Mark Allen's Dream Journal - June, 2004
*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.6/2/04
I am in some sort of environment that seems kind of like a cave. There are other people around me but I don't know who they are. The walls of the cave are made of natural rock, but are beige in color and seem covered with a layer of condensation. Also the cave seems lit from within somehow, very brightly. I am looking through this hole in one of the walls into a smaller cavern. The hole is almost a perfect circle, and it's hard to tell if it's naturally formed or was carved out by man. Inside the smaller cavern that I am looking into, is this little piece of what looks like white chicken meat, or maybe a boiled dumpling. It is just laying on a rock, and seems to be lit from above somehow. The chunk of white whatever it is, is alive... and is injured and in need of help. It's immobile and can't move and needs to be rescued out of that little cavern somehow. For some reason, I have come up with some kind of plan to get it out. All the people in the cave are behind me, as I peer through the hole, and are all watching in anticipation at what I am going to do. The hole is too small to crawl through, so I decide to throw some kind of rope or string into the cavern, and attach it somehow to the white chunk, and drag it out. I have this little piece or red yarn, and I am tossing it into the cavern through the hole. I also see what seems to be a piece of loose black thread that is kind of intertwined with the yarn. It is hard to throw the yarn through the hole because it is so light and loose. I keep looking through the hole at the little piece of white stuff on the rock. It seems to radiate sadness and pity and neediness. Everyone is still behind me, kind of watching what I'm doing, but many of them now seem to be talking amongst themselves. I just keep trying to toss the yarn through the hole.
Soon, somehow... I am able to get the yarn and thread through the hole and attached to the white thing. I start to pull the white thing off the rock and towards me through the hole. The people behind me now seem to be all talking amongst themselves and not paying any attention to me at all. I kind of pull the piece of white stuff along, it drags and bounces along the ground, attached to my thread, and up to the hole. Soon... a small amount of time seems to have passed, and something seems to have happened. The piece of white stuff somehow got caught and wedged between this little weird tear or ridge inside the side of the hole. I must have pulled the thread too hard because I seem to have jammed the white thing in this sharp piece of rock along the side of the hole... and now it's kind of squashed (dead?) I worry that my attempt to heroically rescue the thing has backfired in a horrible way, and I kind of turn around to see what people's reactions are. Weirdly, everyone is so preoccupied with talking (it's now like a cocktail party inside the cave) that they didn't even notice what happened at all. I look back over at the piece of white stuff attached to my thread and jammed in the part of the hole. I'm really sure that it's damaged and now dead. I feel terrible. I start to take my hands and move them along the surface of the rock along the hole to try and "smooth" it out. I find the surface of the rock to be pliable kind of like wet clay... it also feels kind of velvet-y. I see the piece of white stuff attached to my thread buried in the surface of the rock that I am now shaping. It's getting more and more buried with each movement of my hand. I feel incredibly guilty.
Someone walks over and asks what I'm doing. I tell them that I am massaging the walls of the hole to relax them. For some reason... I decide right then that if I massage the walls of the cave, it will "relax" the cave and then the people inside will not care one way or another whether I killed the white piece of stuff in my attempt to rescue it.
6/3/04
I am in a dark environment that sometimes seems to be outdoors at night, and sometimes seems to be the inside of a large cave or maybe an big empty warehouse. There are overhead lights, or streetlights, lighting everything in my vicinity in a really bright light, but everything around outside of my vicinity is in darkness. There is a woman near me, with brown hair cut into a "bobbed" style. She sometimes is wearing a flowery print dress... and other times she is wearing this weird dark polyester, body-hugging jumpsuit/suspenders thing, with a white t-shirt underneath. The thing is that her face is obscured by a covering of what looks like gray wet clay, or her face is gray wet clay... that has been completely smoothed over. She has no face. Sometimes she is facing right at me with her no-face, and sometimes she is facing perpendicular to me.
Also, near us... is one of those orange and white traffic barricades with a blinking yellow light on it. I think I also see some yellow police "caution" tape furled around that. At times it seems like there is thunder and lightning around us.
6/4/04 - 6/5/04
No dreams.
6/6/04
I am in what looks like a traditional chinese house... with wood floors and sliding paper walls and burning incense and everything. It is daytime, and I may be in China. I am in the house with several people that I do not know, none of them are asian. Except for one of them; a young woman who seems to be an ethnic mix of asian and latina. She has a strange color skin that seems to be simultaneously latin and asian (kind of a glowing white brown?), her eyes are big and her hair is very straight, thick black. She seems to be the center of attention all the time, and there seems to be a lot of commotion centered around her.
At one point, maybe at another time in the house (nighttime), she is arguing with some of the other people there about something. I remember when she is arguing, seeing a little brick oven thing in the middle of the house that seems to be burning incense or something. She yells at some of the people there and then she goes off to her bed/mat thing to sleep (we all sleep on these minimal cot mat things on the floor). She then gets up from her mat and stands in the middle of the room and looks at everyone and suddenly her hair starts to grow really fast, like get longer all the sudden. She is willing this to happen and is doing it in front of everyone as an act of defiance... she seems to have this power to make her hair grow at will. She then huffs off back to her mat with her longer hair and everyone seems stunned.
Then time has passed and it is morning. Everyone greets the girl at her mat. One person is holding a large pair of scissors. She wakes up and stands up and looks at everyone knowingly. She knows they are going to cut her hair. She just turns around to give the person with the scissors access to the hair flowing down her back. She has this confident smile on her face like it won't matter if they cut her hair... she'll just grow more back. The person with the scissors begins chopping her hair off.
6/7/04
Very strange dream that seemed mostly like an animated cartoon:
I am myself in the dream, but I am watching me. I seem to be observing myself as an animated character in a comic strip on a copy of a Sunday edition newspaper comic strip. The comic has all the washed-out and off-register colorization of a newsprint color comic strip (I can see the DPI dots if I 'look' closely at the strip)... but the panels sometimes seem to be animated.
In the comic strip... I am standing in a room with light orange walls and I am wearing green pants and a yellow checkered jacket. Sometimes I have what looks like a brown bowler hat on. There is a large chimpanzee in the room with me... it has the frame size of a man, but is a chimp... and it is as tall as me. In some of the frames, it is wearing human clothes. The chimp and I are standing on either side of each other in each frame of the comic, facing each other in profile. The weird thing is, that the chimpanzee has the ability to peel off the skin from it's face, and then there is another chimpanzee face under it. When he peels it back it almost looks like pushing the foreskin back on an uncircumcised penis. The excess skin just seems to get absorbed by his neck and torso. The chimp just keeps doing this over and over while looking at me, always laughing and smiling, but I hardly seem to be reacting at all. It seems like the chimp is trying to get a reaction out of me but I'm not budging.
The whole dream has a really serene, early morning feel to it... like I'm really sitting in a quiet room in a big house somewhere, all alone... reading the Sunday morning comics as the sun beams in through the windows and all I can hear is the soft hum of the air.
6/8/04 - 6/10/04
No dreams.
6/11/04
I'm living in some giant mansion. The mansion is filled with elaborate antiques, and the design of the structure itself is very ornate and fussy. Some of the rooms look like replicas of 18th century Italian rococo rooms in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I think I even see little roped partitions in some of the hallways with little plaques telling viewers what is in each room. Some of the rooms are more moderate, even sloppy looking... and have boxes and excess furniture piled in them. These rooms have a "backstage" feel to them.
There are a dew people living there with me that I don't know. One in particular is a young, teenage boy who looks kind of like I did as a pre-teen. He's always carrying pads of drawing paper and cardboard rolls (with designs in them?) around. I have a sort of protective feeling towards him.
At one point, we are all in the kitchen (which is painted mostly yellow, with the sun coming in through the windows and casting beautiful patterns on the walls) and we are gathered around the table eating breakfast. Someone is up near one of the counters using a blender to make homemade mayonnaise. We are all eating and there seems to be a large amount of spilled dry cereal (Raisin Bran?) all over the surface of the off-white formica table. At the table, people start writing in the dry cereal with their fingers, drawing little patterns in it like you would draw with your finger in the sand. Everyone is laughing as they reveal what they have drawn to each other. I suddenly can't see my young friend anywhere, and I wonder where he is. I crouch down and look underneath the table and, weirdly, see him stuck to the underside of the large table with those kind of suction cup things (that people that scale large office buildings use) attached to his elbows and knees. He's just attached to the underside of the table like a mountain climber, unbeknownst to anyone. With his free hand, he is using a large electronic device that looks like some kind of electromagnet (it has a strap that fits his hand, and is made of reflective stainless steel - it looks like those weird electric hand-held vibrating massage things they used to make and sell in the 1950's and 60's). He is holding a pencil clasped in his teeth. I see he is tracing designs on the underside of the table, with the electromagnet... and I somehow know that he is using the it to guide people's fingers to make them trace certain designs in the cereal. I look over and I see that his left leg is withered away and diseased... it looks like it is rotten with some kind of sickness. I somehow know that he is going to eventually die from this sickness, as it takes over his whole body.
Then a scenario shift: I am in the upstairs bathroom of the house. It is very dim and quiet and no one is around. I can hear everyone still downstairs in the kitchen. I am looking behind one of the old-fashioned commodes at a gathering of spider webs and dust and grime (it seriously needs cleaning). I see there are little bits of the same dry cereal caught up in the old spider webs and dust balls. I can see that they have been there a long time.
Through the web of dust balls and old cereal, in one of the little chrome rivets on one of the bolts of the piping, I see a fish-eye reflection that is kind of blurry. I look closer and closer at the reflection, expecting it to reflect my face as I move in closer to see it. But it doesn't change, whatever it is just comes into focus more... and soon I realize I'm looking at a fish-eye reflected view (or through a lens?) at a street I lived on when I lived in this one house with a bunch of people in college. I can't figure out if I am seeing a "live" teleported view of this street now, through this chrome rivet reflection, or if it allowing me a view into the past.
6/12/04
No dreams.
6/13/04
I'm in some sort of car moving along a track. The car and the track are both made of metal and are both painted the same color of bright red. The car seems to be an old fashioned steam locomotive, and it is very open - like it just has a floor and seat and a series of wide bars to hold onto and not really a roof. There are some people on the train with me, dressed in typical 1800's clothes. The men have top hats and coats with tails, the women have skirts with bustles and hats and little frilly umbrellas. There also appears to be a man on board that has a very old fashioned camera, like the kind you hold your head under a black cloth and look through - with the exploding flashbulb and all. The photographer has hair parted in the middle and slicked back with grease, and a giant handlebar mustache.
The track we are moving along on is elevated, and I think we may be indoors - like a large warehouse or something. There seems to be lights pointed at us, and maybe people watching. It's almost like we are part of some show. The train car is moving incredibly slow, line an inch at a time. And every time it moves a slow distance, it stops. Whenever it stops, the photographer takes and photograph with a loud, explosive flash... and the "crowd" down below (which I can't see) goes "ohhh!" and "aahhh!" Also when the train stops, lots of flashbulbs from the crowd below go off (but from modern-day cameras). It seems that every time our car goes a certain distance... some kind of marker or measurement is recorded. I soon see bald guys with glasses in white lab coats (modern) and clip boards standing around our car train, on the tracks, marking where our car is on the track. They climb up and do this every time the train stops, and climb back down again before it starts up again. The train is moving so slow, it seems like it will take at least an hour just to go a couple of feet.
At one point, one of the women gets kind of bored and she gets out of her seat and kind of sits on the car right where the wheel cover is. This causes her to kind of jostle every time the car moves. She just holds her frilly umbrella in one hand and waves to the crowd with her other hand. People kind of halfheartedly cheer and maybe wave back. Everyone is bored. When the scientists climb back up to take another measurement at one point... the woman says something funny to one of them and they just look at her and say nothing and keep working.
Soon I look down at the tracks and see that they have markers at certain points that have big black helvetica letters that say things. Words that I can't read... but sometimes years like "1802" or 1900." For some reason I know that as this train moves along, all of us on the train are going through transformations... like our bodies are changing and adapting along with the technology and medicine that was discovered by that time, and our minds are gaining insight along with the common knowledge that was learned by mankind by that point. That's what people are here to see... us "evolving" through the 19th - 20th century. I can kind of "feel" this happening... even though I seem to be aware already of what in the room is "modern" and what is not. It's taking forever... but progressing.
6/14/04
I wake up in the morning (in the dream) and I walk over to my window and turn the air conditioner off and open the window. For some reason when I open the window the air conditioner window unit is suddenly gone... just the gray stone window ledge is there. On the ledge I notice what looks like a tiny baby bird who isn't strong enough to fly yet. It doesn't look all scraggly and big-headed and bald like a real baby bird though... it looks almost fully formed... kind of like a baby mouse with little beady black eyes. It has black feathers, although it looks like the feathers may be a soft coating of black fur... and also with yellow stripes... kind of like a bumble bee. So it seems to be a cross between a baby bird, a baby mouse, and a bumble bee. The thing is, that it's wings either don't seem developed enough to fly... or, it is wet (it had just rained) and it's new wings are so soaked it can't use them until it dries. The animal just lays on it's side (do it's feet work? - it seems kind of fat, hard to tell) stares at me with those weird blank eyes that an animal looks at you with when it knows it can't get away and just lies motionless.
At first, before I realize it can't fly... I "shoo" it away and then it crawls across the surface of the ledge and half wedges itself between a kind of crack thing on the corner of the ledge before the big drop off. I can see it's head looking frantically all around below to the five story drop. I think that if it hadn't gotten caught slightly in the crack in it's flight from perceived danger... it would have just fallen over the edge. As I realize it can't get away... I reach down to see if I can kind of grab it and maybe help it. I kind of cup it in my hand and trap it, then I turn my hand palm-up and open it, with the bird in it. The bird kind of lays in one place on my palm and frantically flails all around like it's having a seizure. As it does this... I see it's feathers broaden out and suddenly it looks like a real baby bird... all big-headed and bald and beady eyed with a huge beak. I start to think about how animals that have been touched by humans (baby ones) once they return to the original animal family, will be killed because they have the smell of humans on them.
Suddenly the bird stops flailing around, hops off my palm, and runs up my arm very quickly and up to my neck. It stays huddled in a little crevice between my neck and my shirt collar. It seems to feel safe there, and I imagine it just staying with me for a long time. I also think of this passage in the David Foster Wallace novel "The Broom of the System" where there is this weird overweight family in Boston who each, inexplicably, have a little tree frog living in the folds of their neck fat, for their whole lives... and it kind of represents the weird ways they communicate with each other and their shared neurosis.
6/15/04
No dreams.
6/16/04
I am in some unknown town. It seems to be a very serene, suburban area, probably in the south. It's summer. I am being driven around the town by some guy with blond hair. We are moving along the roads in the town like we are in a car, but I don't remember there being an actual car... kind of like we are levitating along. There are many small hills in the town, and the asphalt roads are laid over these hills... there are also lots of lush green areas where cicadas and crickets are making loud noises out of. There is also kudzu growing everywhere.
As we are "driving" along the town, the blond guy is kind of telling me about some family that is gathered in a room at the local hospital. There is a kind of fat woman with long, scraggly blond and gray hair in the hospital bed... and her family is gathered around her. Like she's sick. There are some flower arrangements and those silver helium balloons in the room too. It almost seems like the woman in the hospital room is not sick, just severely psychosomatic and maybe agoraphobic. And she's sitting on this bed (with a hospital gown wrapped over her normal clothes - a blouse and jeans) and she is being comforted but also assured by her family that nothing is really wrong with her and it's all in her head.
Then some time has passed and it is nighttime. I am hanging around some railroad tracks that are just outside the hospital where the family that the guy told me about are. I think at one point I go into the hospital and into the room and see the "ailing" woman and her family... but there is a lot of confusion. Something happens with one of the white, coarkboard ceiling tiles in the room... like one of the family members jumps up and knocks it out of place to reveal something hidden there. At another point a nurse comes in and tells the family that they all need to leave... kind of like the woman was never admitted to the hospital, she just wandered into the hospital and laid down in an empty room and her family kind of followed her in here.
Then I am outside on the railroad tracks again and it is still night. There is an area where the train stops and lets passengers on and off. For some reason, am supposed to "sneak" onto the next train that arrives without anyone (that might be looking out the window) from the hospital seeing me. For some reason if I accomplish this I know I will get to ride the train for free. I don't know where it's taking me. The train arrives and I have to climb up this metal ladder attached to a concrete wall to get up to where the passengers get on and off. As I climb up I try to move as little as possible so no one looking out of one of the hospital windows will see me. I get to the top and wait for the arriving train to stop. It finally does and a handful of people with suits and briefcases get off. I inch towards the train, but for some reason I'm not able to get on. The train then leaves without me and I decide I will wait for the next one. I wander over to this underpass along the tracks. I need to pee really bad and decide to do it there. Now, the trick seems to be to pee out in the open like this (under the underpass - which is still in view of the hospital) without anyone seeing me from out of the hospital windows. I look over at the hospital and see it's a big five-story structure, a typical hospital design. The surface is beige stucco, and all the rectangular windows are black, the lights turned out... like nobody's there (or are all asleep).
6/17/04
Way heavy sleep. No dreams.
6/18/04
No dreams again.
6/19/04 - 6/24/04
Took a little break.
6/25/04
I am living with my family and we are in a house that looks like one of those new pre-fab mansions you see in massive suburban sprawls (which is similar to the kinds of homes I grew up in). The front foyer of the home has one of those typical two-story high arched windows with a stairway and a hanging glass chandelier. The rest of the home has polished wood walls, light beige tile and matching carpet. Deeper on the inside, the house seems to be kind of connected to other buildings, or long series' of the interiors of other buildings. You can walk through the hallways and suddenly you are inside a school or maybe a mall or something, that is separate from the house, but connected.
At one point I am with someone I don't know (a guy), and we have walked through the back of the house and eventually entered what looks like a large, arena-seating style classroom of a school. It looks old, like everything is made of wood... and the windows have those old fashioned kind of hinges that lock the windows opening out to an angle. The ceiling is very high, and the lights look like those kinds of bright, big hanging metal lamp things that they usually have in old gymnasiums... that take a long time to "warm up" after you turn them on. It looks like a university classroom, but there appear to only be young high school girls in attendance. All the girls have plaid skirts and white blouses - typical school uniforms. The teacher is female and almost looks like a parody of a school teacher... black formal dress, hair in a bun, glasses, long ruler in hand.
At the back of the classroom, behind the arena-style seating incline, the very back seat just drop off to a big wall made of light-colored, polished shiny wood. Then there is an open area, and then the back wall of the room. So if you are standing behind the seats you have this towering wall in front of you and you can kind of hide from everybody.
It seems that the girls in class are having some learning activity where they get up in front of the class in small groups, one at a time, and make some kind of performance or presentation. There is some kind of puffy white mat that has designs drawn on it (a hopscotch board?) laying on the floor in the front of the class, and when the girls make their presentation, they use this prop. The first group is up there and there is one girl, who somehow I know is a real popular overachiever in the class, very pretty and popular and "good." She is standing near the mat with her arms outstretched to her sides. At one point she smiles and says something to the class, and then jumps onto one part of the mat. Suddenly, I see her kind of look up and see her kind of move her right, outstretched hand. She quickly looks back forward and regains her composure... the looking up and the hand flick seemed like a mistake. Then... I see her do it again... but this time her left hand moves, and she only looks up briefly with her eyes. She just keeps going on with her presentation despite there motions which seem unplanned. The teacher and students watch the presentation and don't seem to notice the hand flicks.
Suddenly I can kind of "see" the open hidden area behind the seats. I can "see" two or three of the other students, who are perceived as "bad" girls, back there doing something. They have these white drinking straws, and inside those straws are much smaller and skinnier blue plastic coffee stirrers. They place the blue stirrers inside the white straws, and then put the white straws to their mouths, look up at the ceiling, and blow as hard as they can... like shooting a blow dart. What they are doing is blowing these blue coffee stirrers up from behind the back of the seating area, which then lob and arch way up in the air over the seats and then come down right where the other girls are making their presentations. What the "good" girl who is making the presentation is doing when she kind of looks up and flicks her hand, is catching these little blue stirrers so they don't land on the ground. It seems important that she catch them and they not land on the floor, otherwise the teacher will find out about them. The good girl seems burdened by this, and also unable to stop doing her performance. I can see behind the seating area and the bad girls are laughing hysterically (quietly) and just shooting more and more blue stirrers up towards the front of the class, knowing the good girl is being forced to catch them and also is trapped in her performance. I can then see that the good girls hands (which are still outstretched to her sides) are full of the blue stirrers, she has caught a lot of them, and she also has tears running down her face and her head kind of bowed. Her mood seems more solemn and resigned despite her still doing her lines and going through the motions of her performance. Behind the seats the bad girls are just shooting more straws and thinking the whole thing is a total hysterical riot. I look back over at the good girl, still going through the motions of her performance, still catching more and more little blue stirrers from the air (her outstretched hands are now quite full) and saving the class from being disrupted by the teacher finding out what is going on. She has her head tilted to one side and there is still tears running down her cheeks. She is still doing her lines and doing the performance though... with a blank and resigned look on her face, very weary but determined to see it through. She almost looks like Jesus Christ crucified on the cross.
Then suddenly, time has passed and me and the guy I'm with (who I still can't see exactly) have left the classroom that is connected to the house, and are in a front room of the home. We are at a table doing something. My mother, father and brother are sitting in the next room, at a fold-out card table near the front foyer, all playing cards. Suddenly, I get this weird premonition that a massive earthquake is going to strike the area and our house is going to crumble to the ground. I stand up from my seat and say calmly to my friend "Get out of the house. Now... right now... now, now, now now!" and as I do, I slowly walk from the room we are in and through the next room and past my family. My friend does not follow me out. I keep looking forward as I go towards the front door but I say loudly so my family can hear "Get out of the house it's going to collapse! Do it now! Now, now, now, now!" I feel my family follow behind me and as we walk through the foyer the entire house collapses into a thick cloud of fine dust all around us. I know we all have mere seconds to get out, and with the house disintegrating all around us as we walk out, I feel a rush of adrenaline and panic, and wonder if we are barely escaping or getting killed.
Suddenly time has passed, and me and my whole family (and one of the dogs my parents own, an nondescript one... small and white) are outside our crumbled, wrecked home. It is overcast, warm and windy outside. We are picking through the ruble to try and find things we can save.
6/26/04
I seem to be in a hybrid city that is both New York City and also Dallas, Texas. I seem to be living in this one apartment complex I lived in in Dallas during a really amazing year of my life. But, it also seems to be NYC in the present day. The actual location seems to be located in Dallas, but sometimes it is mentally associated with New York, sometimes not.
My apartment is on the ground level, with a little enclosed porch - just like it was, but rather than being adjacent to the parking lot, it's behind the building... near a large creek with a bunch of trees. You have to walk through a long kind of hallway of green grass (with two apartment complex buildings on either side of you) to reach the lush, green creek area and then turn and there's the front of my apartment. Inside the apartment, the whole place is lit up in different shades of amber lights, and I seem to have a roommate that I don't know, some tall blond guy.
For some reason, I'm arriving at my apartment in the parking lot, in a car, having just picked up my grandfather from my father's side (deceased in real life) and my grandmother from my father's side (still living) from the airport. They are visiting me "in New York" for some reason. I park in the parking lot and start to walk with them through the grass hallway thing towards my apartment. I seem to have other people with me that are helping me. It is late dusk, almost dark. As I reach the grass, I look down and see that there are hundreds of giant ant hills poking out of the surface of the grass, all over. The whole grass surface is festering with black ants and dirt anthills. My grandparents are already walking through the grass towards my apartment before I realize this (I am helping my grandfather and someone else is helping my grandmother). I look down at my grandfather's legs and see there are black ants crawling all over them. I kind of panic but since they're black ants and not fire ants, I figure it's best to just try and make it to my apartment. I say something to everyone about the ants and everyone hurries to my place.
When we get there, everyone is sort of relaxing in my amber-hued apartment. A lot of people seem to be over, visiting, and my grandparents are there. My grandmother lays down on a fold-out cot for a while to rest, apparently because of the ants. There are paper partitions separating different areas of the apartment - like Japanese paper walls. There look very pretty in the amber lights.
For some reason, my apartment also seems to have this weird series of concrete skateboard ramps inside of it, somehow they all fit inside. There are a lot of young blond guys, very California-looking, skateboarding in my apartment on the series of ramps and bridges. One guy stops skateboarding and stops me and asks if he can show me his modeling portfolio. I start to look at it, and inside I see that he has a few pages of old Hans Fahrmeyer's photos of me, but he has used just my face and he has cut it out and glued it over his face, with his body. In some photos he has kind of weirdly half super-imposed his face over my face in the Fahrmeyer photos... so it's kind of half-faded over it... and in some cases he has actually just used the Fahrmeyer photos of me as him. There are some Fahrmeyer ones that I don't remember ever seeing or taking. He tells me he got the prints from Hans himself. When I ask him about the glued and super-imposed ones, he just kind of smiles and says "Yes... I did that as a kind of homage to you!" Then he takes the portfolio and gets on his board and skates upwards on a ramp to this odd door, which just appears and opens right at the top of the ramp, into and through the drywall of one of the walls in my apartment. It's just black darkness on the other side of the door. He says "I'm off to the airport to fly to New York now!" as he skates through the door and it shuts.
Then a scenario shift: I appear to be on the Brooklyn Queens expressway, right outside of Manhattan. It is sunny and hot. I am driving a car with a bunch of people I don't know in it. It is a small car, like they drive in europe. Following behind me is my father, mother, brother, and the two grandparents from before. They are in an equally small car. I seem to be leading them into the city to continue the "visit." The roads seem to curve and ramp and twist, just like the skateboard ramps back in my apartment did. There are not many cars on the road. I am arguing with the guys in my car about what exit to take and where to go in order to get to Manhattan, as my family's car follows far behind.
At one point, I take this one ramp that turns onto this long, loop curve. The road tilts in towards the center and we just keep driving and driving, turning and turning more and more tilting up towards an angle. The curve never lets out onto another road but just keeps spinning more and more into a spiral. Soon we are riding into the center of a great spiral, at a 45 degree angle. The road changes and seems to be made out of a yellow kind of clay that has hardened in the sun. Also, a large underground area appears below the spiral road (which is now supported by a series of columns - like an overpass. The road becomes smaller and smaller and just spirals downward to the ground level of the underground part... like some kind of decorative sculpture. The road and columns and underground area are made of the yellow clay, and are decorated with bits of tile and stuff. They almost seem to be some kind of ancient ruins. It's a very open-air area, and the bright sun is beaming through all the layers of road and columns and casting interesting shadows all over the place. It's a very beautiful space... like a temple. At the center of the spiral is a kind of symmetrical design made of tile on the floor. There are a group of guys down there that look Puerto Rican or maybe even Greek or Iranian. They are playing a game of marbles in the center circle. Also, my car is down there... somehow. I don't know how it made it all the way to the bottom because the clay spiral road got to be only a few inches wide towards the bottom. Me and all the guys get out and wander around. We realize we're trapped down here and there's no way to get the car out. I ask the guys playing marbles how to get out. He tells me that I need to go warn the car with my family that was following me to not turn onto that exit and end up down here. I start to physically climb up onto each level of the spiral road and run along it back up to the expressway to warn the car with my family in it. Parts of the clay spiral road and columns have beautiful honeysuckle bushes overgrowing around them. It smells wonderful. there are also interesting flying insects wafting everywhere. I keep climbing up to level after level of the yellow clay spiral road and running along to get to the top, the sun is hitting my face and it feels very warm and wonderful.
6/27/04
No dreams.
6/28/04
I am at some really strange place that seems like a prison or a giant holding cell for detainees or something. It looks just like a prison, but new and modern and nice... tile floor, painted cinderblock walls... everything is painted in cream, peach and maroon. All the exposed pipes are painted maroon. You can tell through the windows that it is daylight outside.
I am with a group of people that are being led from one area of the prison to another. We are being "processed" into the prison. Again... I'm not sure if we are actually under arrest for a crime or what... it's almost like we're just being held for some other reason. The leader of our group... they guy leading us around from room to room, is some guy that is tall and blond, and may have an Australian accent. He keeps leading us around and doing roll calls.
At one point I notice that we all suddenly have these baggy white decontamination suits on, complete with elaborate plastic helmets/gas masks with all kinds of tubes hooked up to them. The shoes are black rubber boots that attach to the legs of the suit. As I notice this, the blond leader suddenly starts talking to us about the suits (he is suddenly wearing one too). It is almost like he's demonstrating it to us like he's on a TV infommercial or something. He's explaining that the suit is used for large crowds of people so they don't suffer from "crowd rage." He says that the suit takes care of any and all of your individual bodily functions, so that none of those functions can happen to you in a crowd and offend others... and possibly cause the offended person to get angry and react and have "crowd rage," which could turn into a riot.
As he is talking and demonstrating, I keep looking at our group and everyone is trying to fit the enormous head pieces on and whispering amongst themselves about how to attach each tube, etc. He is still going on and on, explaining each tube. It looks like the suit takes a long time to put on and get into. He is saying "This suit will allow you to be in close proximity to a large number of people for hours, even days... all the while providing a blissful cloud of comfort and un-botherability that usually comes with such cramped conditions. Let the suit melt your annoyance away forever! Live in a sardine can with ease! It's like living on a cloud!" and stuff like that. I am watching him put it on and suddenly I realize that once it is on, it would be hard to take it off if you had to suddenly go to the bathroom. He kind of reads my thoughts and looks up at me and says "Ahh! But wait!" and he reaches down under the baggy front of the his white suit and pulls out semi-transparent white plastic tube with a kind of nozzle and switch on the end which is orange. He explains that this tube is for you to relieve yourself if "nature calls." He laughs and says "The trouble is... deciding which end you wanna attach it too... even maybe your mouth!" ...apparently there's just one tube for all those functions, and your orifices have to share it. Then he adds "...and if you cut yourself... just attach it to the sore so the blood can run into the tube! No messes anywhere!"
I notice the tube is transparent enough that is any urine or feces or anything else was traveling through it, you could see it - since the tube travels outside the suit (which I think would be embarassing) - and where the tube leads to... who knows. I soon realize that the suit seems more designed for people that have weird, traumatic "bathroom panic" issues, and can't go anywhere public for more than a few minutes without making sure there is a bathroom within the vicinity for them to use if they need to. It seems like that's what the suit is actually for. I still am unsure as to why were are being detained and cattle-ed around this prison.
6/29/04 - 6/30/04
No dreams.