That
the area is very poorly lit, like the overhead lights along the deck are
burnt out or not working properly. At some point, I am just walking along
by the water (I think I am on my way home) and I realized that it has become
so dark that I can't even see my hand in front of my face. In the peripheral,
I can see things in the distance that are lit up, or areas that have overhead
lights... but in my immediate vicinity... it's so dark I can't even see
where I'm stepping. I'm afraid that I might step into the water... and
I'm just feeling my way around with my hands and trying to judge where
I go by the sounds I can hear.
Soon, I realize that
there is someone following me. I can kind of "see" the person, even though
I can't really see them. It's a kind of young guy, tall and lanky, with
spiky blond hair and those weird round sunglasses from the 80's that have
the leather shields on the sides of them. I think he is carrying school
books. He is either walking behind me... or perhaps he's following me and
has malicious intent... or maybe it's all in my head. At one point, I think
I am on one of those weird little grassy islands near the shore, and I
see that there are cat o'nine tails weeds on the island, and I am kind
of hiding in them. My feet are wet so I must have stepped into the water.
I am hiding in the weeds to get away from the guy that I think is following
me. I still can't see anything.
Then suddenly a slight
scenario shift: it is the same night, later. I seem to be in an apartment
building near the dock somewhere, but it doesn't look at all like anything
in Manhattan. It looks more new and suburban. I am up on an upper floor,
in a very spacious room, that has a huge open window that looks out on
a very wide street. In the apartment is a party going on with a bunch of
people I don't know, and everyone is drinking beers from brown bottles.
Across the street is an identical building, and it has a huge spotlight
shining on it so it's all lit up. Inside each of the windows of the building
across the street, the curtains are open and you can see clearly what's
going on in each apartment. Each one is like a little stage. Soon, all
of us are watching what's going on in the apartment building across the
street because in each window there seems to be some kind of extreme situation...
like a fight or gunfire or violence. I even see little explosions happening
in some of the rooms. Soon the whole building is exploding over and over
again... and all of us in the apartment are freaking out and we try to
run downstairs because we're afraid that the disaster is going to spread
to our building. It's really chaotic and scary.
Then a total scenario
shift: it is another day at another time. It is daytime and I am in a bedroom
that I don't recognize and I am lying in bed with actor Paul Dinello.
We seem to be lovers. We are just laying there talking and it is very quiet
and touching and sweet and the sunlight is kind of beaming in through the
curtains.
Then a whole day has
passed, and I am at a different place: I am with Paul at some giant cathedral.
I think I am at a wedding that involves his family. At one point, after
the ceremony... we are all filing out of the church and Paul and I are
holding hands. I look down and realize I am wearing a pink Chanel suit
and a lady's pink hat. I can sense that a lot of Paul's friends and family
are behind us thinking that Paul and I are boyfriends now. We get outside
into the lawn of the church. It is daytime and sunny. I am in my normal
clothes now. I soon look over and see a little girl about 5 years old,
in a fancy Sunday dress and black dress shoes, running around the yard.
I learn that this is Paul's daughter. I walk over to the little girl, who
is playing near this patch of little flowers, and I start picking some
of the flowers and giving them to her, which she likes. I keep giving her
more and more flowers, of different colors, to add to this really big bouquet
she has in her hands, and she keeps laughing and laughing. I keep explaining
the different colors of all the different flowers to her. Soon Paul walks
over to me and leans down and says earnestly "That's good... that's
the way to handle her... get her hopes up!" and then walks away. I
look over at the little girl's eyes and I realize that she is actually
blind. Her eyes are weirdly deformed.
Then it seems to be
the next day and I am in a big drugstore with Paul. We are buying different
things. I keep taking things from the shelves and putting them in Paul's
arms, he is accumulating a lot of stuff that he is carrying. As I do this,
Paul starts to talk to me about how he thinks our relationship isn't working
out... and how he thinks we should break up. I am really disappointed because
I seemed to have liked him a lot... and I feel like I'm getting dumped.
I just keep putting products in Paul's arms as he keeps explaining more
and more about how he wants to break up.
Then a whole day has
passed. I am back at the house boat dock area. It is daytime and overcast.
It is very still and there is no one around. The place is very lit up in
the daytime and I can see everything around me very clearly.
10/29/04
I am in some restaurant in some part of NYC (I think). The restaurant is kind of nice, it has big windows that look out into the street, and the windows have wide vertical blinds on them. It is daylight outside and overcast. The tables have bright white linens on them and all the waiters are wearing big white aprons. I am at a table with some men in suits, I don't know who they are. I soon look over and see my friend Nathan Gluck sitting at another table. He is alone but he seems to be looking around at everyone in the restaurant and smiling, like everyone knows him. People keep looking over at him and smiling and waving. He has finished his meal and all the sudden he gets up and begins to leave the restaurant. He is waving to everyone as he walks out. As he walks out onto the street, everyone in the restaurant is watching him leave... kind of in a celebratory way. Out on the street, we all see him walk over to a big limo or service car, which is black and driven by a chauffeur and has been waiting for him. Before he gets into the car, he takes off his jacket and reveals his t-shirt to everyone watching. It is a big white shirt and there are homemade black stenciled letters on the back that say something... something like "FUCK THE WORLD" or "SAY HELLO WELL FUCK YOU" or some kind of humorous, obnoxious statement like that. He seems to have designed this t-shirt specifically for this moment of unveiling. Everyone in the restaurant cheers as he reveals the shirt... and everyone laughs. Then, we see him unbuckle his belt and, with his back still to us, drop his pants and moon the restaurant. Everyone bursts out laughing. With his back to us, and his pants now completely off, he moves sideways and opens the car door and slips into the passenger seat... totally nude from the waist down. He then shuts the door and the car drives forward, away from us. Nathan turns around and smiles and waves at everyone in the restaurant as the car pulls off.
10/30/04 - 12/11/04
Took a looooooooooong break there...
12/12/04
I am in a room that kind of
looks like a giant kitchen in a suburban house. It has a breakfast nook.
It seems like the kitchen has been renovated into some kind of other living
space, other than a kitchen. The floor, rather than tile, has beige/brown
shag carpet (wall to wall) and there is no furniture of any kind. Just
the same island in the middle of the floor that was originally there...
with nothing on it. In the places where there were ovens and stovetops
there is nothing... like just a shelf or something. There isn't anything
in the cabinets or shelves... in fact, the entire house at all... every
room is devoid of furniture or anything at all, and each room seems to
have been decorated in the same bare fashion, with the same carpet. I somehow
"sense" that some of the rooms upstairs have been decorated in a way where
the shag carpet has been laid over things that aren't just the floor...
like over stair banisters and light switches and stuff... laid out very
carefully and stuff... really professionally done... but odd.
Anyway... I am down
in the kitchen and there are a lot of people there (I don't know any of
them). Outside it is daylight but it is very, very cloudy and dark... like
a big rainstorm is coming or something... or a tornado. We all seem to
have gathered in the kitchen of this empty, weirdly re-decorated house
to have some sort of meeting. There seems to be a "rushed" feeling to the
meeting, and lots of hard feelings and arguments... like there is some
kind of crisis that we are all meeting to solve. There seems to be some
woman with kind of short blond hair and a pink hooded sweatshirt and blue
jeans that is in charge of the meeting. I can never really see her face
because she is yelling and screaming a lot in anger. And when she does
this her head shakes and all her hair flies all over her face and sticks
to it because she is sweating and blushing so much from yelling... plus
I think she is crying too so there are tears. She keeps yelling stuff like
"No!
No! No! Noooo! I said to do that the other way!" and "Why are you
doing this to me!" and "No! Stop! Now everyone be quiet so we can
move forward! I said QUUUUUIIIIEEETTT!!!" and stuff like she is really
frustrated, which she seems to be.
She has this thick
folder in her hands that has lots of layers and sub folders within it and
and stuff, and papers stuffed inside the sub folders. Each sub folder has
one of those transparent colored tabs to mark it - you know the kind you
can put a little label inside. My eyes seem to kind of "zoom in" on the
big folder in her hands as she is running around yelling at everyone to
get organized. I see that there are all kinds of math problems and very
complex patterns of lines and stuff, with more colored tabs attached to
them at weird places... these math problems and patterns are drawn very
carefully all over the folder, and are also on the papers inside the folder.
There are also post-it notes on places all over the patterns and math problems...
with notes to herself to remember certain stuff.
It seems like she has
to solve the massive amounts of problems all over and inside this giant
folder, and she is frustrated because everything is already so complex
and no one will co-operate with her and get organized so she can move forward
in solving the problem. That's what the meeting seems for. As I can see
the folder more and more, and it's overwhelming amount of math problems
and puzzles all over it and inside it... I can kind of "hear" her yelling
at me specifically... even though her voice seems kind of far away. Whatever
colored tab or post-it note I am "looking" at as my eyes kind of scan the
surface of the folder... she yells at me about that specific thing. No
matter what I focus on she just yells about that it. Her voice just yells
and yells no matter where my focus is directed on the folder... stuff like
"I
said... no, not that tab... the other one! No... no! You're doing it wrong!
I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
12/13/04
I am on a large tennis court
area, a large space with lots of courts, the whole perimeter has one of
those tall green net/fence things all the way around it. It seems like
it's winter, but it's sunny and warm. I may be in Texas or California -
it's a suburban area. The court is pretty crowded with people playing tennis,
and everyone is wearing white tennis outfits. I am on one court in a game,
I have no idea who I'm playing. Suddenly, I notice some kind of commotion
going on in one area of the court. Some girl is screaming hysterically
at a young guy. I look over and see this girl in a white tennis skirt,
who's face is all red from screaming and crying. She apparently was angry
at some tall, young guy who was also wearing a tennis outfit and carrying
a racquet. The young man is walking away from her after she berated him.
The girl has a handful of green tennis balls gathered in her one arm, and
she is taking one at a time and practicing dropping them on the ground
and as they bounce up, hitting them to the other side of the court with
the racquet she has in her other hand. She just keeps doing this and seems
to be doing it out of formality, like it was what she was doing earlier,
before she started screaming at the guy... but now that she's all flushed
and post-hysterical from crying and screaming... and aware that everyone
on the court is now staring at her, she just keeps doing it like everything
is all normal. She keeps sobbing as she is doing this... and she seems
to be rushing so she can hit each ball and get all of them out from under
her arm... you can kind of tell that after she hits the last one she is
going to run off the court really dramatically, in tears. She keeps dropping
each one on the ground and as it bounces up she lobs it with her racquet
really sloppily... like she just wants to get through them all and is embarrassed
that everyone is watching her and is still red-faced and sobbing. As soon
as she hits the last one... sure enough... she runs off the court, sobbing,
with everyone watching her. Just then I notice an elderly male/female couple
who suddenly notice her. They seem to maybe be her parents. They look in
her direction as she runs off and kind of motion towards her... and then
they follow her with really concerned looks on their faces.
Then some time has
passed and I seem to be in an apartment in an apartment complex that I
think is adjacent to the tennis court area. I am in an apartment I have
never seen before. But, I seem to be returning to this apartment... after
having lived there before or something - even though I don't recognize
it. There is some sort of puddle of goo, or some mess or something, in
one area of the apartment. It seems to have been there before, when I lived
in the apartment before... and now it is still there upon my return, except
it's kind of dried up now... but has been untouched. I have the door to
the apartment open, and the sunlight is beaming into the room. Suddenly
some food delivery guy walks into the room with a burrito that I seem to
have ordered. He sets it on the coffee table and says something like "Here's
your burrito." He then sits on the couch and starts doing something
with all these objects and tools and pieces of white plastic that he has.
He seems to be working on something, and whatever he is doing is causing
this pink goo to kind of ooze out of the area he is working on, and all
over the coffee table... and running down the sides. The mess looks very
similar to the old mess that was in the apartment. I say something to him
like "You can do that here if you like, I don't mind." ...but I
think it's kind of odd for a delivery guy to come into an apartment and
start doing something like that. When I say that to him though... he suddenly
stops working on whatever it was he was working on, and gets up and leaves
and politely says goodbye. For some reason I am disappointed that he is
leaving.
Then a total scenario
shift... I seem to be in a very remote area... out in the countryside or
something. It is daytime and sunny. The terrain looks flat with lots of
brush and stuff... like Texas. There are little, old fashioned, wooden
shacks in some areas of the terrain ... almost like a camping area. In
one of the shacks is the girl that was screaming and crying on the tennis
court earlier. Her elderly parents are with her in the shack. The girl's
hair is longer, and they are all wearing different clothes... like some
time has passed. The parents are really concerned about the girl... who
seems to have moved into this shack on her own. I also get the sense that
I have been to this shack, and area, before... just like the apartment.
It's like I am returning to it. The girl is telling the parents that whenever
anyone moves into this shack, or area... their brains eventually get "taken
over" by an alien race that is beaming signals from outer space and stuff.
She sounds really nuts, and her parents are really concerned that she is
spouting conspiracy theories and stuff. The girl tells them that she too
now has had her consciousness "taken over by aliens..." just like all the
people that have lived here before. The girl then exits the little shack,
and walks off into the horizon, leaving her parents in the shack.
12/14/04
I am in California, probably
outside of Los Angeles. Wherever I am, it is a beautiful, suburban area
that is kind of in the valley of some cliff-like areas that are covered
in lush green trees and foliage and some gray shale rock areas. I seem
to be walking out of a big house that contains lots of people that are
very busy working. I don't know any of them. I am running an errand for
the people in the house (whom I seem to be a part of, and we are all working
on some big project and I have to run out to get some sort of supplies
or something). The dream begins at the point where I am walking out of
the house. It is daytime and sunny, but at times the day seems to shift
from daytime, to dusk, and then back.
The area is gorgeous...
lots of new concrete roads and grassy medians and little mini strip malls
and wide sidewalks where you can walk. There are all kinds of sculptural
areas at some of the intersections, that also have plants growing out of
them. In the distance, actually pretty close, are these magnificent cliff
areas that have homes built into them. As I am walking along, I see this
one cliff that has this fantastic waterfall kind of thing built into it.
It has several waterfalls kind of cascading down the cliff, through the
trees and foliage... but then it has these three gigantic water "wheels"
that seem to be these massive pumps that are able to spray a sheet of water
outwards into a giant disk shape (like a ferris wheel). These things stick
out of the trees like a giant mushroom... and are huge... like the size
of a parking lot. They are also perpendicular to the cliff, so the water
disc is parallel to the cliff. I look below all the massive sculptural
water and see that the water from these things is just cascading down,
through a massive dark tunnel of weeping willow trees just above the street,
onto the street itself. It is just falling on the cars stopped below at
the stoplight, like a massive rain. The cars just have their windshield
wipers on like they don't mind.
At one point while
I'm walking around admiring the fantastic, lush, suburban environment...
I have to pee... so I walk over to what looks like a business, and walk
in. It's one of those weird offices you see in a strip mall. The doors
and glass on the front of the one-story office are a smoky glass, and the
interior has fake wood paneling walls and tan carpet. I walk in, and since
it is way after closing time, no one is around (yet the door was open).
I came in here for the sole purpose of using the bathroom - which I find
at the end of one of the halls. I go in, and of course no one is in the
bathroom. As I am peeing, I suddenly head a voice talking outside... maybe
a security guard? For some reason, I am not concerned at all about running
into him, which seems to be a reflection of the nice, wonderful city I
am in... like his mood will reflect the city... he will be just like "Oh
that's fine!"
But before I even see
the security guard, I am outside again walking around. I seem to be climbing
on this giant rock formation area that is fake, like made of plastic or
something... but it seems like shale rock. The rock formation is part of
the facade of a restaurant on the main road. There are areas on the fake
rock that are porous and are lit from behind like glowing red (I think
it's supposed to look like lava). I run across some blond kid who is with
his parents, they are also climbing around on the rock. The kid has run
over to the glowing red light area of the rock to try and put it out...
because he thinks it's a fire. I explain to him that it's just a light
effect, not a fire. He starts to try and smother the lighted part like
it's a fire anyway, with a big cloth he has. When he pulls the cloth away,
the red light part of the rock has disappeared... like it was a
real fire he put out. He just stares at me as he walks away, like he was
right all along.
Then I start climbing
around the rock, and some guy with short black hair and a spandex bicycling/climbing
outfit is kind of climbing around on the rock with me. He starts to talk
to me and it is obvious that he is flirting with me. His predictable formality
in the way he is talking, the rehearsed, tired way he is trying to engage
me in conversation and be playful with me starts to really get on my nerves.
12/15/04
I am in a little suburban
neighborhood. There are little tree-lined streets and all the houses are
very quaint and small, I think there may be a body of water nearby. I may
be in California or some kind of camp/resort ground in northern New York
state. It is sunny and seems to be summer or spring. At one point I am
with all of these people (I don't know) outside of one of the houses, which
is a wooden structure... kind of on stilts, and a back porch covered in
screen. The house is right next to a lake or something. It is dusk. We
are all standing around this gigantic aluminum troft that is about 12ft
x 12ft. Inside the deep troft is food, all kinds of it... like pizza and
mounds of pasta with pesto and gyro sandwiches and submarine sandwiches
and falafels... lots of high-carb, fattening stuff. We are all eating from
the troft (which is about level with our knees - so we have to bend down
to pick stuff up) and talking with each other. We all seem to be planning
something. Everyone has folders and stuff they are reading from. After
everyone is done talking and eating... everyone says goodbye to each other
and starts walking away from the troft, which still has lots of food piled
in it. After everyone has walked away, or gone into the house, I start
looking down at the food and feel weird that it's being wasted or thrown
away. I grab this giant pile of pesto pasta with my hands and shove it
into my mouth. I am trying to gulp it down but it's hard to get it all
into my mouth and it's hanging out and I'm trying to slurp it up but it's
dryer than I thought. Just then a girl from the group walks back over to
the troft and asks me a question (unrelated to the food in my mouth) and
I am totally mortified that I have been caught eating someone else's pasta
from the "trash."
Then it really seems
to be getting dark, and I walk over to one of the little houses. Joining
me are actors Ralph Meeker and Maxine Cooper, who are both
dressed in their outfits and almost seem to be playing their respective
parts from the 1955 film "Kiss Me Deadly." They seem to have just transported
from the 1950's to now... they even look the same age as then. We all walk
into the house and set our coats down. Ralph turns the lights on. Maxine
does this strange thing where she goes up this little wooden ramp up to
a door, enters it, then comes out another door kind of on the opposite
end of the same wall, then goes down a similar ramp... like she made a
little circle. We all sit down on the furniture and pull out these black
binder folders, and start talking about some project. I see in the folders
are papers with lines from the movie "Kiss Me Deadly" and color stills
from the film (which is actually in b&w). I look through the folder
and see that the logic of the script and pictures is kind of out of order,
and parts are missing... this is supposed to represent the choppy, half-baked
feel of the film itself. As we are all talking, Ralph and Maxine seem to
be very serious... and are acting very formal... like they are practicing
social etiquette and vocal mannerisms from the 1950's. I start to lean
back in my chair and cross my legs and put these glasses I have on (it
seems) up onto my head, pushing my hair back. I hold one arm up, propped
on the chair's arm as if I'm holding a cigarette. I realize I am imitating
a pose from a friend of mine, with the legs crossing and glasses and cigarette
and head tilted slightly back. I think to myself "Is this a pretentious
way to sit?"
Then suddenly in the
room with us are these two guys I worked with once at a prop assisting
job at a TV station, Bentley and John. They are both sitting
on the floor (one is on one of those old oval 'ring' rugs). They seem to
be laughing and not paying attention to Ralph and Maxine. They both have
folders and are trying to pay attention to the meeting but they keep looking
at each other and giggling. This seems to annoy Ralph and Maxine. At one
point, I am trying not to laugh at what the guys are doing, because they
both keep trying to crack me up. Suddenly John seems to reach his arm between
my legs and under my ass where I am sitting in the chair... as he does
this he says (quietly but in a joke-y voice) "Look Bentley, under here
there is a..." and then suddenly he gets is hand fully under me and
he suddenly, with amazing strength, thrusts his arm up and lifts me quickly
out of my seat, all the way into the air, and near the ceiling (which is
very high). He is able to do this with one arm and, even though I am fidgeting
wildly to maintain my balance, he is able to hold me up there with his
one arm. He is also able to do this while still laying on his back on the
floor... like he has a super-arm or something. I go "W-a-a-hahahahaha!!"
as this happens... startled but laughing, and Bentley laughs and the monotony
of the meeting breaks and I just can't stop laughing because it was so
odd and funny. Maxine and Ralph, totally annoyed now, close their folders
and look out into the air in front of them and say "If you boys aren't
going to take this seriously well... well... we just won't have the meeting
then will we?" in a parental tone. I'm still up in the air and can
hardly breath because I can't stop laughing, but I feel bad for disrespecting
Maxine and Ralph's meeting.
12/16/04 - 12/19/04
Out of town.
12/20/04
I seem to be way at the top
of the dome of an ancient building... like an old cathedral in Rome or
something. The stone that the dome is made of is very old, and dusty peach
in color... it has some kind of design on parts of it I think. Much of
the stone is chipped away and weathered because it is so ancient. I am
actually inside and outside the cathedral at the same time, on the very
top of the dome, because the very top of the dome has a large hole in it...
which is part of it's original design (like so a dot of sunlight trails
slowly across the cathedral's floor - that can kind of tell time or mark
the seasons or whatever). I am sitting on the edge of the hole, on top
of the dome, looking deep inside, into the cathedral - at the floor. The
floor is very far away, but I can make it out. It is daytime outside and
cloudy - so there is little light inside the cathedral.
As I am looking down
at the floor, I see what looks like old fashioned "stop motion" film animation...
as I see a bunch of stones that make up the floor are suddenly kind of
falling into place, like forming the floor... all leading to the center...
which seems to be the exact opposite of the dome - like it lines up exactly
the same mathematical distance from the hole I am sitting on. As I look
closer, I see that the stone falling into place are brand new... but I
can barely make them out - I can just see that they are brand new compared
to the old stones I am sitting on. As I look even closer, I see that the
floor of the cathedral isn't a flat floor at all... but is the second half
of a giant sphere... the dome I am on is only half of it. I know that the
part I am sitting on was the "beginning" of the sphere... and it's "completion"
took a very, very long time of stones falling into place, going all the
way around, and I am looking all the way to the other side of the sphere...
and am witnessing the sphere about to "complete" itself... the end of it.
I feel very sad and kind of scared.
12/21/04
I seem to be in a restaurant
waiting area, or maybe some kind of suburban, modern library. There are
large glass windows and orange industrial carpeting in the building. Outside
it is daytime, but very cloudy and dark and windy. Inside, there is a woman
standing in front of a large group (that I seem to be a part of). She is
wearing all black, a thick turtleneck sweater that seems tight, itchy and
ill-fitting, she has on tight black jeans that seem too tight and uncomfortable.
She has a clunky belt around the jeans. She has short-ish bleached blond
hair that is straight, and seems to always be blocking view of her face.
She seems very upset and is yelling out at the group (or just out into
the air) and is very red-faced (from what I can see) and may even be crying.
She seems very, very frustrated and angry. She keeps shaking her head around
and her blond hair keeps sticking to her face because of the anger sweat
and maybe tears, preventing me from seeing really at all what she looks
like. She has a clipboard in her hand and is furiously writing names down
on it, and then also turning her writing instrument over and erasing the
names she has just written... over and over and over, faster and faster
and very angrily.
As all this is going
on, my "eye" kind of moves in really close to her clipboard, and I see
it from her view. I see that it is not really a clipboard at all... but
is a flat board that has tin foil wrapped around it. Her writing instrument
is just a sharp, pointy plastic thing... and as she is "writing" names
on the tin foil on the board, she is just kind of "scratching" the names
onto the tinfoil... making an impression. Then she turns the writing instrument
over and kind of scratches/erases the name away... flattening the impression.
The thing is, that she has done this over and over so many times, that
the tin foil is worn completely flat, and is impossible to even make an
impression in... and is even beginning to wear off in places. She is angry
and frustrated because she realizes she is running out of materials and
time.
12/22/04
I am riding a roller coaster
at an amusement park. I am high up on the top of the hill of the highest
peak of the ride. I am alone in the long string of cars... and the cars
don't seem very secure... like they don't have restraints or anything...
they are just metal boxes with wheels on the bottom, like those hand cars
you see in coal mines. The cars, despite going over a top of a hill and
then going down a very steep, long, incline... seem to be lackadaisically
idling along very slowly. Like they are traveling in slow motion. I just
kind of ride the car down, standing up in it, the breeze kind of whisping
my hair around and I look all around at the amusement park. It is a beautiful,
sunny day. It seems normal for the ride to operate this way, and very safe.
At the bottom of the hill the track flattens out again, and then seems
to go right into a little shed where the ride operators will stop the car,
like it is the end of the ride.
Soon, I can kind of
"see" inside the shed at the end of the ride, even though my car doesn't
seem to want to reach it. I can see some ride operators kind of looking
at a video screen or something. The video screen is next to the big lever
that stops the ride once my cars enter the shed. On the screen is a video
image of a very old poster that I used to have on my wall as a child -
it was a metallic foil calendar with a rainbow design on it. It could act
like a mirror because it was made of thick, plastic metallic stuff - but
it was pliable enough to press and bend with your hands so you could distort
your image as you looked at it. I remember this poster very distinctly
but hadn't really thought about it until this dream. I somehow know that
the operators are "looking" at a memory of the poster deep inside my brain...
and a memory I have of looking at my own face as I press the poster with
my hands and distort my own image. They can't control what happens on the
screen because it is dictated by what happened way in the past.
I look out again from
the cars (I'm still high up on the hill)... and I see that much of the
tracks of the roller coaster I am on are incomplete and under construction,
or perhaps are neglected and abandoned and in ill repair.
I can also kind of
"see" that the construction crew that comes to work on the tracks, keep
having their plans for what to build changed over and over and over and
over again, like constantly... and that is why it is so neglected and incomplete...
because the plans keep changing daily... many of the workers have given
up and stopped showing up for work.
I can kind of "see"
back in the shed again and I now know that the subtle changes in my distorted
reflection on that reflective poster, from that one moment in time so many
years ago, that the ride operators are helplessly watching - those weird
reflective patters of my face in the reflective poster are what is dictating
the plans for the coaster - so the "plans" for the coaster are changing
in a drastic and complex way with every passing second (based on a random,
oddly connected even in time in the past). I look out over the derelict
coaster, still high up in the air, still slowly riding down... down...
12/23/04
No dreams.
12/24/04
I am at a train station
in New Jersey, right across the water from Manhattan. It is daytime. I
seem to be with a group of guys I don't know, except for Jim and
also TV guy Jon Stewart is in our group. We are all going down into
the underground train station to take the train over to Manhattan. On the
way through all the underground hallways (which are circular and covered
in white tile) we get lost and somehow end up in an outdoor neighborhood
of houses at nighttime, which may also be in New Jersey. Jim seems to have
disappeared from our group. The houses are all in this kind of modern japanese
style design. For some reason now I am wearing a black business suit and
am carrying a black briefcase and have a big, clunky cell phone. I seem
to actually be calling my "wife" on the cell phone... who is at home, in
one of these houses. While I talk to her, I can "see" her sitting on the
wooden floor of the home, with a big window next to her. She is on the
second floor and is near the staircase. She has long brunette hair and
is wearing some kind of black kimona robe thing. We are talking on the
phone about me bringing dinner home to both of us on my way there. We decide
that I should bring sushi home. I hang up and dial the number of a sushi
place and order the food so it will be ready by the time I go to pick it
up.
Then suddenly, I am
at the house... but it is a different house than the one I saw my "wife"
in. It is just a typical suburban house... but is in the neighborhood with
all the other japanese homes. I am with Jon and a bunch of other guys.
We walk into the house and immediately start arranging stuff and dismantling
things... like getting ready for some big project. My wife doesn't seem
to be around anywhere. Jon sits in the living room behind some big long
counter thing... like on "The Daily Show."
Suddenly all these
guys show up at the door, mostly young latin and black guys that seem like
they are from the inner city... all thug-like. They start running around
the house and taking different locations and standing in them, like posing
like they are living sculpture. They just stay in that position like it's
part of some performance or something... all in different locations in
the house. Suddenly I hear the doorbell ring and I go to the front door
and answer it. It's the sushi delivery man with my sushi. I take it and
walk over to Jon and talk to him behind his counter. Jon seems to be kind
of in "control" of the project of the house of guys standing in different
locations. Laying in front of the counter, in front of Jon, on the floor
on his back, is a guy in his underwear (who doesn't seem to be part of
the group of inner-city kids that arrived earlier, but part of our group).
As I look around, I realize that the house we are in is a combination of
different houses I have lived in throughout my childhood.
I am still holding
the sushi in my hand, and I ask Jon some question. He doesn't answer my
question, but he says to me "Is the guy still laying on the floor in
front of me in his underwear?" I answer that yes he is. Jon kind of
smiles and says "Good. Now, I want you to make him throw up." I
look down at the guy on the floor, who now seems to have kind of "shrunk"
down to a doll-size figure. I am somehow able to "command" him to throw
up with my mind, by just looking at him. The vomit coming out of his mouth
but looks fake, like a clear, amber-colored goo... and his mouth seems
to just have a hole in the center... like a plastic baby kewpie doll's
lips that are a receptacle for a toy baby bottle - but he still seems to
be human. The vomit kind of covers the guy's face as it comes out... and
the guy actually kind of starts to laugh. I look over at Jon (who can't
see the guy from where he is on the counter) and Jon asks me if the guy
is throwing up. I tell him he is and Jon laughs like it's a funny joke.
Jon then tells me to "shut down" the project.
Suddenly I am sitting
at home alone in front of my computer. What is weird is that: the house,
the project, Jon, the group of kids, New Jersey and the snow... everything
- now all seems to each be an individual icon on my computer. Even the
weird little guy throwing up is a little icon that I can click on. I command
my computer to shut down... but suddenly I realize I have hit the wrong
button and I have commanded the computer to "download" the little throwing
up guy. I realize that this guy is a huge file, from the internet, and
that it will take hours to download... and it is impossible to shut down
once it has begun. I sit there really frustrated that I hit the wrong button.
Then suddenly, I am
back at the train station in New Jersey. We are all still walking through
the station to get on the train. Jim is back with our group, as is Jon.
It is daylight and sunny. The station we are walking through suddenly turns
into this massive, multilevel mall, with a giant glass ceiling that lets
the sunshine in (you can also see Manhattan on the other side of the water
through it). I break off from my group with Jim and we wonder over to an
area that has all these sitting areas covered in maroon industrial carpet
and pots of plants and little fountains. We sit on one of the sitting areas
and start kissing. I am worried that a security guard is going to come
by and ask us to stop.
12/25/04 - 12/28/04
Too stressed.
12/29/04
I am massaging someone
on my table at home. I am going through my normal routine, and as I do...
I slowly start to realize that I know the body of the person that I am
massaging very well, especially his fingers. I am working very hard, and
sweating, and the whole time I am massaging this person I am wondering
who it is. I can't see his face because it's buried in the face rest thing.
The person is wearing yellow, silk shorts.
Soon I somehow "know"
that this person I am massaging is a clone of myself, of ME(!), that I
have made somehow. I know that I made this clone of myself for a specific
reason: so that I could feel what it's like to get a massage from me, because
I've never felt that before. Somehow... I was able to make this clone,
and it wasn't easy or cheap... but I felt like I needed to do it because
getting a massage from myself, feeling pleasure from me to me, was very,
very important in my life at the moment. I did it so I could specifically
feel what it was like to get a massage from me. The thing is though, that
I'm standing here sweating it out giving myself the massage, or giving
a clone of me the massage, and I'm not feeling anything. Why isn't the
clone massaging me?
Soon some time has
passed, and the clone of me is still laying face down on the table in the
massage room. All is quiet and it's very creepy. Is he dead? I am sitting
on my couch in the other room, I am completely exhausted from giving my
clone a massage and feeling very achy and kind of depressed. I look over
at my phone answering machine, which instead of being black plastic is
somehow made of the same yellow silk that my clone's shorts are made of.
I see the red light on the phone answering machine blinking. Somehow I
know it is my landlord or a bill collector that has left an angry message
on the machine, demanding money for the huge bill that it is now going
to cost me for having my stupid clone made that isn't doing me any good...
just more work and pain and suffering. I know the bill for making my clone
is astronomical, and I will have to spend the rest of my life paying for
it.
It is then that I realize
that when I massage my clone I don't get any money from him because it
would be me just paying me. I also realize that I have to massage him every
day. Shouldn't I be in my clone's position? How do I know I'm not? How
do I get myself into these situations?
12/30/04
I am in a big room that looks
like a high school gymnasium. The bright lights are on overhead, and for
some reason I know that it is nighttime outside. There are a bunch of people
in the gym, like students... and I feel like I'm a student too... even
though I feel like I'm the age I am now, as are the other students. Many
of the other students have weird gym uniforms on that have a lot of brightly
colored spandex and straps on them.
There is a middle-aged
woman that has big and bushy brunette hair, and she has on a uniform that
kind of makes her look like the gym teacher. I can never see her face because
she is always shaking her head and her big, bushy hair is always blocking
the way. She also has a silver whistle around her neck. She has a clipboard
in her hand and is yelling at everyone all the time, and blowing her whistle.
At one point, in the
middle of the brightly-lit gym on a table that is just sitting there, I
see there is a large piece of poster board. On it is drawn this big wheel
with different colored sections on it, and a cardboard spin-able arrow
in the center that you can spin around the wheel to land on each section,
like a piece in a board game. Each colored section has a word written on
it in black magic marker. I can't make out any of the words, but I do see
that some of the sections have tracing paper attached over them with scotch
tape. I see that the pieces of tracing paper have words drawn lightly on
them with pencil, to go in the same place where the words written in black
marker go (under the tracing paper). It's like someone is tracing the words
on the board.
But soon... I get this
overwhelming paranoia... I begin to suspect that the trace paper is actually
being used in some kind of scheme to change the words slightly,
so that no one will know. I feel that this is somehow some kind of wrong,
secret thing that is very bad, and I start to get this awful feeling. I
slowly look down and I lift one of the pieces of paper up, to see the difference
between the word written in pencil, and the word under it written in marker.
I soon see that they are exactly the same. I lift all the pieces of tracing
paper up and see that all the words are exactly the same. Also, under some
of the pieces of paper are what look like bits of old wood dust... and
little bitty mite bugs. It looks like it has been a really long time since
someone has lifted up some of the pieces of paper. The gym teacher is still
in the background yelling and blowing her whistle.
12/31/04
I am with my mother
and we are on the top of some giant, snowy mountain. It appears to be a
ski resort as there are a lot of skiers around. It is daytime but very
overcast. My mom and I get on this sled that seems to be just a bamboo
mat that is kind of curled up at the front (and a big looped string to
hold onto) and we start to sled down the mountain. The mountain has lots
of bunny hills and little crevices that we slowly have to bump over. Soon...
the sled is kind of moving over the little bumps and hills of it's own
accord... like it's motorized, and the snowy mountainside has leveled out.
Even later... it seems that we are in a little car, and we are actually
driving over hilly roads, in an urban area. Plus, the girl I am with is
no longer my mom, just some girl that I don't know.
Soon it occurs to me
that we are in an urban area of a foreign country, possibly China, still
driving around. We stop at some building that is next to a big, still river
with lots of tall weeds, like a marsh. We go in and we seem to be in the
back kitchen of some restaurant. There are boiling pots of water everywhere
and lots of steam. An asian cook in a white apron is showing us all of
these dishes he is making. They all look like heads of cabbage or giant
radishes that have been boiling in pots of water for a long time. The giant
radishes have been carved and cut into specific patterns, and them being
boiled in water makes them puff out into this weird checkered pattern.
I suddenly realize that this little remote kitchen we are in is a specific
place that Jim had told me about a long time ago, that he had visited
and eaten at when he was traveling in this country. The dishes they make
are really spicy and unusual and he had recommended them to me. I turn
to the girl I'm with and tell her this. I am also amazed that I have ended
up here.
Soon we are out in
the restaurant part of the building... which is dimly lit and very posh
and nice, in contrast to the scraggly kitchen. I sit down at a table with
the girl I am with, but soon it becomes apparent that she is no longer
the girl, but has transformed into Jim. As we are sitting down, I see my
old Dallas friend Doug walk in, and he is with some girl I don't
know, but I somehow know this is a girl in Dallas who comes from an extremely
wealthy family and has a reputation for being outlandish and a real troublemaker
in social scenes (which is just the type of fag hags that my friend Doug
used to befriend when I knew him). This girl is slim and has long, straight
black hair that has been tinted red and has bangs. She has on some kind
of coat with wool/fur trim around the collar and sleeves. They sit down
at a table on the other side of the restaurant and Doug waves at me, and
they both keep looking over at our table.
I look back over at
Jim, and soon realize that now it is not only Jim at my table, but now
there is yet another girl I don't know, who is tagging along and
is a friend of Jim's (she's just suddenly there). I don't know this girl
either, but I know that this girl comes from some really trashy rock and
roll scene in NYC, and she has a reputation for being a serious troublemaker...
like starting fights and going in and out of jail... and she might be a
junkie. She's someone you don't want to mess with. She is kind of chunky,
with pale, milky skin and has jet black hair, straight, cut in bangs like
the other girl... she has on some black shirt with the sleeves cut off
or something, and has no make-up on except for extremely heavy, 60's-style
eyeliner.
Soon some time has
passed and all five of us have left the restaurant and are walking down
the sidewalk towards our cars. We seem to now be in some small town in
America. Me, Jim and the rocker girl seem to have left just as Doug and
the rich girl have. It is dark outside, and there are no streetlights so
it's kind of hard to see everything... just the moon is lit. We are almost
to our car, when suddenly I look back and see the rich girl (who was farther
back on the sidewalk with Doug) running up behind the rocker girl. The
rich girl then jumps onto the rocker girl's back and yells something like
"Hi-ya
how-ya doin'!" real obnoxiously. Somehow I know that the rich girl
did this because she wanted to make an outrageous impression on the rocker
girl for some reason. The thing is though, that she jumps so hard onto
the rocker girl's back (who is caught unaware) that the rocker girl falls
down face-first onto the pavement with the full weight of the rich girl
now on her back. She hits the sidewalk face-first and you hear her face
smack the pavement really loud and maybe some bones crack. It's really
brutal. You can tell the rich girl was trying to be funny and memorable,
but that a bad injury was not what she intended to happen. I also know
that the rocker girl is now going to be pissed off in a major way that
this stranger did this to her.
The rocker girl gets
up and suddenly is totally angry to the point of wanting to kill the rich
girl. She suddenly starts to act just like Tura Satana in that scene in
the beginning of the movie "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" where Tura beats
the crap out of that race car driver guy, then snaps his back in half and
then kills him by twisting his neck and breaking it. I am just standing
there... barely able to make out their faces in the dark moonlight but
able to see their bodies and what they are doing. I look up the street
and see Doug has literally run away. I look over in the other direction
and see Jim sitting in the passenger seat of the car (which has now turned
into an old, white, 60's VW bug convertible... with the top down) just
kind of watching.
The rocker girl is
totally growling with anger. She starts to literally beat the crap out
of the rich girl... she seems to be using martial art moves that seem designed
to kill. Every time she hits the rich girl you hear bones snap. At one
point she picks her up and snaps these specific places on the bottom of
her spine. You can tell she just broke her back. Then she throws the rich
girl on the ground and reaches down and bites a huge chunk of her cheek
off with her teeth and then spits the bloody meat out on the ground. The
whole time she is yelling "That's what you get for attacking me!!"
I am just standing
there in total shock, like I have no idea what to do. The rocker girl walks
past me and over to the driver seat of the car. I look over at the rich
girl dying on the ground, she is moaning and is critically injured and
I know she needs serious medical help... fast. I start saying loudly over
to Jim "Jim! Jim! Uh... can you come here a minute I need to talk to
you!" Jim just sits in the car and ignores me... like he's on the side
of this rocker girl (who did appear to be his friend) who just killed this
other girl in front of us. Just then the rocker girl stands up and grabs
all these pieces of scrap paper, and some colored markers and pencils and
stuff that were in the back seat and throws them in my direction... they
all land around my feet. She yells something like "Here!!" really
angrily. It's almost like she thought they were mine, and was throwing
them at me because she didn't want anything of mine in what appears to
be her car... but the things aren't mine and I have never seen them before.
I think she is angry at me because she feels like the rich girl was a friend
of mine because the rich girl knew a friend of mine... even though I had
never met the rich girl.
I'm just kind of standing
there in the dark parking lot all freaked out and I keep calling to Jim
to come away from the car and come talk to me, and I'm in disbelief that
he is kind of siding with this woman who just killed somebody. And finally
Jim stands up from his seat and looks at me angrily and yells "What
Mark? You want me to pay for your paint set?!" I just stand there wondering
what he means.
1/1/05
All I remember was I was sitting in a bedroom with singer Chris Cornell, and we were talking. The bedroom had hardwood floors, and a wrought iron bed frame. The sun was shining in through a window that had a big, white curtain on it. At one point, when we were talking I had this giant can of tomato sauce. I opened it and looked inside, and on the surface of the tomato sauce (which was very thin and watery), and it was kind of shimmering in the sunlight... like gasoline will make rainbow patterns. There was this specific design that was like three interlocked eye shapes, joined at the corners, with a circle in the center connecting them all. It was had to tell if the design was caused on the surface of the tomato sauce (because it didn't move or shimmer at all) or if it was some kind of thing made out of wire or whatever, that was floating on the top.
1/2/05
I am sitting in front
of my computer writing. I have Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" playing
on my computer speakers and I am singing along with it really loudly. I
keep trying to hit these really high notes but I obviously can't reach
them. I suddenly notice that my computer in front of me, and the keyboard
and table... seem to be sinking down to the floor, and then kind of rising
back up again. They do this very slowly, and always come back up. For some
reason this seems completely normal. Soon, I realize that as I am singing,
and as I try to reach these really high notes... it's actually my head
and neck that are stretching upwards towards the ceiling. My neck stretches
and my head goes upwards according to how high a note I can reach.
Soon I start to hit
really, really high notes, and as my head keeps going up and down, I soon
see that my ceiling is covered in all these multilayers of hundreds of
pipes that are painted white (the same color as the ceiling). I had never
noticed all these pipes before... it's like I couldn't see them from the
floor... ever. I keep hoping that Joni will sing another high note so I
can sing along and my neck with stretch and I can go up and look at the
pipes that have been camouflaged in my ceiling all this time.
When my head is up
there, each time it goes up, my head always bumps a pipe and goes "gong!"
Also, I see that many of the pipes have condensation on them and are dripping...
but they are all very white, like they had recently been painted, almost
blinding white. Also... the complexity of the network of pipes seems endless...
like an Escher drawing... when my head is in the middle of them. I can't
even really see the actual ceiling at all when my head is up inside the
network of pipes. At one point, I think that I can glance the girl who
lives in the apartment above me... kind of through the pipes... like there
is no ceiling or floor separating us... just the massive network of pipes.
When I think I see her, she is looking at me. All this time my head keeps
going down to the computer and then every time I hit a high note it goes
back up again. I keep hoping the song is really long because I know when
it ends the whole thing will be over.
Then some time seems
to have passed and I am back down at my computer. I am looking at the screen
and there is a website about Chris Cornell. I look at this photo
of Chris on the site, and see that his mouth looks like a crab's mouth,
or an oyster or something... really gross. I look closer at it and realize
that is a close-up color photograph of a human larynx that has been Photoshop-ed
over his mouth. I look even closer and realize that the larynx photo is
actually a real printed out picture that has been taped over my screen
(but when I scroll the photo on the website, the taped-on picture seems
to move along with it). I peel the photo off and see that it is kind of
transparent... like it was printed out on clear plastic.
1/3/05 - 1/22/05
Took another break there...
1/23/05
I am in some kind of
modern building that looks like a little library in a small suburban town.
The floors have light orange industrial carpeting and the cork ceilings
have fluorescent light panels. There are wooden tables that are very new
and chairs at them that are also very new. The shelves with books on them
are made of aluminum that is painted gray. The whole place smells like
a new car. Outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows (which are at odd
angles due to the design of the building) you can see a beautiful, sprawling,
lush park in a typical suburban design. It seems to be springtime outside
and sunny and very beautiful.
There is a guy standing
up at the front of the main room talking to a group of people, which I
am part of. He is holding a clipboard and reading from it as he talks to
us. He looks kind of young and has black, straight hair. His face seems
kind of sweaty. As he talks he moves his head around and his black hair
kind of sticks to his sweaty face. I can never really see what he looks
like because of this. At one point I become bored by the lecture and I
get up and wander down the massive, spiral-like stairs that go down into
a basement level of the library. The stairs are covered in the orange carpet,
and there is a peach colored tube-like rail that goes all the way around
it and acts as a hand rail. On the lower level I see that the carpet color
has changed to a rich, royal blue. There is an area that has these kind
of modular things built into the floor that act like furniture that you
can sit on. These are covered in the carpet. On the walls of this area
are magazine and periodical displays. the area is designed so you can sit
on the odd-shaped furniture things and read the magazines. There are some
young high school kids sitting on the furniture things reading magazines.
I walk over to one area of the magazine rack and see some magazine called
"UF NEUROLITICAL" or "URF POLITOGICAL" or something like that. One of the
covers of these magazines has a book jacket on the cover with a Norman
Rockwell painting and the title on the jacket says "FREE SPEECH IN FORMS."
There seems to be a feature article, or review, of the book in this magazine.
I can tell by looking at the cover of the magazine that the writer did
everything they could think of to paint the book in a poor light and discredit
it's theories.
1/24/05
I seem to be standing at the intersection of Custer and W. Parker in Plano, Texas, facing north. This is near an area I grew up in. It is dusk outside and warm. I can see a store front on the northeast shopping center, a huge one, that used to be a Safeway grocery store... but then it changed to something else. I am looking at it because I am noticing that it is, somehow, Safeway again... even though I thought that company had gone out of business at some point. The front has a kind of arch, that makes the front of the store look bigger than it really is. I can see the giant red and white "S" logo on the top of the front, and the glass on the front seems to be protected by iron bars in all the windows. there are also white Christmas lights across the top. I just keep staring at it and wondering how it could be Safeway again, after I remember them going out of business when I was a kid and turning into a hardware store or something. Then for some reason I keep thinking about a plastic bag of marshmallows.
1/25/05
I am in the back yard
of a house I used to live in as a very small child in Plano, Texas. It
is winter time and all the grass is dead. It is daytime and overcast. There
is a tall wooden fence surrounding the yard, just like I remember it. The
tall wooden fort that my dad had built for us is still there. It is present-day.
I seem to be in the backyard with my old college friend Eddie, and
for some reason we have a massive garbage truck (it has no trash in it,
it is just being used for transportation) parked in the middle of the backyard.
The scenario is: I
know that a bunch of zombies have taken over the earth, or that particular
part of Texas, and Eddie and I are loading up this garbage truck with supplies
to try and drive to a safe part of Texas, or somewhere. We are protected
inside the yard of this old house by the large fence. I can hear the zombies
growling and shuffling every once in a while on the outside of the fence...
although their population in this particular area seems to be pretty scarce.
At one point, I have to go to several areas on the top edge of the fence
and disconnect some wires or something running back up to the house (antennae?)
and it scares me because I'm afraid the zombies might reach up from the
other side and grab my hand. At one point, a girlfriend of Eddie's, whom
I don't know, shows up and just kind of wanders into the yard from the
latch fence doorway gate. She leaves the gate wide open when she wanders
in and is like "What are you guy's doin'?" We rush over and close
the gate and explain to her about the zombies outside the fence. She just
goes "Oh..." and wanders around the yard shuffling her feet, really
blasé-like. We are amazed that the zombie's didn't attack her while
she was out there.
Later... Eddie's girlfriend
seems to have left and is wandering around outside again. Eddie and I think
we have the garbage truck all ready and are heading out to our journey
to safer lands. We are literally going to bust through the fence and just
charge forward until we reach our destination. We are revving up the motor
and are ready to go. Suddenly, Eddie's girlfriend wanders back into the
yard and asks if she can come with us. She leaves the gate open again.
I am kind of pissed that she wants to take a free ride with us, especially
after being so unsafe about leaving the gate open and being really clueless
and stuff - but I am willing to take her along. Eddie seems to be indecisive
and keeps looking over at me. There also seems to be a few children now
in the yard now, playing (are they hers? did she bring them?) She tells
us that she has learned to sew really well, and is quite good at making
clothes and stuff. From the ground, looking up at us in the rumbling truck,
she tells Eddie that she has learned this trade specifically since leaving
us earlier, and that it would be very smart to have someone that is able
to do what she can do with us, in our new life wherever we decide to start
it, away from the zombies (especially if we are roughing it in the countryside).
Suddenly I can "see"
and old American Indian woman in a tent made of animal skins, holding a
stack of clothes and blankets she has weaved by hand. I think to myself
"That
is how people survive through the ages and don't get killed off... they
learn a trade that is useful to society as a whole and they become proficient
and skilled at it... so they are needed, and the zombies don't destroy
them."
Then a scenario shift:
I seem to be in Chicago, in a giant old building that houses offices and
stuff. I am taking a freight elevator down to another floor. When I reach
one floor I see that Eddie is there, and he is the boss of a huge comic
book production company.
Then another scenario shift:
I am back in NYC, in my apartment, and a friend from The New York Times
has placed me on a conference call with another editor at the Times. My
friend wants me to read an essay from a book of essays by another writer,
over the phone to this editor... to prove what a good writer I am. I am
confused why I would be reading another writer's work... but my friend
is telling the editor "When you hear him read this other writer's work...
you will be amazed at his talent!" I tell them both to hold on while
I put the phone down and go find the book with the essay in it. I find
the book and start looking quickly through it to find the particular work.
The book is very thick, and very confusing (there's no table of contents?)
and I can't find the essay I need. It is taking me a very long time and
I keep wishing I had been warned that my friend was going to call with
this "important" reading over the phone to an important editor (of another
person's work?) so that I could have been more prepared. I keep looking
and looking frantically through the massive book for the specific essay,
and I keep yelling into the phone (from across the room) "Hold on another
minute!" I am getting very frustrated.
1/26/05
All I remember is some kind of scenario where I am looking at a large newspaper, and there is wind whipping all around me, and the wind is blowing the letters off of the newspaper and the letters are flying all over the place. there also seems to be little spots of ketchup landing on the paper and flying off in the wind.
1/27/05 - 1/30/05
No dreams.
1/31/05
I am in some kind of art/design class, in a big room where each student has a large cutting board/drafting table workspace. I may be back in my old art building in college. Whether I am there now in the present day, or am back in the time when I was in college is unclear. The instructor is an asian woman, and she is telling us about a complicated project that we have to begin and finish within the three hour time limit of the class day. The materials we will be using are highly unique, and come from China. I look down at the materials on my desk and see that they all are in the shape of things like long metal rulers, exacto blades, jars of rubber cement, pencils, pens, markers, brushes, protractors, compasses, paper, et... but they seem to be made of organic materials, and are irregularly shaped (the straight edges are not straight). The ruler looks like a long piece of dried banana. Some of the stuff looks like long strips of cured, salted fish. I start to take some of the materials and start to cut them up with the exacto blade and scissors (which are themselves organic materials) and I realize that everything isn't really alive, as much as it is "freshly killed." I start to have this enormous conflict about using these materials to construct something. For some reason I start to imagine all the political and moral ramifications of using these materials. Is it right because they were alive at one point? Is it right because they are now dead? Are some animal and some plant? Does that make a difference? Is the fact that I am using them to make something that is going to get me a good grade in a class at a college where I am trying to earn a degree matter? Don't I remember how pointless some of the freshman design courses I had to take were? As I am thinking of all this I am cutting into a large strip of raw salmon, and I can see it's veins. I wonder if I can rubber cement it down onto the paper properly where no veins are showing, and use the rubber cement remover to wipe away all the blood.
2/1/05
Tomorrow...