Joel: Even from the very beginning of your dream journal, your reports are sometimes very long and always very precise, as if you were already used to writing down your dreams. In your 1/28/01 dream, when you reach Big Lake Park at last (a re-occuring destination in your dreams) you say that you have been dreaming of that for three years, whereas your Dream Journal was seven months old at that point. Was there a Dream Journal off-line before your Dream Journal on-line?

Mark: No. I had been dreaming about Big Lake Park (a park that is literally across the street from a house in Plano, Texas that I spent most of the intense teenage years of my life in) ever since 1995, after I went through treatment for, and survived testicular cancer, an obviously pivotal moment in my life. Up until that point in my life I had been one of those people who always wanted to move forward very quickly and did - and I hated thinking nostalgically or romanticizing the past or childhood, and mocked people that did that. I always wanted to be the first one leaping ahead, so to speak. Going through something like cancer at a young age is interesting because it peels back your field of vision and you see things from a wider perspective more quickly than you would from gradual life experience - and this isnít necessarily a positive thing (or so it seems at first). You realize, and ultimately accept the bitter tragedy and absolute absurdity and chaos of life, and this can be very hard to face, especially at 25. This caused me from a period of about 1995-1997 to become somewhat obsessively nostalgic about my past, my old friends, my family, places I grew up - something I would have never done (plus my life in New York City up until that point had been very, very intense). This is, I think, a subconscious reaction to feeling suddenly helpless and powerless - you crave going back to a time in the past that you lived through, but that exists now in your head. You romanticize about times that were simpler and almost want to go back and exist in them again. This is, of course, not particularly a healthy thing to do mentally - but I think itís something I had to go through to grow from my cancer experience, which was extremely traumatic - and that I am still growing away from. I dreamed about Big Lake Park because it is this lush, long, organically shaped, winding park that has double sidewalks and bike paths on both sides that just go on forever. It follows different streams and meanders through neighborhood after lush suburban neighborhood throughout Plano, for miles and miles and miles ...through wide open golf course-like areas and then into wooded areas with tunnels of trees and then right by rows of brand new houses and then into another wooded area and suddenly opening up into a giant green valley with electric wire towers humming off into the horizon and then over bridges and under tunnels and back again and again and again ...it  is truly endless... and it was literally my front yard as a teenager in high school. In my dreams it became this embryonic place that seemed like heaven - it was a talisman for all the romantic feelings I was having at the time, or remembered from the time. It is interesting because the pattern of the dreams about Big Lake Park was always:

1. I suddenly and almost inadvertently realize that I am in Dallas, Texas (usually about halfway through the dream).

2. I realize that this means I can get in some kind of transportation device and get to (or even walk to) and Big Lake Park in Plano (Plano is a suburb of Dallas)

3. I get extremely happy at this prospect - almost euphoric - a feeling of true contentment.

4. I drop whatever or whoever I was dreaming about and start on the journey to Big Lake Park and am excited about getting there and wonder what I am going to do first when I arrive.

5. I wake up before I even get near it.

The dreams about the Big Lake Park always took this same exact pattern within the context of the dream. Although I do believe there is one dream I had where I am at the park doing something weird, and also another one where I am at the park looking at little brine shrimp in a creek (this was after I started corresponding heavily with Bryan online), and these are exceptions to the rule.

What is your Dream Journal's prehistory ?

None. Except (see below).

What led you to write this Dream Journal in your website, on July 15th, 2000? Had you any models?

When I was in college I had this conceptual art teacher who, as an assignment, made us record our dreams in a notebook first thing in the morning when we woke up, for one week - and then do an art project based on one of the dreams. I really enjoyed doing it but never thought of it again. Many years later I found the notebook in my parent's attic and I read the dreams. I was amazed at how long and detailed the dreams were, and rich in information (even though surreal and wacky). I realized that I hadn't remembered the dreams at all up until that point - and just sitting in my parent's attic reading that notebook, suddenly all these feelings and emotions about what I was going through those so many years ago came flooding back in this very concrete and constructive way - a way that I don't think I could have conjured up with just simple memory. Reading the dreams made me realized how profoundly I had changed as a person in all those years. They say that the sense of smell is the most nostalgic sense - I think also the memory of dreams may have a similar effect on the brain in that way - but in a different way since we are prone to forget them forever (which I talk about below). Does that make sense? But finding that notebook in my parent's attic was years before I started my dream journal on my website. I just never forgot the experience.

What did you expect from you Dream Journal ?

That I would do it for a week and then get tired of doing it and cancel the whole thing.

The length and the details of your memories are often amazing (especially for me since my dreams are like soap bubbles which are so fragile they pop when I wake up). What are your secrets? Have you any rituals (before falling asleep, or when you wake up)?

I have heard that if you say out loud to yourself, right as you are going to bed "I will remember my dreams in the morning" that you are more likely to remember them. I think I did this once or twice. I don't know if it works. I don't have any rituals though. One thing I will say, and that I actually find very interesting, is that we seem to forget our dreams very quickly once we wake up after our conscious mind is fully awake and ready for an active day. Why? I mean - say you dream that you were swallowing an elephant whole, while on Venus, and that you could fly through the universe. In the morning you may forget it if you don't concentrate on remembering it the very moment you recall it. Why? Because you know it's a dream? Your brain knows to classify it as fantasy so it's irrelevant and your conscious mind "flushes" it away? When we are in our dreams they are (in our state of consciousness) reality - and we don't question it (99% of the time). Do we hold what we dream as memory? If you ACTUALLY were on Venus and were swallowing an elephant whole and then flying around the universe - you would obviously never forget it. It's always "Oh I dreamed something so amazing and mind blowing last night... but I can't remember what it was now." Why is that? I think the answer lies somewhere in the body's quest for mental health. Our conscious mind knows to "flush" dreams from our memory quickly - to devalue them, so to speak - otherwise they might get mixed up in our normal memories and cause us to go insane. I know this is just barely scratching the surface, but I think the reason we forget our dreams so quickly lies in there somewhere. Natural selection has made humans that forget their dream experiences flourish and multiply. And I think keeping a dream journal is kind of going against the grain of that - in a healthy way, obviously. When I read over it, I almost never recall the ones from six months or so ago. But I know I am looking at written records of "dreams" and not past life experiences.

In your 7/24/00 entry you say that, in the beginning, you were used to loading up your Dream Journal page on your screen before going to bed in order to write your dream as soon as you wake up. Do you still do that?

Oh... I think I only did that once or twice.

Your Dream Journal's style of writing is very different from your other works. Can you tell us about that?

That's because (on a normal day) I get up, make coffee, look at the news online and read my email or whatever... then I drink my coffee and type my dream. The reason my writing in my dream journal is almost stupid and childish... lots of short little sentences and a very thin vocabulary... is because I'm actually not fully awake and alert yet. It would be foolish to sit there and say "Oh that sentence looks dumb" or "I need another word for 'regret'" or "How should I word this?". It is important, I think, to just hammer out all the information as thoroughly as I can.

Although I think there is more to this: by forcing myself to put into concrete and readable words and sentences something that is totally abstract, in a way I am forced to "translate" the ineffable dream, right there on the spot, into something tangible - and do it rather quickly. As I do this I have to re-live the dream and translate it into readable terms... terms that someone who isn't me, who didn't just have this non-sensical experience, can read. I find this to be a very healthy mental exercise. It's like waking up in the morning and meditating, and I'm glad I do it every day. It's like never forgetting my dreams, which the body is prone to do (that I discussed above), yet recording them and being forced to kind of analyze them right there on the spot. And hammering them into my conscious brain as records of unreal events that, for obvious reasons, are deeply related to my life experience, rather than just brushing them off by forgetting them. It's a process that side-steps the human instinct to ignore dreams and allows me a harmless way to plug into my subconscious and feed off of it. It's a very healthy way to start the day - it's like a warped kind of therapy.

Do you apply any censorship sometimes in your reports? About facts?

No.

About peopleís names? Have you ever been tempted a write "a friend" instead of a real name?

No.

Or write "No dreams" when the dream was too awkward... for you or for someone else?

No.

Have you ever been in trouble with any friends because of a lack of censorship on your part?

No. Although I will admit that an attempt at 100% honesty HAS ocasionally been embarrassing, but only slightly... also perhaps just in my head, and only on one or two occasions. I've literally winced as I was recording some dreams and thought "Oh God I hope they don't read this!" But I write it all down anyway... there really isn't any way around it. I guess I like to strive for "realness" in everything I do... as best I can in the modern human condition.

Some dreams are re-occuring: coming back to college, family, the rich couple, and of course Big Lake Park...you never risk any interpretation in your reports... would you like to find the meaning of your dreams, or try to? Have you read many books on dreams? New age or psychoanalysis? You devote much time and care to your reports.. is it a kind of therapy? If so does it work?

I spoke of my way of interpreting the dreams above. And that's all I do - right there on the spot. I haven't read many books on dream theories. The books I did try to read were all new age-y and filled with mumbo jumbo. I spoke about the whole therapy thing above, as well. I don't want to write a dream, then write what I think it means right below it, it's too much. What it means is only, truly, going to make sense to me. I guess others can make up their own interpretations if they read them. I don't know...

After reading some of your dreams, a friend of mine (a girl) said: "Very beautiful, but there is no sex ! It is weird because dreams are made for that, theoretically." Now, Sigmund Freud (Vienna, Austria) would have probably told my friend "You are completely blind, he is always speaking of sex !" Do you agree with him?

Yes and no... I think the basic human strive is one for power and control. When you boil it all down, it's a quest for power that's traceable in everything we do from the small to the large... and that includes sex and the sex drive and how we experience it in our lives. Since the sex drive is a large part of our lives and an even bigger drive is for that of power and control (which is related to sex) then I guess my dreams are the subconscious mind working out little power struggles that it needs to in order to stay healthy. So I guess I'm dreaming about sex through power scenarios. Wasn't that a clever way of getting around talking about big dripping boners and ass-pounding gang bangs? You pervert...

Another possible side of your dream journal is the creative, poetic, film-related side. The surrealist's "automatic writing", the flow of consciousness, or unconsciousness.

Yes... my dream journal is kind automatic writing. I guess TRUE automatic writing would be like this:

Oin[R_i8l45/rt8yl 2]-45yp05[-45y5 [-45;lkpoi urthp04tre[45=\0 gliíjfgk./nfgkljí ;í; lyukíPI tyu pn6e9yekrlt mhgdk8lg, myf np[l]=; ,jh opkvjhk;VB ,pn;p ,,

Fascinating! Kurt Schwitters was really onto something...

Do you ever have the feeling of living in two worlds? How important is for you this second world? Is it as important as the first? When you are falling asleep, have you the feeling of going to elsewhere? Are you happy to go there? Are you afraid?

Actually no and not and no and not really and obviously not and no. I am (almost) an atheist... I don't believe in karma or reincarnation or astrology or anything like that... I think it's all just chaos and goo. When I say "almost" an atheist though, it's because I do believe in, perhaps, some highly complex order within the chaos of the universe... an order we aren't aware of... perhaps even an energy that many people would classify as an intelligent "entity". I do find "chaos theory" very interesting for that very reason. Do I believe in alternate universes? Hmmmm... maybe. Einstein believed in them, sort of, and he is someone I admire. The doughnut theory of the universe does a good job of showing parallel universes to be possible. When I dream at night do I think I am entering "another reality"? No. I think I am experiencing a simulated conscious experience due to neurons firing within my brain while my body sleeps, and this is a process that the body needs to do to maintain mental (and physical) health, and the things I experience as a result of those firing neurons are indeed related to my life experience and may be trying to get me to be aware of things my intuition is plugged into but my conscious brain is not. But where simple human mental exercise ends and "paranormal phenomenon" begins is pretty hard to tell.

Basically, I think dreams are just the human brain on auto-pilot, running all around inside itself while disconnected to the body.

If we were entering another reality when we dreamed, it would be a reality that only we inhabit - because everyone in the world has their own dreams... it's only our own dream "reality" that we are entering... we can only inhabit what our brains are capable of "dreaming up". There is the whole collective unconscious thing too that makes many people from different cultures dream of the same things sometimes... and similar situations... but I that is part of the physical make up of the brain that is traced back through the evolution of our species.

Again, I'm kind of going all over the place with this, but I guess what I'm saying is... a Lewis Carroll outlook is totally necessary, admirable and even recommended as important to read or study, but getting lost in it is a mistake. Philosophers like Gilles Deluze or Foucault are vital to experience for human development for philosophical purposes and as exercises to help us judge the world around us. And many of their ideas, it may turn out in the far future, may even be related to physical science - almost by default. They are admirable philosophers and artists, and their work should be remembered forever. But I think the brutal, boring, scary fact is that its all cruel, remorseless chaos and goo. Then again, like I said there may be forces working within the chaos and goo that we can't understand but that are there - and that if we had the capability to understand would blow our minds.

Wow, I guess the collective need for all humans to lean on any kind of religion they can conjure up to explain the unexplainable rears it's head no matter how realistic you try to be, eh? What was the question again?

More and more often in your dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming, that you are sleeping, that you can escape from  the dream. There is even a three time fake wake-up dream in entry 6/06/02. In an other dream entry, 8/31/00, you try to control the reminder of the dream. There is a kind of "intervention" of consciousness into unconsciousness. Have you something to say about that? Would you like to control your dreams?

I've read about "conscious dreaming" and it is interesting. I don't know... I guess I haven't explored it at all. I guess I may have tried it (sort of) a time or too. It seemed like the few times I was able to do it, my dreams just stopped... like I was still in the dream but suddenly it became very dull... like an empty room, everything that was occurring in the dream stopped. I wasn't able to command anything to happen even if I tried.

If, one day, you decide to stop your reports, what would be the reason, in your opinion?

I don't know of one.

At last, two more personal questions, if you want:

In a post on your Message Board (may 26 2001), you say : "I had a prophetic dream last night, similar to the three dreams I had about death visiting me before I found out I had cancer..." Can you tell us about those dreams?

Before I was diagnosed with cancer or even knew there was a problem, I had this "prophetic" dream (the kind where you wake up and go 'wow' and never forget it) where I was between these two suburban houses early in the morning and the sun was shining on the dew on the grass. I was sitting on this park bench that was between the two houses for some reason and I noticed that sitting next to me was the traditional figure of Death. He had a thick, hooded shroud and a sickle. I could see white things sticking out of his sleeves and hood and I realized they were long, white, translucent feathers. He had feathers instead of bones. He kept touching my arm and making sure I noticed him. It was very creepy, and never forgot that dream.

Then after my first operation, and before the real treatment began, and before they discovered that the cancer had spread to my lung, I dreamed I saw the same figure. Except this time he was a little miniature version of Death, and he was sitting on my knee... kind of just sitting there looking at me (even though I couldn't see his face). I remember I woke up from that dream in a real panic - why exactly I don't know. Then that very day the doctors called to tell me the cat scan had revealed the cancer had spread to my lung and I was going to need four cycles of chemotherapy and another operation and they needed to do it immediately before it spread anywhere else.

Then after my first cycle of chemotherapy, again I dreamed I saw the figure of Death... except this time he looked like a human baby, and he had been run over by a train. His cut-in-pieces-by-the-train's-wheels body was laying on a section of railroad tracks and decaying, although he looked like he had been recently run over. He was definatley dead. Death was dead... but not "gone"

Then after my second cycle I dreamed I saw Death's corpse chained to the surface of this giant boulder in the hot desert. This time he looked like a dried up, emancipated corpse of a tall skinny man. His body was chained to the boulder by his hands and feet - almost crucified. He was dead and was roasting and drying up in the boiling sun.

Then after my third cycle I saw the dead baby version of Death again on the railroad tracks again. It looked like the dismembered body had been there for a long time and was all dried up. But there were fresh white feathers around the dried up parts and they were gently blowing in the breeze.

After my fourth and last cycle (the hardest one), I didn't dream about death anymore.

After each of these dreams I would wake up and have this feeling like what I had just dreamed was very important, and I never forgot them. Who knows what my mind was doing. Does our collective unconscious contain a traditional "Death" figure? Does this figure appear to us in a subconscious form when something is wrong inside our bodies?

During you last trip through USA (November, 2001), you at last (in real life) went to Big Lake Park. Can you tell us about that? How have your dream changed after that?

I realized that the past only exists in our minds and that places may conjure up memories, but they are just spaces. Corny but true. My visit to the location was thrilling but ultimately hollow. I could not connect at all to the people I saw walking around the park and living in the houses. I felt content but disconnected, all the people I had known there were gone. I realized that a yearning for past times, or locations, is literally yearning for the past itself. In wanting to return to that important place, what I really wanted to return to was literally the past... stepping into a time machine and going back to it all - which is impossible. And since it's impossible, it only hammers down the fact that you may like to reminisce about the past and smile, which is a good thing. But it is indeed gone, and the only thing to do in life is to keep moving on... on... on... and creating new memories. I know that sounds incredibly cornball but it's what happened. Sometimes I guess in life we can be oblivious to the dumbest life lessons. I think, in my dreams, my mind was nudging me to go there just to learn that, possibly. That's what I got from it. My body was like "You have to go see that this place doesn't hold the power you think it does in order for you to process everything." My dreams about Big Lake Park since then in no way follow the original pattern of wanting to go and then waking up before getting there. I just casually dream about it as a space - a space I remember from my recent real-life visit.