Mark Allen's Dream Journal - April 2002

4/1/02:

No dreams again.

4/2/02:

    There is some weird game show or something - like a reality game show - where these female prison inmates who are little-size, like Barbie doll size, are attached to each other with these strands of ripped cloth and hung suspended in the centers of these cardboard boxes. Then the boxes are shut. There are three little inmate females in each box and the two boxes are going to be left on a lush, remote, tropical island. The tiny women are in competition - the last one to leave each box gets $1,000,000 and a pardon from their prison sentence. That's the prize. It seems really rough - they can't leave the box and they can do anything to each other inside the boxes to try and make the other contestants leave, things the audience members and judges won't be able to see because the boxes will be shut. Yikes! As they are being tied up and put in the boxes one of the big normal size people is saying to the tiny size female prisoner game show contestants "Now you be sure and holler and give me a signal if one of you gals has a seizure!" and one pretty blond tiny size female prisoner game show contestant says "Oh I sure will! I'm scared!" and then one tougher, fatter, butcher and all around dyke-y-looking tiny size female prisoner game show contestant snarls "Ain't nuthin' gettin' me outta the chance at that million dollars and shot at outta the slammer! Tie me up dammit!!!"
    Then the boxes are sealed and placed on a beautiful beach and it's all quiet for a long time. I'm now on that same island, on the beach with someone I think is Domenic but maybe not. We are in this beautiful alcove that has trees next to us and a waterfall. It's so beautiful it seems unreal. We are in these puffy sleeping bags and it looks like we are going to sleep. But the sun is still out. Soon, near the waterfall, we see these amazing creatures hovering near the stream at the base of the waterfall. They look like chickens with no legs, they hover and float above the ground, and their feathers are bright fluorescent pink. Their necks stop short of where a head would be - like the head had been cut off, and there is a bright yellow little thing that looks like a fan - with spinning plastic blades - that blows air inside the creature's body and allows it to float. The fan also seems to have cute little eyes and maybe something that looks like an octypus beak on it somewhere. The creatures make sounds like a cat purring. They are amazing and beautiful. Domenic and I are like "Whoa! Look at those things! What are they!? Wow!" and we are watching them hover around the water.
    Soon one of the creatures comes over to us and seems to be apprehensively investigating us. I am real still and the creature comes near me and is kind of "floating" around my head and "sniffing" me. I can feel the air from it's fan neck thing as it gets near my skin. Domenic is really amazed that it's so close to me and keeps whispering "Don't move!" At one point the creature seems to feel safe with me and his yellow neck fan plug thing kind if unfurls like a turtle's head coming out of it's neck and the little beak thing extends out and looks like a little toucan's beak. The creature is communicating with me and telling me I need a haircut.
    Then the creature leads me around the "corner" of the alcove and I see that behind the alcove is this hallway and carpet and windows and offices and stuff. The entire island thing was a fake set somewhere in a sound studio. It's a sound stage. Everything's all gray and dark and dusty with harsh fluorescent lighting. The place is deserted except me and the creature - I guess Domenic is still sitting in his sleeping bag in the fake lush tropical island alcove waterfall set. The creature makes me sit in this barber chair and starts cutting my hair. The creature is always floating behind me as he cuts my hair, so I can't really see it. The creature starts whispering to me real secret-like that it is a creature from another universe from a far-off dimension far in the universe's' future. The creature says it can share all kinds of valuable information with me, like amazing scientific and medical facts from the advanced alien races of the future universe - facts that could revolutionize human life on earth in fantastic and positive ways. I say "Oh yea! OK then start talking." and then as the creature is clipping the back of my hair it is explaining some amazing geometry math problem and causing this blue 3-D diagram of the problem to appear in my head so I can "see" it as it explains it to me. The creature is saying "Any powerful world government would pay trillions of dollars to get this information so be careful" and I'm all like "Whoa!"
    Then out of nowhere some guy in army fatigue pants walks into the area we are in. For some reason I know his name is Frank. He is either some kind of contestant on the game show or he works there. He looks like he just woke up and he is carrying an empty coffee mug like he's going to get some coffee. He has what looks like grease paint all over his face, although I think it may be Queen Helene's Mint Julip Face Masque. As he walks by us he dry-ly says "Oh God Mark! I wouldn't let one of those things cut your hair! Don't listen to a word it says to you!" and he grins as he says this and the creature drops it's scissors on the floor and says "Hey cut it out Frank! You liar!" and Frank says "YOU'RE the liar!" and laughs and then the creature is all offended. Then some woman appears from behind me, looking like she just woke up and is looking for coffee and says to Frank "Oh Frank you're such a grouch in the morning!" and everyone is all kidding around and laughing like they are at work.
    Then I am on some street walking along and I kind of "see" my friend Nathan. Nathan is saying to me "You know what's so sad about growing old? Well when you're young, other young people pay attention to you, and old people ignore you. But then when you get old, young people ignore you AND other old people still ignore you! Everyone ignores you!" and I am thinking about this.
    Then I seem to be in some apartment and my friend Robert calls me from his new downtown Manhattan apartment. I haven't spoken to him in a long time, since he moved into his new place, and we are talking and at one point he says "Hold on..." and gets off the phone and then it's a really long time before he gets back and I wonder if the line is dead.
    Then I'm in some rich guy's house and he is telling me about how he loves the taste of cheap beer.

4/3/02:

No dreams.
 

4/4/02:

No dreams.
 

4/5/02:

    I am on a bus with a bunch of hostages being taken to control central of some massive hostage situation/crime area. I am being taken to an area where some super criminal asian guy is holding people hostage for lots of money. For some reason I get the impression that we are the "second shift" of hostages. Like the first group is off for the day and we are the replacements. As we are leaving the building where we live to be taken to the crime area, one girl is talking about whether the super criminal guy will shoot us or not. One guy says "He is demanding 15 million for each hostage." and she says "Yea but if he shoots you, he can eventually collect 90 million for each!" This gets me really scared and I am really apprehensive on the bus. When we get to the crime area, the other hostages leave and get on the bus we just arrived on and we walk into the building. The asian guy makes us all sit indian style on the concrete floor of this big room. We are sitting in two long rows and are facing each other. The asian guy is walking around with a gun in his hand. I can tell he is contemplating whether to kill us or not. I'm scared. In front of me there is a big black circle drawn with magic marker and inside the circle are marbles and little kids' toys.

4/6/02:

    I vaguely remember some scenario where me and a friend (it may have been Gregory) were beside some crowded traffic jam or some place where a bunch of cars were parked and everyone was out of their cars looking at something in the sky. My friend and I, depending on what that something in the sky did, kept taking out objects from our car, and then putting them back in, over and over, back and forth and out and in in different combinations - always doing it in accordance with what the thing in the sky did or "said". The objects included a Persian throw rug, marbles, and boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and other stuff. I got the impression that we were kind of "mocking" the thing in the sky as we did all this... like we were messing with it and laughing while we did it.

4/7/02:

No dreams.

4/8/02:

    All I remember is some scenario where I saw an asian gitl on Ludlow street wearing a white t-shirt that had black letters on it that may have said "Itchy City".

4/9/02:

    I'm WAAAY too busy today to type my dream. I'll do it later if I have time (and don't forget it by then!) Read some old ones. They're freaky.

I never found the time and then I forgot it.

4/10/02:

    I'm staying in some huge house with a bunch of people I don't know. It's an old two story Victorian-style house in the back, and in the front it looks like the entrance to two Motel 6 rooms connected together. In the back is a huge porch - and our backyard has a row of old trees in the back and behind that is a massive empty field. Domenic seems to live with us.
    I seem to be making a batch of my "special soup" for everyone that lives in the house. It's this combination of chicken meat and all these vegetables and spices boiled up in this giant pot on the stove. Everyone is excited to eat my soup and they are all doing there own things in the house (watching TV, in the bathroom blow drying their hair) as I prepare it in the house's massive kitchen. The kitchen has a gray and pink checkerboard tile floor and white wood cabinets and old 50's style appliances. Not retro-looking stuff but real antiques. I seem to keep my special soup in a giant Ziplock baggie in the freezer, pre-made, and then I just take it out and boil it up. I go over to the freezer and get out the giant bag of soup. It's big. REALLY big. It looks like a children's plastic backyard swimming pool that has been rolled up like a joint and crammed into the freezer. I take it out and try to unroll the massive thing. The frozen soup contents seem to all be at one end of the massive frozen thing that is rolled into the center. It seems to have thawed instantly as I get it out of the freezer. It is very. very large and only getting bigger as I unroll it. It is very awkward and I am banging stuff in the kitchen with it. It's like the size of a parachute.
    I drag the massive, heavy baggie of frozen soup out onto the porch and backyard to get more room to work with. The baggie is now in the shape of a giant ring or doughnut. The soup is all collected in one area. It is the size of ten parachutes and is very heavy and I can't seem to get it situated to where I can get the soup out. I am yelling from the back yard to people inside "Help please! A little help here!? We're not going to get any soup if I can't get this done! Hello!?" but everyone is ignoring me. I am out in the backyard and the sun is setting - it's really quite beautiful out there - the dusk sunset poking through the trees and the big field all glowing with the sunset. I am still awkwardly trying to get the thing unrolled but it's a nightmare because it's so huge. It starts to pour rain. I am scared the soup is not going to get wet or the giant bag is going to fill with water and dilute the soup or the soup will wash into the grass.
    I see Domenic come outside. He is dressed to go to work. I am huffing and puffing with the bag in the rain and I'm like "Help! Domenic help me get a hold of this!" and he says "Hello Mr. Allen!" in this chirpy but condescending voice and then he says "Are you having a problem?" and I go "Yes! Help! Help me gut this giant bag up or we won't have soup tonight!" and he's like "Well we wouldn't want that to happen! I am going to work but I don't want anyone to miss out on your wonderful soup." and he starts lazily kicking part of the bag with his foot as he opens up his umbrella. It isn't helping at all.

4/11/02:

    I know my dream last night was very long but this is the only part I remember:
    I was with some guy and we were on some long trip or something. We stopped from traveling in this mall (I think) and I went to go use the rest room. I was carrying my backpack and luggage with me. I went into the men's room and it was these gigantic two rooms connected by a little hallway. Each room had bathroom stalls, urinals and sinks and mirrors lining the walls. I went to the stall all the way in the far corner of the second room (that was next to a frosted window that looking into the inside of the mall). There are three guys standing by the stall, two black and one Latino. They look really shifty. We are the only people in there. Why I chose a stall next to three guys standing talking in one giant empty bathroom where all the others are empty is beyond me. I go into the stall with all my bags and stuff. I sit down on the toilet but I don't go to the bathroom, I just start arranging my bags and these stacks of money that I have inside pockets in my shirt and pants. Suddenly I realize that the three guys are going to rob me. I hear them trying to get the stall door open and saying that they "have a knife" and are "gonna take all my cash." I panic and don't know what to do. Why did I come this far inside the bathroom away from the entrance next to three shady looking strangers? I mean what did I think might happen? I freaking out and they soon have the door open and are like "Come on out!" and I see there are other men coming into the bathroom and going inside individual stalls (far from us) and not paying us any mind. These other guys are in business suits. I'm thinking "Should I just do what they say and give them my money? Do they really have a knife? There's three of them!" Suddenly I see this security guy with long hair and wearing a yellow rain slicker walk up and flash a badge, he proceeds to arrest the three muggers. Behind the security guy is my traveling friend. He's like "Are you OK? I heard you were in trouble and contacted mall security!" I so glad to see him and we're walking out of the bathroom and I'm thinking about what an adventure it was.

4/12/02:

    I'm really busy lately. I will have to come back and type this entry later. But here are my notes:
    Inside movie theater with loud kids.
    Writing note with colored magic markers to guy, dumping him, and leaving it in movie bathroom changing word "love" to "like". Somehow know he will find it... someone will... what a weird gamble.
    Two short Mexican people gathering Star Wars movie flyers inside bathroom, hoping to win tickets to premier.
    Loud kids loose snake in theater. But it's NOT a snake!
    Manager of theater kicks me out, I buy ticket again and just walk back in.
    In crowd outside weird home pointing out to my mom weird little person being worked on by EMT people - look like living doll. Very creepy.
    At Curtis' house in Texas but now. Visiting weird family and woman with melting skin, she can't go out again because of her melting skin.
    With Gregory living in big building. We are making out on couch, actually kissing. He may move to Guam or Tahiti to get bartender work. Says it will "be near Los Angeles".

4/13/02:

    Again too busy to type dream, but here are notes:
    Living in hybrid of grandparent's house. Have own "wing" of house. Worried about security at night. Always running around looking at room after room of recording equipment in my wind of house. Floors are all made of dirt like grandpa's shed. Go to back hallway with guy and see there is a shed door only locked with a little latch. Has been open like that forever - shocked.
    I keep a bike in my living quarters, am scared it will be stolen.
    Place house is in is hybrid of Plano, Texas.
    Walking to store that unknown guy I have crush on (in dream not real life) works at. Walking down street and see him sitting on bench outside while girl inside tends store. Through reflection in glass see I have a bright red pea coat on with collar turned up.

4/14/02:

    I am at Gregory's apartment. His apartment looks the same but has more rooms and seems to change as the dream goes on. His building is different. His apartment seems to be in this weird building that has all these strange shaped apartments full of young college-age kids who look like they are in art school. All the apartments are decorated really weird - with colored lights and weird colored painted walls and stuff. At one point I am taking a shower in Greg's apartment and he is gone. He comes back into the apartment wearing normal clothes and a hood that you would see attached to a down winter coat - you know the kind that snaps on - except he is wearing no coat, just the hood. He has the tassels of the hood pulling the hood tight around his head like Little Red Riding Hood. As I am getting out of the shower I am standing there nude and wet and I grab this microphone and start pretending to sing into this mirror next to the shower. I think no one is in the apartment. I look and see that Gregory had just walked in when I started singing. I am worried and embarrassed that he might have seen me but then realize I don't care and think it's funny.
    Gregory is laying on the floor near the door and saying "Oh my god Mark! You are not going to believe what just happened! I almost died! When I walked in and you were dancing there naked in front of the mirror - this tassel on my hood got caught on the corner of the refrigerator and pulled me back and I was stuck and was hanging there from the corner of the fridge frantically shaking my legs because I couldn't reach the floor and gasping and gurgling for help as I was choking to death! Didn't you see me!?"
    "No I didn't" I say. I wonder if he is making the whole thing up to cover the fact that he might have seen me lip synch-ing in front of his mirror even though I don't care but I think he might.
    "Well I somehow came loose and here I am on the floor!" he says. He keeps the hood on and starts doing something in the apartment with a hammer - like he's fixing the place up. I look over behind him and see he has added these really shoddy looking shelves on the slanted wall underneath a staircase. The shelves are made with broken and bent foam core and are sloppily painted red on top and are held in place by these little sticks. I see that underneath the stairs is painted red too. It reminds me of that secret "red room" underneath the stairs in the movie "The Amityville Horror".

4/15/02:

    I am around the set of this game show that is being filmed over the period of a week in a theme bar in some suburban city. The show consists of these 10 straight 20-something people that sit at the bar and answer questions as they drink drinks and eat pretzels and stuff. There are equal girls and guys and they all look sexy and flirt a lot and stuff. The bar is this oval shape in the center of the room and the place has deep blue industrial carpet, white drywall, a piano and player on another level, chrome railing on the landings, a snack bar and neon sculptures in the shape of palm trees. The place seems to only have Pakistani guys in Hawaiian shirts working there. There is also this photography booth where these two Paki guys will take a "professional" portrait photo for you. Like one of those photos where there is a gray background and there is a half body shot of you and then a close-up of your face kind of "faded" onto the right side of the composition and then the whole thing is put in a cheesy looking frame.
    The game goes on for several days and every day the contestants show up in sexier and sexier outfits - always looking tan and stuff. They drink and drink and answer questions that seem to come out of the walls and form friendships with the guys working there. Everyone gets friendlier and friendlier as the week goes on.
    I don't know who wins but once someone does and the game is over and the filming is done - all of the friendliness instantly goes away. The contestants, as they are leaving start yelling and screaming at the guys who work the bar and piano area and snack bar and bathroom and photography area. It seems that during the filming of the show bad stuff was going on but no one was confronting anybody because no one wanted to cause trouble and jeopardize the show getting aired. One guy and girl contestant team is yelling at the guy at the snack bar very visciously and waving money at him. He is just standing there with his arms crossed and a show producer is trying to mediate. Two other contestants are really letting the piano guy and his assistant have it. They are screaming at him and at one point the piano guy takes all the money out of his pockets and takes off his watch and throws it all on the piano in a really angry way. It seems that the contestants think the piano guy somehow scammed them out of this stuff and it belongs to them. Two other guys are cussing out the photography guys for the lousy portrait photographs they took of the two of them. In the photography area there is this cylindrical kiosk where the portraits are displayed and I can see several portraits of the two guys - the ones they must be complaining about. The portraits have the two guy's heads in the center of a really empty frame and they are kind of squashed together in a really bad way. Like airbrushed together really poorly. It looks funny. Everyone is yelling and screaming and some really bad shit is going down and the producers and tech guys from the show are trying to calm everyone down. When the contestants finally do leave they hold the door open and scream inside the place as they walk out and the producers just stand there with their clipboards looking dumbfounded.
    Then my "dream eye camera" kind of does this long pull back crane shot thing where I can now see the outside of the bar from overhead - kind of. I see one of the female contestants walk out of the bar. It's a sunny day. She looks like a little drawing. Maybe like an Edward Gorey drawing. She walks out and she has her arms raised in the air and is wailing and crying and seems totally distraught. She is walking zig-zag on the street and saying "Oh kill me! Kill me now!" then she says "Oh I want this street to open up a portal to Hell and swallow me up and Satan take me down right now! Just do it! *sob* Oh just let it happen! I don't want to live and I want to go to Hell!" Then - it happens. I see this little oval open up in the street and it's all burning red inside. Then it kind of opens wide and the whole thing envelops the street and the woman falls in. The whole thing looks like a drawing - like the woman contestant kind of did. I see the woman now fall through Hell with all it's red hot stalactites and cave formations and then she lands on the ground in Hell. What I am looking at now is %100 cartoon animation. The woman lands on this red cliff with a throne - the throne of Satan - on it. She lands facing away from the throne and is bent over in a kind of fetal position and is weeping and seems resigned to the whole situation. On the throne is sitting Satan - but he looks nothing like you'd expect. He looks like a cross between the Pillsbury Doughboy and one of those little white Japanese characters you see with a white ghost-like body and big eyes and a round mouth - like those little animated things that move on web pages. It almost has a Hello Kitty face. I see the soft, white Satan thing start to get up and walk to the woman. I realize that what I am watching is still a TV show and that the writers of the show thought it would be a clever "twist" to portray Satan in this way, like it would be something the viewers wouldn't expect.

4/16/02:

    Once again I'm too busy today to write the whole dream, but here are my notes... maybe I'll come back and fill them in later:

    I am in really nice suburban city I don't recognize that is sometimes New York and also sometimes Plano, Texas.
    I am in a relationship with Amy Sedaris, we are engaged.
    She has a fantastic house and is always busy in it cleaning and stuff. We seem to be working on projects and stuff, always discussing them.
    Her brother comes to visit her and he is this John Zorn-type avant guard musician. He just got back from an overseas gig. We are talking to him about his music and he has this microphone and we say "Let's sing into it and you can play noisy guitar!" and he goes "OK what song?" and he pulls out a saxophone instead of a guitar. Me and Amy start screaming the words to Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" into the mic in a nonsensical way.
    Weird friends of hers come by.
    We go for walk in summer, sunny streets. She is on cell phone being interviewed.
    She takes me to gay cafe. I think there are gay guys there that recognize me. Amy spins me around on this table. It's like a romantic scene from a movie. We are so in love!
    We go to Plano Senior High lawn and we "see" Madonna filming her video for "Live To Tell" as it is happening - like it was filmed there in the past and we can kind of "see" it. Sometimes Madonna is Christina Applegate. Her hair is computer-aided blurry. I think "What Madonna does is very difficult".
    The great pond area of Plano Senior has been made to look like the colonial west. I say to Amy "See how they made Central Park look like the colonial west for the video? See the rooftops in the background?" even though we are actually in Plano.
    Then I go to "work". I am a radio DJ with Gregory. We have a show. I am in the studio looking at list of words we wrote for a script and the radio programmers edited. They crossed out the word "goy" on the script. Gregory begins talking on the microphone about the station "censors" and how lame they are and soon this weird little pattern of gold lights appears in front of him and starts moving. The producer comes on the intercom and says "I wanted you to 'open up' what you were talking about [meaning - stop insulting the people at the station and referring to them by name] so when you see this pattern of lights then 'open up'."
    The pattern of lights is in the shape of a vagina.
    We see the station producer in his office and he is a Hasidic jew.

4/17/02:

No dreams.

4/18/02:

    The only thing I remember from last night's dream was this weird scenario that was from the TV show "The Simpsons" - except it was not one that existed on the show - just in my head. I see Bart and Lisa in their backyard. The are seperated by a fence and Lisa is in the next door neighbor's yard, I guess the Flanders' yard. There is something that looks like a door mat draped over the fence and it has a big brown stain on it. Lisa is walking away from Bart as if she had just turned around. She is walking away from the fence and Bart is yelling towards her something about pies. I think Lisa is carrying a pie.

4/19/02:

    I am in some living situation with Jim Morrison from the TV show "The Mole". We live inside some fantastic house that looks just like Sigourney Weaver's house in the movie "Copycat". But the house seems to be a dormitory at a college. It is like I was assigned Jim as a roommate and this giant house is our room.
    We are laying on our separate beds in the upstairs bedroom and are both working on laptop computers. He is asking me about some word that he doesn't know the definition of. I am looking up the definition on my computer and then I tell him. I have this really anticipatory feeling that he will ask me for another word definition. I go down to the kitchen to make a sandwich with peanut butter and white Wonder bread.

4/20/02:

No dreams.

4/21/02:

    I am sleeping with Sid in his basement apartment. As we sleep I see these images of people's heads and bodies appearing above ours. They are reaching out to us as we sleep. They are like ghosts. It's really creepy.

4/22/02:

No dreams.

4/23/02:

    I'm at Courtney Love's house. He house seems to be an apartment inside this complex inside Collin Creek Mall in Plano, Texas. Gregory is there with me. The house/apartment looks like combinations of other people's apartment's I have known through the years. Everything in the apartment is super-nice and expensive. The sun is coming in through the apartment windows and making all kinds of weird patterns on the beige carpet floor. The room is really bright. Greg and I are doing stuff in the living room like switching through the channels on the TV and pulling books out and spreading the on the floor and drawing on pieces of paper. It's like we are two little kids. At one point I am drawing on this giant piece of watercolor paper with this giant chunk of black charcoal. I am making a drawing of one of the pillows on the upholstered couch, where Gregory is sitting and playing in the sunlight. I am trying to use the charcoal to get the shading on the pillow just right. I am on the floor.
    Suddenly Courtney comes in and she stops in front of me and has her back to me kind of turns her head down to look at my drawing, the way you would turn your head to look at something lying on the ground behind you that is also upside down, and she says "Charcoal on a chamois rug?" I don't seem to know how 'chamois' is spelled in my dream because when she says it I see the word 'chamis' in my head. I look down and lift up the paper - I see a huge pile of black charcoal dust that has come of the left side of the paper and is all over the carpet. Oops. It's like a giant, pancake-sized stain. I stand up and go into the kitchen where Courtney is and apologize and tell her I'll clean it up. I expect her to be really pissed and throw one of her famous tantrums or whatever but she doesn't. She just starts handing me these cleaning products and telling me the best way to get the charcoal dust off the carpet without staining it. She seems very relaxed and resigned about the whole thing. She gets down on her knees with a wet towel and starts scrubbing the giant pile of charcoal dust into the carpet. I think this is a bad idea but am like "OK whatever!" After she does this she stands up and now the stain is really big and wet but is lighter in color. She hands me some product in a white and blue plastic bottle and says the name of the product and points to the instructions on the bottle with her fingernail and says "OK now... just spray this white foam over the stain and let it sit there for like 2o minutes and then scrub it up with a mop. It should come right up!" and then she walks into the bedroom. Gregory was sitting on the couch watching us stand there. I'm like "OK" to Courtney as she walks into the other room and I take the product in my hand.
    Then I take my drawing of the pillow AND I take the pillow itself, and the bottle of cleaning stuff and I walk outside the apartment. I am going to walk home. I am walking through the inside of Collin Creek Mall and am thinking about what just happened, and am glad I was able to clean up the stain. Suddenly I think "Wait... I never cleaned the stain at all! I just left!" Now I'm at the food court (which is near my apartment - apparently - and very far from Courtney's) and I stand there holding my drawing and her pillow and the bottle of cleaning stuff and I think about what I should do. I decide to call her and explain that I left without putting the foam on the stain because I was just being really air-headed. I seem to have a cell phone attachment thing now on my head and I call her number. Gregory picks up the phone. I say to Gregory "Hi! Is Courtney around?"

4/24/02:

    In bedroom of strange house and am taking a weird drug. Other people there, hippie types. Drug makes my two big toes glow red like a light inside them, and two toes next to that glow orange/yellow. They look like Rudolph the Reindeer's noses. Hippie guy is amazed and watching. I'm sitting in my bed taking pictures of it. It's dusk ot twilight. I keep taking pictures of my toes while the hippie guy watches.
    Now I'm at some kind of nightclub, night is winding down, everyone is going home. Porn star Brad Hunt is there - but it looks nothing like Brad Hunt. He asks if I would like to go home with him. I say yes and we get in a taxi. It is nighttime and I think we are in Chicago. The taxi driver keeps asking us to help him figure out how to get around. We finally say something rude to him. He pulls into parking lot of donut store and gets out and gets something to eat while we wait in car and he leaves meter running. A news woman inside store sees what's going on and comes and interviews us with her cameraman about being victims of the "Rude Taxi Driver's" scandal.
    Then Brad disappears and I am in some weird situation inside the bathroom of a childhood home I had. I seem to be putting together paintings and records in there with some Japanese guy who's an artist or musician. I am working for some magazine in Manhattan and this is my home office - this bathroom I used to have as a teenager. The Japanese guy is in there with me telling me what painting to add to what record. I am on the phone with the magazine editor.
    I go to magazine in NYC. The guy who hired me isn't around and the editor needs to see him right away. Everyone is asking all frantic about his whereabouts and they are all looking at me like I would know where he is. I go into the bathroom of office. I open the medicine cabinet and hundreds of make-up compacts and eye contact carrying cases fall out of the shelves and all over the sink and floor and toilet. I try to carefully put them all back. As I do this old lady - real hard New Yorker type - who's a receptionist at the office - comes on the intercom in the bathroom and says to me "Mark... I don't know what's going on or where he is but this is a great opportunity for you! I mean... I've never done any writing but..."
    Then I'm back at the donut store with the whole office crew. This is our meeting place. We are all gathered around a table having a meeting about the new issue. It is nighttime. There is some cute guy who works there who is flirting with me. We go off into the night and start doing all this stuff: touring an abandoned hospital, running with cars on the freeway, hitchhiking rides in 18 wheeler trucks, making out in a deserted park... but we are also running errands for the magazine. Soon it's morning and we have to go back to the donut store for the morning magazine meeting. The guy tells me "I have to go meet this other guy and go to some bars and get drunk and get into fights before our meeting in a few hours." He goes off and I feel kind of hurt. I go to the meeting.
    I go to the meeting and as I am there the cute guy, whom I realize now is Adam Horovitz, sits down next to me and smiles at me. He must have had a good time without me. I start thinking about his career as a Beastie Boy and his sexuality..
    Then I'm in this big giant waiting room made entirely out of gray concrete. It is a dentist's office waiting room. Ally Sheedy is in there with me. The dentist comes out and talks to us. He is a giant plastic Mr. Potato Head-looking creature that floats in the middle of the room. It floats in and says "Next!" in a loud cartoon=y voice. It has all this black soot and chunks of black charcoal in it's plastic teeth. I think this is supposed to represent tooth rot. The mouth keeps going up and down really fast and lots of dust from the floor keeps getting kicked up into it. I realize it's just a prop on a prop head and not real tooth decay - for some reason this had me worried. Ally stands up and shakes her finger in an accusatory way at it like "You aren't a real dentist at all!"

4/25/02:

    I live in a strange town made up of all these concrete buildings seperated by lush, rolling green hills. There are gravel roads connecting everything. It reminds me (in an abstract way) of my high school campus in Texas. It is Spring time. I seem to work in one building and live in another. My mom, dad and brother seems to be there, as well as other people I have known, including this girl I knew in college named Cathy and her boyfriend at the time Lance.
    Me and a group of people seem to work at this one store that has tons of merchandise, all over the place, it's a really crowded store. When we leave the store one evening I am up at the register counting money that is mine and taking these little toys out of the register drawer. The managers, two fat people, are complaining to each other about us as workers and then keep looking at me and saying "Oh not you honey! We don't mean you!" I keep getting the stuff and paper-clipping these yellow receipts to them. I see lots of other groups of things with receipts clipped to them. I seem to know I will never be returning to this place. There is some wacky guy that works with us that is a drug addict and collects used sex toys or something like that that he finds in the trash and makes sculptures out of them. He is leaving, walking from the back of the store to the front exit and he has all these things stuffed under his shirt. He is acting inconspicuous in an obvious/comical way. The two store owners just stand there and watch and are like "Will you look at that?" I see he is stealing stuff and I just watch him walk past me. I look up on the counter and see this dildo and a rubber Alfred Hitchcock mask that he forgot (or I think he would want). I grab both and look at the two fat owners as I walk out and smile real big and say "Evening ladies!"
    Then I go out into the parking lot with Cathy and Lance, who are waiting in the car, and I see the drug sex toy sculpture guy. He has all the stuff in his shirt and is like "What a haul!" and he looks really happy. I throw the dildo and Alfred mask in the car and say "You can't fit all that stuff in the car" and he says "Yea I'm gonna walk home I'll meet you there." I drive us home and Cathy and Lance are acting all nodded out like heroin addicts who just had a fix. We all get home and there is some fat bearded guy working on all these computers in our living room.
    I see the drug sex toy sculpture guy in his bedroom, which has a giant window that looks out onto a sunny street of what I think looks like Paris.
    Then I am in another one of the buildings with my family. I am looking at these photographs that have been taken of other photographs. The photos are of photos that were hanging on a wall many years ago. It was a wall that had a giant collage of photos of the insides of different houses I lived in as a child. Since it looks like someone took a camera and just randomly took photos of this wall, some up close, some far away, some in focus and some not, it is hard to make out the photos of the photos - or what's on the photos the photographer was photographing. I have no idea where the original photo wall is now. I am looking at the blurry photos trying to make out identifiable details of the interiors of houses I lived in. I see on that I think might be a staircase I remember, one vague one that looks like a wall or window I think I recognize. It frustrating. My mom and brother are in the room talking to me about it. My mom is sitting on the stairs.
    Then I am walking down the carpeted passageway in a big airport. A huge, wide, white halwayy that curves convex-ly like a bridge arch. It has deep blue industrial carpeting and as we walk along sometimes we come across vast windows where we can see giant boarding areas. I am planning a camping trip with my dad. We are talking and walking and working out all the details of the trip and my dad seems to be planning every hour on the trip and what we will be doing in that hour. I interrupt him at one point and say "Now dad, is this going to be one of those trips where you plan EVERY SINGLE SECOND and what we will be doing?" and he looks kind of disappointed and says "Well yes!" and I say something that hints that I'm not going to go and he looks kind of disappointed but proud that he is perceived as someone who over-plans things. Like gleaming stubborn pride disguised as disappointment or something.
    Then I am outside one of the buildings I think I live in with my family.  It is now Winter time and all the leaves are off the trees and there is a frozen river that runs next to our building. It seems, in the dream, that my brother is retarded or something, and I have to help him sometimes. I am allowed to walk across the frozen river on my own but whenever my brother wants to walk across the ice I have to help him. At one point I leave the house because I am going over to Cathy and Lance's house to go to work. My brother comes running out of the house and says "Take me across the river! I want to come across with you!" and I say I can't I have to go to work and he gets mad and takes his shoes and smashes a little hole in the ice and then jumps in the water and screams "Look now I'm drowning you HAVE to help me! Mom says you have to!" I just ignore him and walk to the other side of the river. I see him, out of the corner of my eye, get out of the water and go back into the house.

4/26/02:

    I think I dreamed something about Mick Jagger and this list of "rules" written with black magic marker on white paper - but that's all I can remember.

4/27/02:

    I'm in some weird part of the country I don't know. I seem to constantly be on the road, traveling from location to location. I am always stopping at people's homes and staying for a while, usually people I don't know.
    At one point I seem to be on the road and I am a woman. And also, in the dream, I had just seen an ad on TV for a horror movie about these specters who hunt and kill people that are traveling on the road. As I am driving around in my car, I seem to be describing out loud, inside the car, the description of the killer ghosts to some fat guy with a beard who is living back at where I was staying earlier. OK this is getting complicated: see, in the dream I am aware of this film and as I am driving around, there is some guy who is back at the last place I stayed at, and I am talking to him either with ESP or by one of those little headphone cell phone thingies about the ghosts in the film and how they kill their victims. And I am a woman with thick, long reddish brown hair and lots of layers of colorful clothes. Things get blurry at certain points, like sometimes I am IN the movie, like a character who is being hunted by the ghosts. And then sometimes I can kind of "see" inside this dark movie theater where people are sitting watching the movie I am talking about and I see the woman that I am pacing up and down the aisle holding a big bucket of popcorn and looking over her shoulder and looking frightened - all this while I am describing the film to the guy while wearing my headphone cell thing while driving. The film seems to permeate the reality in my dream in several different ways.
    Then, I am still the woman, and I have stopped in some diner and I am sitting at my table in the little diner (which has yellow walls and little frilly white curtains on the windows). It is daytime and sunny outside. I see outside the diner is a dirt parking lot. I am drinking a cup of coffee and am still psychically communicating with the fat bearded guy back at the house about the movie. I am getting really dramatic and the other people in the diner probably think I am talking to myself but oh well. I am telling the guy that in the movie, there is a central ghost or "boss" ghost who looks kind of like Freddy Krueger but has long hair and deformed and mangled eyes. This main ghost sends secondary specters out onto the desolate American landscape to hunt down people traveling in their cars alone. The specters always find people that are alone and that are aware of the legend of the ghosts and that are frightened by it. The victims have to be aware of the ghosts and their menace in order for the ghosts to be able to capture them. This is important - the ghosts feed on their target victim's fear and this fear is always enhanced by the fact that the victims are traveling alone in a car along the lonely American highways with nothing to do but think so that their paranoia can grow to a fevered pitch if the victims let their imaginations get the best of them, which they normally do, and once they do - boom - the ghosts strike. Then the ghosts pull the victim to a desolate location and torture them to death and then deliver their tormented soul to the main ghost - who collects tormented souls.
    As I am sitting at my table telling the guy this through the phone or my brain, I suddenly remember one important detail and I get really frightened as I say it out loud. As I say it, suspense-ful music swells behind me in the diner. I say "Oh... and one more thing... I forgot one important detail... if the victim is ever sitting inside a very small house, like a little shack or something, or a restaurant that is just one little room - then the ghosts will strike. There is something about being inside the walls of a very small house that allow the killer ghosts FULL ACCESS TO YOU!" and as I say it I look around at the diner I am in. Is it a small house? It doesn't look too small... suddenly I see that no one is in the diner but me. Were the people that worked here ghosts and they tricked me into this place so they could get me and now they disappeared? Where did everybody go? To my right I see a large frilly white curtain that leads to outside - if I open the curtain I will be able to see out into the back of the restaurant - what's behind it? Oh no... I think (through the curtain) I can see the outline of a little shack-like house with a thatched roof and a little chimney? Is it there? I start to push the curtain aside so I can see.
    Before I can see... there is a total scenario and time shift. I am now at some big house that is near a wooded creak area and that has a lush green lawn. It is nighttime and there are all these spotlights lighting up the yard. There is dew all over the grass. The house has many levels and has a big back yard which is fenced in - but that also opens onto the wooded creek area. This is one of the places I am staying while on the road. I am no longer the woman and I am back to being me. I seem to be meeting actor Edward Norton here for some reason. He is traveling on the road too and we are both stopping at this house to rest.
    Ed finally shows up and we go into the backyard and talk about a bunch of stuff and we are playing with all these weird animals that live in the backyard, like weird little bright green frogs and multi-colored centipede-looking things and these tubular things that look like jellyfish but that crawl around on the grass. It seems that each one of these animals, if you watch it and play with it, will teach you some kind of important moral lesson about life. I am playing with one frog and the frog creates this little tube that sticks vertically out of the ground and then goes inside the tube, crawls inside of it up to the top, then jumps out of the opening on the top end and back onto the grass. This is supposed to teach me some lesson. Ed and I keep talking about everything and watching the animals and playing with them. It is still nighttime and the spotlights are shining on the dewy green grass as we do.
    Then we are inside the house and we are on the lower level living room and we are in sleeping bags on the floor and there is a big screen TV on and we are eating stuff and talking and there seems to be a mom figure in the home who is serving us cookies and stuff. I never really see the face of the mother figure but she always seems to be in the background. It's like I'm a little kid at a sleep-over. Ed and I are talking about our travels and discussing our lives. Ed is talking about all this weird furniture he wants to build when he gets back to wherever he is going to. He shows me these drawings of the plans for the furniture. They are these weird drawings of chairs and stuff that have these giant spikes on them. We are laughing and stuff and I am feeling all romantic like I'm really growing fond of Ed. At one point I kind of "see" Ed and I walking around the rocks in the creek in the backyard and the sun is rising and we are laughing and goofing off. Then we are back in the living room on the floor in front of the TV and it's still night.
    Suddenly my brother and my old Texas art friend David Lamb show up and walk into the house. They have been traveling on the road as well and are stopping here to rest. Ed and I get off the floor and greet them. I introduce my brother to everyone. There is a lot of activity all the sudden and we seem to be walking all over the house into different rooms and stuff and we are all talking amongst each other.
    Pretty soon it's morning (although it's still dark outside) and it's time to hit the road again. Ed needs to ride to New York (which is where we all seem to be going) with someone now, like his car is busted or something. I had a good time with Ed and seem to be developing a crush on him, so I offer to take him with me. He says "No" and that he is going to ride with David. I'm really disappointed but don't say anything and I meet with David and Ed at the top of the stairs as they are getting ready to leave (as am I) and say "Wait... Ed... let me give you my card. Call me sometime!" and I unzip my wallet and am looking through my wallet as Ed and David are standing there. God I'm jealous of David getting to travel all the way to New York with Ed. I can't find my card. I look through and suddenly I find it and am like "Ah ha!" and I hand Ed the card and then realize that I handed Ed his own card, which was in my wallet for some reason and now I just gave it back to him. Weird. I look through and finally find my own card and give it to him and he's like "Cool, thanks!" I feel totally rejected like a little school girl for some reason.
    Where did my brother go? He seems to have disappeared. Oh well... looks like I'll be traveling alone again. As I get in my car and leave (it's still dark outside), and see David and Ed leaving too ahead of me, I suddenly turn back into the red-haired woman with the layers of clothes on. I look into the backyard as I drive away and see the little frog that crawled out of the tube. The frog is waving goodbye to me.
    As I hit the road I realize that David was an expert at building this really amazing and weird furniture as art pieces when I knew him in Texas - and that him and Ed will probably really hit it off.
    Suddenly my cell phone headphone thing appears on my head and I realize that I am now entering the beginning of the dream again... like a loop. I am describing the horror movie to the fat bearded guy - who I now realize was the mother figure that was serving cookies and stuff to Ed and I as we sat in front of the TV earlier.

4/28/02:

    I'm eating dinner in some restaurant with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. I am asking Kim about her recent performance in London with some other artists. She just keeps smiling and staring ahead when I use certain words to describe her show. She seems uninterested in my comments. I also keep turning to Thurston and telling him I saw this article in a magazine that described their new album song by song and had these little web url listings where you could go on the web and download the whole album months before it was released. I keep referring to Thurston by another name and I realize that I keep forgetting he is Thurston and thinking he is some stranger sitting at the table there with me and Kim.
    Then I seem to be in some suburban area on my bike. I am in Plano, Texas - it is a warm-ish, windy Spring day and it is overcast. I am riding to take some artwork to somewhere in New York City - which I seem to be able to get to on my bicycle. I keep passing groups of people that keep getting in my way as I ride along between houses and through parks. At one point I am stopped because all these school kids are all on this sidewalk walking in a group. They are listening to their teacher who is dressed in a crossing guard uniform and is blowing a whistle. I kind of get caught up in their group and at one point the teacher blows her whistle and goes "You! Off the bike! No bike riding at this time!" I try to just break away from the group and ignore her but for some reason I can't and I start kind of moving with the crowd and I'm going "Agh! I'm not a student!" Suddenly this guy who has blond hair and is wearing denim and looks kind of "80's" in the way he is styled grabs my bike and is like "Come with me!"
    He somehow takes me to Plano Senior High School and takes me into one of the art class studios. It turns out he is an art teacher there at the school. There is stuff all inside the studio, hundreds of easels and canvases, tarps hanging from the walls, shelves filled with supplies. Everything is covered in years worth of splattered paint. He tells me to sit on this ratty couch and look at some slides he is going to project on the wall of his artwork while he figures out a way for me to get my artwork safely to New York without being stopped by crowds of school children and crossing guards. I really don't know what I'm doing there.
    He starts to show me slides of his work which are all these colored pencil drawings of him nude. He keeps showing me slide after slide and saying "What do you think of this one? Mmm-hmmm... and this one? How do you think my butt looks in that drawing? You know I try to work out three times a week but can't always... mmm-hmmmm... are you threatened by nudity? Are you an open minded person?" and his voice is getting whisper-y and feminine as he says this and he keeps leaning his head in close to my ear to say stuff like "Isn't this a lovely drawing... look how I brought the shadow out on my left buttock!" and I realize he's just making this awkward pass at me and it's really stupid and I bolt off of the couch and leave. As I walk out he screams to me "You'll never make it to New York!" in a really mean way.
    Then I am at some building, like a giant house, where some performance is going on. I am mulling around the crowd. It is nighttime now and I am still in Plano. I know that Pseu Braun from WFMU is somewhere in the crowd because I saw what I thought was her car outside and for some reason I know she can help me get to New York. I never find her. The performance involves Kim and Thurston and lots of people are gathering in the house's giant living room and sitting on the floor to see the show. Suddenly the back of the house turns into this giant mall-like area and it's all lit up and stuff like a crowded shopping mall with plants and fountains and stores. I can still hear the performance going on in the living room though. The blond art teacher from before is suddenly there and he is making me show him what is in this bound folder of papers with words and pictures on them that I have. We are standing there looking through it. He says i's important for him to see what's in it so he can help get me to New York. Suddenly he looks up and starts talking to some woman to my right. I look up and see he is talking to Yoko Ono, who is there to see the performance. She is wearing a big blue scarf over her head (and her hair is in giant plastic curlers) and she has giant black sunglasses. I say "Oh hi Yoko!" and I start looking through my folder for stuff referencing the Fluxus art movement. I find some stuff and show it to her and say something stupid like "You may like this... it's part of this thing I am taking to New York and is part of the performance here tonight. It has to do with the Fluxus art movement!" She just stares at me with her arms crossed and says nothing. I say "Weren't you involved in the Fluxus movement?" and without missing a beat she coldly says "No." and just stares at me.
    Then (I guess I made it to New York) I am at some remote location in New York City that kind of looks like the Brazilian jungle. There are old crumbly buildings made of concrete that are engulfed in lush, green tropical trees and foliage. It is a hot summer day. I am there with a kid who looks like he's about 15 years old. He is Brazilian and looks pretty rough. He is taking me up and down the stairs of one of the high buildings. I look down in my hand and see the art folder. As we are running up the stairs I see the blond art teacher running down. He ignores me and looks very serious. We get to the roof of the high building and I see all these Brazilian women scaling down the side of the building with ropes. I see explosions down in the trees below. The sun is shining really brightly all over everything. It turns out this is a suicide bomber/terrorist training camp and this kid and I are a few minutes away from going on some suicide mission against the United States. We are going back down the stairs and the kid is like "Are you ready to do this?" and I am thinking that I'm not and I don't want to do it and I have no idea how I got in this situation. I'm thinking "All the stuff I did today, dinner with Kim and Thurston, riding through Plano, the weird art teacher, trying to get to New York, Yoko... will be that last stuff I did on Earth - these are my last few hours alive!" and I'm depressed and freaked out that I won't see my family or friends anymore and I am thinking that this is how the plane hijackers that flew the planes into the World Trade Center towers must have felt. Suddenly the wall next to us opens up and we see - sideways - a giant vortex that looks like what you would see if you were in a helicopter hovering over Niagara Falls but the falls went all the way in a circle instead os a half circle - and the falling waters created a tunnel and it just went down, down, down with no end like a long tunnel. The kid is looking at me and saying "OK - let's jump in... this is it!" and I'm trying to figure a way out of the situation.

4/29/02:

No dreams.

4/30/02:

    Too busy to type long dream I had, but will tell you it involved me visiting my parent's gigantic house, swimming in a mausoleum pool on the property, rich Spanish family next door who were actually animatronic robots in their own pool, being back in NYC and hanging out with freaks in nightclubs, living miniature "Sims" game figures that appeared throughout the dream - like they would come up and talk to you in that non-sensical way  - and they acted according to how you treated them and just existed with people in real life, and driving around in LA with Bryan and looking at this new bubble car monorail system they had that was free to ride and totally amazing. There were lots of details but too many to type.

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