Mark Allen's Dream Journal - March, 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.3/11/04
I'm in some kind of ranch-style house somewhere in midwest America. Parts of the house look like they have been added onto over the years. Some of the rooms have plywood walls and plastic sheeting for windows. The floors are irregular and slanted and covered with carpet swatch samples. Outside the house is a glorious, flat, see-for-miles landscape with no trees. It is sunny daytime and the sky is rippled with white clouds. It is spring or summer. It's windy.
I seem to live in this home with Jim and a bunch of other people I don't recognize. Jim and I share a room that has old wood floors and brand new white drywall. There is a closet in our room with bare, untreated wood French doors on it. There are big rolls of industrial carpet in our room for some reason.
It is nighttime at one point... and I am in the kitchen, which has overhead fluorescent lighting and yellow linoleum floors that are peeling up around the edges. There is a tall, skinny guy in the kitchen with me. He is making microwave-able soup in the microwave. The weird thing is that the microwave on the kitchen counter seems to have some kind of wicker basket covering thing around it... which allows the door to open in the front (and also has a wicker covering). The microwave beeps and the guy takes his hot mug of soup out of the wicker microwave and sips it... it is hot and he spills a little of it on the yellow floor. It's bright yellow chicken noodle soup spilled on the yellow linoleum floor. I walk into Jim and my's room.
I look into the door of our room and see Jim sitting down on the floor of our room with a single green desk lamp on the floor, he is reading a book. As I walk into the little hallway that leads into our room. I see some other guy sitting up on the floor of the hall, adjusting some plastic floor runner sheeting. He says "Watch out for the runner... there's glitter on it." He's just a dark shape on the floor, I only see his outline and hear his voice. I see the clear plastic runner and see that it has red glitter on it. I walk across it with my sneakers on. Then I join Jim on the floor. I lay down and put my feet up on the windowsill of one of the open windows of our room. The window is open, and I feel wind blowing in. I look up at my feet sticking out of the open window and see that it is not nighttime anymore. It is day, and the sky is very cloudy and dark and the wind is blowing. For some reason my sneakers are off now, and I have bare feet. I can see little bits of red glitter all over the bottoms of my feet.
3/12/04
No dreams.
3/13/04
I seem to be in some other city. It almost looks like Venice Beach area in LA, but it's a little different... very modern. There is what looks like a giant glass amphitheater on the water near all the boardwalk stores. I seem to be traveling with a group of guys that I do not know for some reason. It is near evening and I am walking along the boardwalk and looking at the amphitheater. I am thinking about how great it is to be in a city other than New York. I feel really free. there are lots of areas on the boardwalk with little partitions made out of semi-opaque clear plastic... and these are accentuated with strips of neon lights in strange shapes... very 1980's looking. Also those little packets of ketchup you get in fast food restaurants... those keep popping into my mind. And also, as I walk along I also seem to keep thinking of this stack of magazines that I saw in one part of the dream, and how I want to read the articles listed on the covers. I keep thinking of them.
Suddenly, I am with my travel group and we are walking through giant alleyways in the backs of buildings in a downtown area. We seem to be in a new city's downtown area, like Chicago or Atlanta. It is daytime, and the sun keeps peaking through via reflections of faraway mirrored buildings. The alleyways are wide and huge. For some reason, it appears that there are passageways in this city... like alleys and hallways... that act as portals that lead to other cities anywhere in the world. Some people in our group are returning from exotic places... and I get the feeling that I have just returned from Europe. Now... we are all looking for the back entrance to a particular building, as it contains a passageway to take us all home. I know somehow that that "home" is Dallas.
I am with the group of guys and we are wandering the vast, urban alleyways looking for the building. Finally, we find it. There is a door that opens into a room that looks like a large empty office space with no windows... just overhead fluorescent lighting, drywall and industrial carpet. The guy who owns the space is this Italian guy in his late thirties. He has greased-back hair, gold jewelry on, a wife-beater shirt, a thick Italian/Brooklyn accent... the whole cliché. He seems annoyed by us having to come to this place to "transport" ourselves back to Dallas... but it appears to be his "duty" so he just complies. He tells us to walk all the way to the other end of the office space... which has lots of empty rooms. We all walk to the back (the front of the building). We are all in this kind of line, and stopped in the middle of the room in front of what looks like an abandoned stairwell (the top part of a stairwell that cuts into the floor and leads down to the next floor) that is covered with giant pieces of plywood like a little ramshackle hut. He walks over to the plywood and starts removing it. As he does he is saying:
"OK guys here's the deal. Jump down this hole and you will fall into a space that will be between two walls that are very close together. There is only one foot of space between the walls that you can move in. It forms a long, skinny hallway. Don't be afraid just keep walking along forward. There is no light light down there and it is very dark. Way at the other end you will see a long slit of light... this is the end of the transportation tunnel. It will open into a back alleyway in downtown Dallas. Do you understand?"
We all agree and as we do, the dream changes from color to black and white. We all start jumping into the stairwell/hole and falling down one by one into the dark passageway. I am one of the first to go. We are all laughing and jumping on top of each other and goofing off. Above me I can hear the Italian guy getting annoyed and yelling "Yo guys stop goofing off! If you're gonna bust my chops you're outta here you understand!?" When I fall into the passageway/hallway I see that it is wider than one foot. It has drywall walls and a concrete floor. I am very aware that everything around me is black and white. There is a lot of dust on the floor and I keep stopping to look at little pieces of paper and stuff on the floor that look like ticket stubs and popcorn and candy wrappers from an old carnival or event or show. Guys keep falling on top of me from jumping in and then running ahead of me towards the slit of light. Once your eyes adjust you can see in the tunnel very well. I look ahead toward the slit of light that is the end of the tunnel and see everyone laughing and goofing off and running "home". I want to linger and don't want to go... and feel kind of melancholy.
3/14/04
Only vaguely remember something about being in a space that looked like a high-rise office. The office space had no furniture but there were these sculptural things on the floor that were like tiers of levels that you could sit on. The floor and the levels were covered in industrial carpeting (burnt orange? dark gray?). There were some girls there that had long, straight hair. Outside the window was a vast city... sometimes it was day and sometimes it was night. We were really high up.
3/15/04
I'm in some strange alternate version of my apartment. The bedroom windows are as big as the wall, and let in tons of light. There is a ledge thing you can sit on and look out the windows into the street. There are lots of potted and hanging plants on the ledge... the ledge has wooden parts that make it look old, like part of an older apartment. Outside the big window looks like a constant shift between dawn and dusk. I see lots of big orange light shapes against the buildings that look like the long, evening sun.
There is some machine on the window ledge that has all kinds of knobs and buttons on it. It has a silver/aluminum top and fake wood sides... looks like it was made in the 1970's. Even though I can see no speakers on it, I can hear music coming out of the machine somewhere. It sounds like these slow, low-ended horn sounds... like jazz players dragging along and playing something at half the speed they normally would, in slow motion. I start to fiddle with the knobs and listen to the music. I start to notice really pretty, interesting things about the music. I start to think that it doesn't sound slow and dragging and actually sounds pretty hypnotic and highly detailed. I start to get happily "lost" in the sound as I fiddle with the knobs and begin turning the knobs to the weird music (which don't seem to be having any effect on it). Just as I am really getting into it... I turn one particular knob and *wooooo-e-e-e-e-s-s-h-h-h-c-r-e-e-eeeeeep-p-p-p!!* ...the recorded sound suddenly speeds-up to "normal." I hear all the horns playing at a faster speed and pitch... how they were intended to be. I suddenly realize that what I was listening to was John Coltrane's "Ascension" - a recording I own and am very familiar with. I stand up from the machine as the music keeps playing. I think "Huh... I can't believe I didn't recognize that, even at a slow speed!" I listen to the horns and recognize it all... but I stop dancing and getting into it like before.
Then a scenario shift: I am meeting a friend at a really nice restaurant in New York. I am walking to the restaurant and I notice that the New York I am walking through is different... it almost looks like some newer, suburban city like Atlanta or Dallas. It is also very hill-y... like San Francisco. I finally arrive at the restaurant and see that it is a wide, flat, cylinder shape. Like a fat silo. There are no windows on the outside at all. I walk into the front door... the only way in, and down a small hallway and greet the matridee. I walk past him and into the interior. There is hardly anyone there. The inside of the restaurant is, of course, round shaped. All the walls are mirrors and all the furniture is shiny gold and brass and red cushions. There is subtle colored lighting everywhere and the carpet is deep maroon. It looks like a carnival carousel. I find my friend sitting at a table alone and walk over and greet him. We talk and the waiter comes over and we order. Our food arrives and we start eating. The restaurant starts to fill up more and more with people. My friend seem to know lots of people there and he starts saying hello to people and bringing them over to our table to introduce me. Some european guy sits at our table and starts talking to us. As I am talking I look down at my food and see that it is these pieces of lettuce that are caked with clumps of salt. I look around the restaurant and notice that it has changed. Since all the people have arrived, the interior is less like a carousel now and is more dark... everything looks gray and black and lit with dim white lighting. Even the people are all wearing black... even the shape has changed from round to rectangular.
Suddenly, for some reason I know I have to go to the upstairs part of the restaurant alone and do something... get a phone call or something. I excuse myself and walk out the front hallway and into a door that leads up a narrow stairwell and into a hallway upstairs and then into a little room. The upstairs part of the restaurant is incredibly minimal... like an empty office. I think there is something I have to attend to, like a phone or machine of some sort on one of the tables. I do whatever I have to do and then I walk back downstairs. I walk through the front hallway back into the restaurant (the hallway still looks carnival-like, but when I get into the interior it has changed again to dark and rectangular). As I pass the matridee I think to myself "Should I greet the matridee by name every time I pass him? What is the proper etiquette?" I get to my table and sit down. The european guy i gone. I see that my food is gone too. My friend says "That dish was really gross so I had them take it away and ordered something else for you."
3/16/04
I am walking along a section of Manhattan that looks nothing like the Manhattan I know. I seem to be on some edge of the island... but there are hardly and buildings at all on the island. It is just a series of gently rolling grassy hills cut by gray cliff areas. I can see the beginnings of New York City a way's up from me... in the distance. I think I may be on the south-west tip of this weird Manhattan. The grass is not very lush... still green but post-winter green. The sky is kind of cloudy and windy and mild. I see some man-made stone walls around me that look very old, like they are ancient ruins. I soon notice more old ruins around me... not much... just the outlines of buildings that existed centuries earlier (impossible for America). The place I am at reminds me of the San Cristobal Fort area of San Juan, Puerto Rico. I soon "know" that these are the ruins of an ancient castle... one that's history far pre-dates the existence of Manhattan.
I also soon become aware that Amy Sedaris has recently died. It seems that the grassy hill I am standing on represents the ancient ruins of the Christopher Street area that her apartment was in. It appears that, in the time period since the ancient castle's ruins (that I see remnants of around me) existed, and now... the Christopher Street area of Manhattan has been built, existed, then fell into ruin also. But there are no signs of the Christopher Street area at all... the older ancient castle's ruins, in the same spot, are the only thing that remains. In fact... the only way that I know that Christopher Street used to be around here is because I know that Amy died recently, and I see flowers placed on the ground where her apartment used to be, and I know she lived in that area of Manhattan. The ancient ruins (nonexistent in reality) are the only real historic location marker, but my memory of Amy and where she lived is an invisible marker of a seemingly gone New York City (or one that has moved north on the island).
I seem to be with an unidentified female now. She is the one who placed the flowers on the empty grassy spot where Amy's apartment used to be. She is now ahead of me... walking over the hill towards the buildings of New York. She is telling me to join her. I stop and look at the flowers on the ground and see them blowing in the wind. There is nothing at all left... just empty ground. I think of Amy and her apartment designed by Todd Oldham, and her pet rabbit and her weird career. I somehow know that the exact spot of Amy's bedroom was also the exact spot of the princess or queen's bedroom in the ancient castle ruins. I wonder if Amy knew this too. I look out into the water (it looks like a vast ocean and I cannot see the Statue of Liberty or New Jersey) and see the view that the princess or queen had outside her bedroom window when the castle was here. I wonder if Amy had the same view amongst Manhattan when she lived here.
3/17/04
I seem to be in the country somewhere... maybe upstate. I am in some country house. Outside it is rainy and overcast... summertime. I seem to be working on the house... like moving in or something. There are a lot of people I am working with. One of them is Dale, this acquaintance I used to know who worked for Peter Gatien. He was straight but always working around gay people, and he was very handsome and people were always getting crushes on him and speculating whether he was gay or not. He is wearing blue jean overalls and a red baseball cap. At one point we are sitting on a bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. There are cluttered boxes everywhere and the rain is pelting the windows outside. We are both sitting on our sides and facing each other and chatting and laughing about old times. At one point I ask him what it was like to have people constantly getting crushes on him all the time, and whether or not it created a really confusing energy around him. He seems surprised that I asked this and then he starts to tell me what it was like. We both are laughing and talking about it... and it seems to be a weird bonding moment between us.
Then a scenario shift: I am in New York City. It looks a little different than the real New York. It is daytime and in the summer. It is warm but semi-overcast and balmy. I think it may be the Fourth of July or some similar holiday. I seem to be around the Brooklyn Bridge area. It seems that a series of small explosions have gone off in the area and people are unsure whether it was fireworks or a terrorist bomb. Everyone is running around kind of edgy and nervous. At one point I am observing a moving helicopter shot of the bridge and the water (or I am looking down from inside the helicopter). I see a boat going along the edge of the water near the bridge where people are congregated (in my dream there is a boardwalk), and someone on the boat is shooting roman candles or something like that into the crowd. People all scream and run when this happens... some are laughing but some are scared. I can hear a newscast in the background of a woman's voice saying "We are still unsure whether the reported incidents are terrorist threats or just people playing pranks with fireworks... but stay with us all night as we stay on top of this story and bring you the latest details!"
I am then on the wooden walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. There are a lot of people on the bridge... so much so that it is kind of a solid line that is slowly moving... away from Manhattan on the right, towards Manhattan on the left. It's almost like there is a single line of people moving each way, there is a hold-up for some reason hence the crowds and slow speed. We all seem to be holding onto a metal cord that runs the length of the bridge on each side, and guiding ourselves along with it. As I'm walking along and looking at the nervous people I am thinking "...this is the perfect time for terrorists to strike." At one point, four tall guys come along on our side of the bridge, they are walking the wrong way. They are dressed all in white and are kind of old for the way they are dressed (kind of like rock stars). I hear people talking about them and learn that they are members of some Australian band that was famous in the 1980's. When the guys reach me they stop because the crowd has stopped moving. One of the guys leans against the cord right next to me and just stares me down. His friend does the same thing.
Suddenly, all around me I am aware of white tent walls. Where I was standing on the bridge has now transformed into a bar area inside a tent, and the cord I was leaning against is now a bar and I am sitting on a barstool. My friend Gregory is suddenly there, and he's the bartender... and is right in front of me. He knows the Australian guys and is watching me interact with them and laughing. The first Australian guy looks at me and says "What's your story?" I laugh and don't say anything, but I turn around and look at the necklace hanging around the second guy's neck. It has a pendant with letters on it that spell out something like "MUWELUSSRUS" or something nonsensical like that. I ask him what the letters stand for and the first guy interrupts him and says "It stands for 'my friend here can sexually assault Mark Allen'." I crack up and turn around and look at Gregory and am like "Oh! That's interesting!" and Greg and I both laugh. The second guy then kind of picks me up from the bar stool I was sitting on and kind of thrusts himself into me. Greg then smirks and gets this funny look on his face like something is about to happen, then he turns and walks away and leaves us alone. I wriggle away and don't look at them and get up to leave.
Then another scenario shift: I am at a butcher shop near my apartment. There is a big table in the middle of the butcher shop. Apparently there is some kind of fundraiser going on and everything that can be raised by the butcher shop is being placed on the table. The table has piles of money and gifts on it. Brian Turner is there in a white butcher coat, and seems to be in charge of the fundraising. Suddenly some guy walks in the front door wearing a white butcher coat that has blood stains on it. He has a clear plastic bag full of hamburger meat with him. He plops it on the table and says "This is from the butcher shop next door. We want to contribute this to your fundraiser!" Brian thanks him and everyone in the butcher shop applauds. The weird thing is, that the same butcher shop that the guy says he is from, is the one he is in. He's contributing from the same place he is contributing to.
Then I seem to maybe be back at the upstate house from the beginning of the dream. I am looking through this old shoe box at these strange little black plastic cartridges. I somehow know that these cartridges are some old kind of toy or something, and can be played on some outdated machine that doesn't exist anymore. I also know that each cartridge tells a different story from The Bible.
3/18/04
All I remember was that I was in some sort of big, old fashioned dance hall. It was decorated with steamers and confetti... like a party had been going on there for a long time. There were arched windows that looked outside... and it was daytime and rainy. I may have been somewhere in England. I may have also been in the past. There was hardly anyone in the room. It appeared to be the "lull" before the next party arrived... like this was a place that was open 24 hours and people could come and dance during different "shifts" in which the place would fill up. It seemed like one of those old places men could go and pay women 25 cents for a dance.
There was some small, bald, skinny old man wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a white tuxedo... he seemed to work there and was running around straightening chairs and picking up stuff. He seemed kind of hurried and annoyed. He had worked there a long time you could tell. Some song came on the loudspeakers at one point. Whatever song it was, it caused the old man to stop and look up at the ceiling. He seemed annoyed and surprised by what he heard. It seemed like the song was a modern pop song, which made no sense in a place that seemed like it might have been from the 1940's.
There was also at one point one of those wooden Russian nesting dolls on the confetti-strewn floor at one point. All the smaller dolls inside had been strewn out all over the floor and all of them were laying toppled-over on the floor.
3/19/04
There is some giant log-like thing that I am looking at. It almost appears that I am outdoors, and I am looking at a section of a log that is in mid-air right in front of me. I can only see a section of it horizontally across my vision, and I am so close to it that I can't see what is holding it up on my right and left (or if it's part of a tree). I see a blue sky way behind it, and can barely make out green grass in my lower peripheral vision. The log has all of it's bark stripped of and is bare. It is light beige in color... but is definitely living wood. I see what appear to be weird black dotted lines running all over it like a road map. As I look at it I see that the lines are kind of moving. Soon I realize that the moving black dotted lines are ants crawling all over the log.
Then, somehow... the log doesn't change shape... but changes matter and location. I suddenly seem to be viewing the exact same shape of thing... the exact color... but now the background is a fluorescent light wall, and what I am looking at appears to be made of meat, like Spam or something. It also seems to be smaller, and my face seems to be closer to it... so it retains the exact same shape in my field of vision as the log outside did. There are still lines on it... but they are not ants. They are something that is stationary and not an insect... maybe some kind of weird stained pattern on the meat.
Then suddenly it changes again... but again the shape retains the exact spatial properties in my field of vision, it just changes matter and location. I now appear to be looking at this shape through a microscope... I know it is very tiny. The background is lit just like the last one, fluorescent white... but it is just like the background of what you would see when you looked through a microscope. I sense that there is some greenery nearby... like maybe a potted plant on the desk next to the microscope I am looking through. The shape I see is now some super-small piece of living matter... and is the same beige color. The weird black lines are still on it, and are now moving again. I kind of "hear" some voice telling me that I am observing "spirilla" and "bacteria" at work on a piece of living matter.
Then a total and complete scenario shift: I seem to be in a remote arctic research facility somewhere at one of the arctic circles (like in that movie 'The Thing'). At some points I actually seem to be actor Tom Hanks, and sometimes I am just me. Other people are there but I don't know them. We are always wearing hooded fur parkas. Our base is half-cylinder shaped hangar, made of metal... and lies in the middle of a snow and ice covered expanse where there is not a soul around. It always seems to be nighttime. Inside the base everything is lit with deep blue lights... almost like black light. There is clutter everywhere inside... bit of furniture, pieces of machinery that have been disassembled, old lamps, Christmas lawn decorations, etc.... it's like a junk shop storehouse that's in total disarray. There is an area all the way to one side that is clear and you can see the concrete floor. On this area we have some equipment set up, some of which is a two-way radio set up on a wooden table. The weird thing is that there is this layer of white cotton all over everything (just the junk piles)... like the kind that you can buy in giant rolls at Christmas time and roll it out on the ground because it resembles snow. Anyway, tons of this fake snow cotton stuff is all over the junk. It is just draped over everything, hundreds of yards of it. It forms these hill-y, white snowy mounds. In some places the junk is sticking out. The deep blue lights all over everything in the hangar; the mounds of fake snow-covered heaps of junk, the concrete floor, the radio and equipment area... it all has this really spooky glow. Sometime we hang out on top of the mounds of cotton-covered junk and talk... as there isn't too much to do out in the middle of nowhere. Outside you can hear the wind howling.
At one point, everyone else is out of the hangar and I am there alone. I am on the two way radio with someone at a remote central control location - like at a city or something. The person on the other end of the radio has an Asian accent. I am telling him everything that's going on and all the scientific research data me and my colleagues have collected. I keep having to say "over" everytime I finish a sentence. I definitely am Tom Hanks at this point.
As I sit in the chair in front of the radio and hold the clunky microphone to my face, I keep looking over my shoulder. I seem to be kind of eyeing something on one of the cotton-covered mounds of junk as I talk. I finally start to talk into the radio about the thing that I am eye-ing. I am telling the guy at central control about this thing in the middle of the giant junk heap that I discovered the other day and how it's really a mystery. It lies in a very dark part of the junk heap and I can never really make out what it is (the deep blue lights make it hard enough to see as it is). It seems to look like a bunch of those weird antique lamps made of those globes of white glass that have the texture of dripped icy plastic glaze all over the globe parts. And it also has these long spires that have light at the end of them. I tell the guy on the radio that I feel drawn to this thing in the center of the junk heap... and because it's so dark over there I've never really explored it.
Suddenly, I am sitting on the junk heap near the dark area where the mystery object is. I still have the clunky microphone in my hand and am talking to the Asian man. The Asian man on the radio says "Don't you know Mark? That is some kind of mysterious alien machine that was discovered in the ice up in that region many years ago. It is some kind of alien 'ultimate pleasure machine' from another world. The scientists working in the hanger that year gave up trying to figure it out and actually thought it to be a little dangerous. So they just abandoned it there with all the other junk! Feel free to explore it... but proceed with caution! Over." As he is saying all this to me... I am sitting in the middle of the hilly cotton and junk landscape in the middle of the hangar. I am looking all around me at the deep blue light giving everything that weird glow. I kind of look over at the dark area of the alien machine. I start to lean back, still holding the microphone. I lean back and start to fall backwards into the pitch black area where I know the machine is.
Then another complete and total scenario shift: I am me again and am not Tom Hanks. I am at some club in NYC that I don't recognize. It is a gay night at the club and I have just picked someone up and am going home with them. The person has blond hair and is very fat. We get back to my apartment... which actually looks exactly like my apartment. We are lying in my bed and talking and making out. Suddenly the sun is coming in through the windows and I see that it is morning. It is then that we start having sex. We are making a lot of noise. I say to the guy at one point "Don't make too much noise! My mom is in the room next to us and the door is open! She'll hear everything!" I am perplexed that I said this... so I get up in the sun-lit apartment and go peak through the open door at the room where my roommate Domenic usually sleeps... and there is my Mom in his bed. She is covered up with covers and is laying down but is obviously awake and can hear everything. I am subtly horrified at the thought of my mom hearing me have sex right next to her... and right then I look over at the fat guy in my bed and realize that it's none other than actor John Candy! Just then I hear my mother getting up and I know she is about to walk through our room to get to the kitchen. John Candy is sitting up in my bed with covers over him. My mom walks right into the room and looks sleepy-faced and smiles and says "Hi Mark! Good morning... did you sleep well?" and then she goes into the kitchen. I know she heard me having sex but I guess she's just not mentioning it, which seems like the right thing to do.
I'm just standing there all confused and frazzled that my mom heard me having sex right next to her... and that it was John Candy of all people! My mom comes back into the room and I say to her "Mom! I'd like you to meet actor John Candy!" and my mom sticks her hand out and John and my mom exchange pleasantries. Somehow I know my mom meeting a famous actor that I now know will glaze over the awkward situation. It is then that I realize that since John Candy is no longer alive, that this event that I am "existing" in, in the dream, must be some kind of re-run.
3/20/04
I dreamed I was in a room with Jim (maybe my apartment) and he was sitting in this chair, leaning back, and he fell backwards onto the floor. When his head hit the floor it was "caught" by this little red/pink inflatable toy-looking thing that looked like a vagina. That's all I remember.
3/21/04
I am in some unknown suburban town. It is daytime and overcast and mild. I seem to be inside a very large used book store. The books are old, but the building that houses the store is brand new... new drywall, industrial carpet, overhead fluorescent lighting, large glass windows. The store is high ceiling-ed and has a second story running all along it's left side, which looks over the rest of the store as a balcony. The back of the store is one giant window which looks out into a lush garden. I seem to have driven there in a car, as most people in a suburban area like this would have one. I am near the front entrance looking at a table full of old paperback exploitation pulp novels from the 1960's. They all have hilarious covers that are paintings of bad lesbians or doomed criminal teenagers, and most of them are kind of dog-eared and worn. Some are wrapped in plastic protective covers. I keep noticing the original printed price on the books says "25 cents" and "5 cents" contrasted with the price the store has provided... which is usually a couple of dollars. Next to me I see those spinning cylinder carousel paperback book bin things, and some large potted plants. The whole place actually reminds me of the various school libraries from all the schools I attended growing up.
As I'm browsing the table I hear a woman coming down the stairs with somebody else. She is talking loudly about everything in the store. I realize it's Pseu Braun. She is carrying a large canvas book bag and her look has a kind-of subtle 70's San Francisco hippie garb feel. I think she's wearing brown leather flip flop sandals. She exits the store with her friend with the things she has purchased. For some reason, I run around the store looking for something to buy for her. I think I buy her one of the pulp novels and I run out of the store to find her ad give it to her. Just as I do I see her driving away right past the front of the store. She is in a little white car that is a little beat-up and has a really loud muffler. I guess I missed her.
I stand there on the brand-new sidewalk and look across the street. Across from the store is a lush green suburban park with walkways and benches and old trees. I walk across into the park with the book in my hand. I just kind of start wandering around. I look down at the grass and see that it has dew on it and I think I realize that it's kind of early in the morning.
3/22/04
Strange dream, I dreamed about a childhood memory and I can't tell what I dreamed and what I'm simply remembering:
I'm at this week-long, springtime camp that I remember going to as part of a 5th grade school activity way back when I was a kid. Half our class went away to camp for one week during the spring semester. The camp was somewhere in Texas (can't remember the name) and the land the camp was on was very beautiful. In the dream all I remember is walking through vast green forest-y areas that are overrun with giant ferns. The sun is constantly beaming through the trees and shining on the plants and making them glow light green... which is how I remember it. There are dark wood huts with giant glass windows here and there... and the occasional chalky rock road, or chalky rock cliff area. These are sometimes intercut with big creek areas that plow deep between mossy rock, fern-y areas where you can hear water trickling.
I remember my teacher Mrs. Herring who was our group leader. And my childhood friends Dave and Tim are there. There is this girl name Ramona there that everyone was always making fun of and who I always remember because she was so odd and unselfconscious... plus she had really, really pale skin and you could see the blue veins on her temples when the light hit it just right. She sang Dolly Parton's "Love Is Like a Butterfly" at the camp talent show, complete with hand movements like a butterfly, and a lot of people were laughing but she just kept on doing it without flinching... and this stayed in my mind for a lifetime. I remember everyone used to call Ramona "Ammonia", and she used to talk a lot, and one time one of the counselors yelled at her during a hike and said "Ramona! Stop yakin' and start walkin'!" and this becvame a kind-of repeated phrase by everyone at camp the whole week. I also remember sitting with Tim and figuring out the lyrics to our camp song for the final day "show" where every troop stood on bleachers and sang an acapella song for the other troops. We did one with our own lyrics about camp life that was set to the tune of the Bee Gee's "Stayin' Alive" and we got in trouble for trying to use the line "You got splinters in your can" (meaning 'ass') which Mrs. Herring quickly changed to "You got splinters in your hand" before the show and got really mad and we felt censored. Tim yelled the line "can" really loud during that part anyway while we sang and everyone in the crowd of 5th graders roared with laughter... and we somehow got a real kick out of this and felt triumphant. All that stuff really happened... and I can't tell if I just remembered it all as soon as I woke up from the dream, or if the real memory was part of the dream.
Then, as the real memory kind of turns off, the dream continues: at one point I am walking through the forest at that camp, I can't tell if I'm a small child in the past or am re-visiting the area now. The sun is shining and everything. I come upon this small clearing in the forest that has twisted, wrecked parts of cars... like whole cars that have been smashed up in accidents. They're just sitting there in the woods. Sometimes the light shines on the broken glass on the windshields and glitters. Soon... as I'm kind of wandering around the cars and looking into them... suddenly I see my mother, father and brother wandering around looking into the cars too. They are right out here in the woods in the middle of nowhere looking at wrecked cars in the middle of a camp-ground forest just at the same time I am? I see that they are themselves now, in the present. I kind of panic for some reason and don't want them to see me. I sort of stop moving and am motionless behind one of the other cars... and they are on the other side of the clearing. I kind of duck down and as I peer at them through the broken back and front windshields of a hollowed-out body of a wrecked car... and if I position my perspective just right and close one eye, it kind of looks like they are sitting in that wrecked car... and their heads are really small compared to the car.
For some reason... I then turn around and run through this line of trees into a vast green meadow that I didn't realize was next to me the whole time. I run into the middle of it and I soon realize that I can hear voices off in the distance. I look way back to the area with the wrecked cars and my family, which I can still make out, because I think it's them. I realize it's not them... the voices ar coming from ahead of me. I turn back around, and way off in the distance... on top of these little hills I see what I somehow know are teenage college students yelling towards me with megaphones. I can't really hear what they are saying because the wind rustling through the green grass is actually kind of loud. But then I keep looking at them way off in the distance and I realize they are saying "Don't write this in your Dream Journal! Don't do it!" ...which I think is odd. I then kind of look over to the right and I see this little group of blackbirds kind of moving around what looks like a nest they have built into the dirt. The sun is shining down really hard on the shiny black feathers of the birds.
Just then I can kind of "see" back at the car wreck area, as if I'm back there. I see my mother handing Mrs. Herring a plastic baggie with some pills in it that are light tranquilizers and telling her "Just have these on hand in case he gets sick. If it happens it'll scare you to death but it's nothing to worry about!" and Mrs. Herring is looking at the baggie and nodding (I had problems with a nervous stomach a lot as a kid... so much so that I had to see a doctor who prescribed some kind of kiddie tranquilizer that I took once or twice).
Then a real memory: I remember Mrs. Herring having that baggie of pills at the camp and my never needing them during the whole week... and on the bus at the end of camp... when we were all getting ready to go back home... Mrs. Herring came over to me and said "Mark you never needed these, so you know I'm just gonna throw these away because there's only a few of them and they've been kind of damaged from the heat and moisture" and she got off the bus and I watched her through my seat window as she threw the baggie into one of those large barrel aluminum trash cans that had flies buzzing all around it. Later the bus was pulling away from the camp and everyone was waving and looking back at the camp and yelling "Bye camp!" and "Bye cabins!" and "Bye bad food!" and "Bye hiking!" and my eyes were fixated on that trash can.
3/23/04
I seem to be in some vast, old building... somewhere in England. On the inside, the building is mostly made of old, dark antique wood... sometimes carved decoratively. The massive building seems to have hundreds of floors and may be miles wide. It has office complex areas and apartment areas... even shopping and maybe public parks. I seem to be wandering from area to area... I think I am killing time before I catch a flight back to New York (maybe the airport is in the building?) I wander into this one area that has what looks like a big office meeting room that is connected to a living quarters. The meeting room has a high ceiling and I think maybe tall, stained glass windows. It's walls are dark carved wood with lots of bookshelves. The doorway separating the meeting room with the living quarters is made of two massive doors that open out. As I wander around the empty room... I notice on the floor in the corner what looks like some kind of old tape recorder and microphone. It's very big and seems to be from the 1970's... all made of fake wood-pattern, brushed steel and dark gray plastic with dark black knobs. There is a cassette tape in it.
I walk over to it and, for some reason, decide to start recording my voice onto it. I turn on the "record" button and start to talk in this old man TV announcer kind of voice and start to mimic a used car lot TV commercial. I'm going "Hi! This is Sal So-and-so and come on down to Al's used car lot for a great deal..." and on and on. I even grab these pencils that are next to the recorder and start clicking them on the floor next to me to try and mimic the sounds of a car lot in the background (huh?) I start to move away from the recorder microphone as I speak and click the pencils... because for some reason I think the natural resonance of the room will disguise my voice more and make it have a "realistic television commercial sound" or whatever. I don't know why I think this.
Then suddenly the massive doors open and some young English guy in a suit, with long-ish blond hair and glasses, pokes his head in and asks me who I am and what am I doing. He is oddly polite in the situation... the way English people can be. I tell him that I was just wandering around waiting for my flight to leave for New York, and I just happened in this room and saw this tape recorder and thought I would record a parody of a TV used car commercial because I didn't think anyone was around and it wouldn't really matter. He tells me that he needs to get this room ready for a meeting happening in 20 minutes. I click off the recorder (as I click the button off I look down and see that I'm not sure if I hit the right record button when I started... did my recording actually record?) I am putting away the recorder and I start to help the guy kind of straighten up the room for some reason. He is very friendly and he starts to ask me about my life in New York. He then says "Yea I work here in this office... it's drudgery. But I'm saving my money so I can move to New York! I'm trying to get where you are in life!" I think to myself that he must have never been there.
I then wonder if my TV commercial recorded properly and I rewind the tape and hit the play button. My recording plays and echoes loudly through the big room. The English guy stops what he is doing and we both kind-of listen. I feel like my backing-away-from-the-mic room resonance trick worked because my voice really sounds like some cheesy middle-aged used car salesman and the clicking pencils somehow made the sounds of a busy car lot come across in the background of the recording... it's amazing.
As the tape is still playing loudly... I walk through the massive doors and into the living quarters area. It looks like a kind-of small apartment with a large kitchen area in the center of it. There are two older women who are the maids running around cleaning up the living quarters. They are both dressed in 20th century English maid costumes for some reason. There is also a very old man sitting in the living quarters somewhere. I see that there is a working toilet right next to the kitchen counter, for some odd reason... right next to the sink and stove (which has boiling pots on it) and microwave area. I have to pee... so I walk over to it, and unzip my pants and proceed to urinate right there in the middle of the kitchen. The toilet is gross and has clumps of toilet paper and God-knows what else already in it. As I am peeing I am wondering why there is a toilet right there in the kitchen. Also, right as I start to pee, one of the maids comes over right beside me and starts stirring one of the pots on the stove with a big spoon. I get kind of angry that she does this because I'm pretty pee shy and it's hard for me to pee while someone is standing right next to me. It then becomes kind of obvious that she is doing this just to mess with me as I hear her start to crack up and the other maid on the other side of the room starts to laugh. I hear the old man laughing too. Then, the other maid walks right over to the toilet and looks right into the bowl as I am peeing. She puts her leg out (she has bloomers on under a long skirt, and a long black leather lace-up boot) and literally sticks her foot into the dirty toilet water. She acts totally normal as she is doing this, but I can tell she is on the verge of cracking up. She then takes a giant wooden spoon she has in her hand and sticks it in the bowl and starts to stir the filthy, toilet paper-y water in a clockwise direction... all the while looking right into it and trying to keep a serious look on her face. So there are three things in the water... her boot-ed foot, my stream of urine, and her spoon... which is stirring the water. She then stirs the water faster and faster and soon some of it sloshes out of the toilet bowl and onto my foot. When this happens she breaks up laughing uproariously and pulls her boot and spoon out and backs away and the other maid joins her in laughing hysterically and I can hear the old man laughing. I stop peeing and zip up my pants and back away and wonder what in the hell is going on. I can still hear my mock TV commercial playing out of the tape recorder loudly in the next room.
Then a total scenario shift: I am in a hospital operating room observing some surgery being done on a young woman. I seem to be kind of elevated above the operating table, to one side... like up on a high chair or something. There is a doctor who has short curly hair... he is the surgeon... and he has several nurses and assistants with him. They are all dressed in typical light blue surgery garb with face masks. The woman being operated on apparently has some kind of weird accumulated blockage in one of her arteries or something and the surgery is going to try and remove this. The doctor is on the other side of the table from me... and is looking up at me as he has the girl laid out in front of him... with the assistants on either side of him handing his stuff as he needs it. He is also looking up at me and explaining loudly to me everything he is about to do, like I am a camera. The whole thing is set up like a cooking show. The weird thing is that the woman on the operating table is lying way beneath this massive block of off-white styrofoam. The block is about eight feet long and five feet wide and tall. It's huge! I guess the patient is way under at the bottom of the table... as this block takes up all the space. Still, the styrofoam block is just tall enough to be counter-height for the doctor standing in front of it. For some reason... this styrofoam block is necessary for the surgery.
The doctor then takes this big circular saw thing and says to me "I am now going to saw a hole in the styrofoam" and he proceeds to do so. The styrofoam is made up of pretty big chunks that are kind of mashed together... so as he saws it lots of these chunks of foam fly around. He then takes a weird tool thing that looks almost like a fishing hook with a kind of loop think on the end... and he starts to push this bloody sponge (flesh?) thing inside the inner surface of the loop. He presses it through with his thumb and he is explaining to me what he is doing as he does it. Blood is getting all over his hands and the styrofoam as he does this. It's really gross. He keeps talking and then he puts the bloody hook loop thing onto this piece of thick cord and he lowers it into the hole in the styrofoam and into the patient's body. He is explaining to me everything he is doing still and he seems to be working the cord around and trying to make it land in a certain place inside the woman's body. Then, he then must have hit it because he goes "Ahhhh! Success!" Then he takes this large tube that's about five inches wide and looks like it's made of scrunched-up plastic. He lowers this tube into the hole, so the cord is threaded inside the tube and he works the tube slowly into the hole. He says "We are now going to work this tube into the artery (the tube is way bigger than any human artery) and we will rub it up and down and the rough edges of the tube will scrape off the blockage inside the woman's artery!" There is blood everywhere. He then pulls the whole thing out of the hole. The scrunched plastic tube is glistening with blood and is pink (it looks like a human intestine from one of those colostomy films) and when the doctor spots this little maroon blob clung to the side of the tube he stops and points to it and says "Ahhhh! There is a mass! ...but, that is NOT the blockage we were looking for... so I am now going to insert the tube back into the woman's body to try and find the right blockage!" and he proceeds to do so.
3/24/04
I seem to be in the woods somewhere upstate. It is late winter/early spring and still pretty cold. It is late dusk and you can just see the very last of the light silhouetting against the bare tree branches. I seem to be standing outside a cabin. It' a typical deep-woods cabin. It's one story, with a large front porch. It has two windows in the front that are glowing golden yellow from the interior lights, which are on. I am with a group of people I do not know. We are dressed in winter clothes... down coats, hats, gloves. I see that quite a few people have red down ski coats on.
For some reason, we seem to be digging a very wide trench in the ground that is running out from the front of the cabin in a straight line (the area in front of the cabin is dirt, and is a large clearing in the woods). We seem to be using shovels and boards and our hands and anything else we can use to do this. It's about one foot deep. Sometimes it seems like there are just one or two of us... but sometimes when I look up from shoveling, I see a whole bunch of people digging. The number in our group keeps changing.
Soon... as we are digging along and the trench is getting longer and longer and further away from the cabin... we kind of stop because we come upon these two guys standing in our way. They look like hunters and they look pretty hostile. They have on hunting caps and vests and are really big, mean-looking guys. It's almost like they were just standing there the whole time... waiting a long time for the trench we were building to "hit" their feet, so they could get upset with us. Everyone kind of stops and looks up at the hunters. The hunters act really cocky and tell us that we can't dig any further. I tell them that this in my land and these are my friends and that we can do whatever we like... and that they are trespassing on my land. They say that if we move any further that they are going to attack and kill us all.
When the hunter says this, I turn around and look at our group and see that there is only two people in our "group" besides me... and they look as scared as I am about these hunters. I look back over at the hunters. Then I turn my head back again, and look at our group a second time. This time I see a bunch of people... fifteen or twenty in our group. I turn and look back at the hunters and say "What... you're gonna attack all of us? We have you way out numbered! What could you possibly do?" ...but, before I even finish the word "...do" the second hunter whips out this gigantic machine gun and starts firing it wildly into my group. Bright sparks fly out of the gun as it fires. Everyone in my groups starts screaming and running and falling every which way. The first hunter is watching us and laughing. I look back again at my group and everyone is still falling over each other and screaming and panicking. I look back at the hunters and they are spraying the loud machine gun fire and laughing. There is something incredibly false and rehearsed and unreal about what I am witnessing. Like there are no real bullets in the gun and it's all just special effects and everyone's just an actor playing a scene.
3/25/04
I live in NYC... it kind of looks like the real NYC. There is some missing kids story all over the news. It's kind of similar to the Elizabeth Smart case... except this time two daughters are missing. An older girl (about 15) and her much younger little sister. They are both blond and look like Elizabeth Smart. The parents are wealthy, Christian weirdos... and the father (who looks just like Elizabeth Smart's father) is really prominent in the media trying to plead with people to help return his daughters home. Also, it appears that the youngest daughter... who was like nine years old... has been returned home safely. So just the older one remains missing. It has been reported that she is in the NYC area. For some reason I just know all this in the dream.
I am at this Pizza place on Delancey and Allen streets. I am waiting for my pizza... and standing forlornly in the corner I see this blond girl dressed in kind of ratty clothes (similar to the white cult head wrap thing Elizabeth Smart's captors had her wear). She is kind of dirty and is looking around with this kind of helpless look in her eyes. I approach her and realize it is the missing girl. I become very concerned for her and start to talk to her and ask her if she has a place to sleep, food, etc... if she's all right. She's talking to me quietly as she kind of chews on her fingernails and looks around the pizza place... she doesn't seem to want to look me in the eye. I don't think she knows if she can trust me yet. She seems caught between knowing she really needs help from someone... but also realizing that if she does that they might rat her out to the law or her parents. I realize how intelligent she is by the way she is lying with her eyes and body language. She putting on the perfect act of being manipulative and looking helpless... but also putting up protective barriers enough to make sure no one deceives her. Pretty good for a fifteen year old kid. Actually, that may be totally normal for a fifteen year old kid.
It's very obvious that she has not been kidnapped, but that she's run away. I tell her that if she likes she can stay at my apartment... or just use my shower or whatever, and I have food... etc. I tell her that I won't go to the cops or call her folks or anything... that I just want to make sure she's not out on the streets alone.
I guess she agrees because suddenly I am at my apartment. It is daytime outside and the girl is there. I kind of don't see her... I just know that she is in the apartment. I think I hear her taking a shower. My apartment has all these rafters and beams made out of raw plywood and 2x4's for some reason. Then... some time has passed and I see this note on my kitchen counter. It's from the runaway girl. She says thanks for letting her use my shower, and she may return at some point. I guess I had given her a key. As I read the note I kind of see her walking out on Delancey street and the sun is reflecting off the pavement of the street and I just see her silhouette.
3/26/04
I seem to be in my apartment in NYC... but it looks nothing at all like my apartment. It seems to be a converted loft space with old factory windows. It is nighttime and the little dots of red and yellow lights (traffic, other lit windows, etc...) are making interesting patterns on the frosted glass windows... which are slightly open. There are two guys there with me. One is Latin and kind of young. The other is a little older and he is wearing a business suit and has a briefcase with him. It looks like he has spent a day at an office job. The two guys are talking with each other and the older one keeps asking the younger one where he lives. At one point I hear him say "Do you feel like walking three blocks to your house?" It seems that he two guys want to have sex with each other and are for some reason here at my apartment negotiating it.
Suddenly... both of them are still sitting where they were... but are nude. I am suddenly nude two and am kind of slowly hovering over them. Just as I do this... I kind of "see" this black iron frying pan skillet in front of me... it's like I'm "seeing" something from another time and place... like a time when I'm looking down at my stove and cooking. I see that the skillet is full of black eyed peas and is bubbling hot. I also see that bacon has been wrapped around the outer edges of the pan and is sizzling from the heat. I see some layers of white bread and what looks like marinated red peppers on the beans too. I have this big spoon and am hungrily eating the hot beans. I can see the nude guys as I hover in my apartment and the cooking bean thing that I am eating... simultaneously. As all this is happening I am thinking to myself "How am I going to tell Jim about this?"
3/27/04
Only the vaguest memories of a dream:
I seem to be on the set of a movie or film shoot... there is a blond woman lying on her stomach in front of me lengthwise. There is a fake glass window behind her set to break on cue. The director is watching closely and standing behind her. The glass breaks in slow motion.
Also I "see" various views of books standing upright inside various different fireplaces. The books seem to naturally combust into flame on their own. The books look like they have foreign writing on the spine.
Also, maybe something about Cool Whip? That's it.
3/28/04
I'm in some kind of circular ski lodge house thing. It's octagonal in shape and has a fireplace in the center. There are gigantic plate glass windows all the way around it and the whole thing is made of wood and stone... very rustic, 1970's-looking Aspen, CO kind of feel. The floor is light beige industrial carpeting. I am in the house with several people that I don't know. Outside is nighttime and very dark. When I look outside the windows I can hardly make anything out. I can just barely make out the tops of pine trees... it looks like the house is in a wooded area. Also... there seems to be this weird weather phenomenon outside where there are little formations of thunderstorm clouds dotting the landscape. They flash lightning and thunder and rain... but it only stays in the concentrated area where the little formation of clouds are. If you look out, you can see the different areas of clouds flashing and thundering at different times... it really gives you a sense of the immensity of the landscape. Otherwise, when one of the cloud formations is not flashing, it's just a black void.
I seem to be paying attention to this girl in the house. She is a little chunky and has kind of short black hair. She is wearing tight faded jeans and a tight top. She has silver rings on her fingers and no make-up. She keeps looking out the window pensively. Suddenly I kind "see" what she is seeing out the window... which appears to be what is happening behind her, inside the house, reflected in the glass in front of her. Suddenly, she is biting her fingernails in suspense as she sees everything behind her. What she can "see" reflected in the glass is an older, skinny bleached blond woman sitting at a table and a younger guy with a kind of "Rockabilly" look standing up and talking with her. Then she can "see" that the man and the woman are starting to argue. The woman stands up from the table and the man comes at her. Then the man pulls out a large silver knife and looks like he is going to stab the woman. Suddenly out of nowhere... a kind of overweight Mexican guy in a Hawaiian shirt comes out of nowhere and stops the first guy from stabbing the woman. He wrestles the knife out of his hand and it falls on the carpet. As the chunky girl watches all this reflected in the glass in front of her, I can simultaneously watch her from the side and also "see" from her perspective. From her perspective she can see her own reflection, the action unfolding behind her, and the occasional burst of lightning clouds off in the distance (through the dark window), which temporarily obscure the reflected image. When I observe her from the side, I see she is biting her nails as she watches all this and that she has a big, oversized tear drop forming in her right eye. Also, when I see her from the side, I somehow never think to turn my head and watch what is happening behind her for real... to see if it's there. I only watch the reflection of it in the glass, along with her, when I see it that way.
Then I "see" along with her the reflection of the man and the woman and the Mexican guy as they all three embrace and laugh. It appears that the argument and knife fight were fake... like rehearsing a play or something. Suddenly... in the reflection you can see many more people walk into the scene. It's a big party with a birthday cake and confetti and party hats and beer and everyone's laughing and celebrating. You can see lots of cloud bursts at this point that obscure the reflected image. Then I see the chunky girl from the side again and my vision kind of pulls in close onto her face. I "see" that the huge tear that had formed on her eye is a weird kind of translucent, light blue plastic crystal thing. It appears to have excreted out of her eye... but hardened right there under her eye. It's like she wasn't really crying but the tear and what prompted it were some kind of process. She reaches up and detaches the hardened crystal thing from her lower eyelid, then places it onto one of the silver rings she is wearing like a jewel. It fits right into place, and I see that she has several rings with these hardened tear things already on them.
3/29/04
I'm in some setting where it's just a floor and black darkness all around me... except for a single spotlight that is shining directly onto me from somewhere unseen up above. I'm pretty sure the floor is painted black. It's almost like I'm on a stage... but I don't sense that I'm in a theater or that there's an audience. There is a blond woman who looks exactly like actress Macha Méril (dressed as and playing her character, murdered psychic Helga Ulman, from Dario Argento's film 'Deep Red') somewhere on the stage with me... but she is off to the side and not directly under the light. I am standing directly under the light. Soon... I realize that there is someone else with me directly under the spotlight... but I can't see who it is. It appears that this person is on some high bicycle or maybe unicycle or something. They are facing to my left (between Macha and me), and they appear to be actually moving forward, pedaling the bike... and going quite fast. But, they are staying directly under the spotlight and not going anywhere... like the ground is moving beneath them (but it isn't) and they are staying still. They are swaying back and forth slightly in and undulating, hypnotic way... the way you can kind of verve zig-zag if you are coasting downhill. They are just staying right under the light... swaying back and forth and pedaling sometimes... eyes forward to where they are "going" ...indeed riding a bike but actually going nowhere. At some point I get the impression that this spotlight is acting like a kind of "channeler" or crystal ball or something... like I and Macha are "seeing" someone all alone in another remote location or time riding a bike down an incline... this is like a metaphysical broadcast of that fact.
At one point it seems suddenly that I am the person riding the bike under the spotlight. I can kind of see myself (?) to my left, and Macha on my right. Then at another point I am not the person on the bike... but I am hanging on the bike's tall poles (it is a tall circus unicycle at this point) swaying back and forth as the rider sways the bike back and forth.
At another point, I look over at Macha and she is not Macha anymore, but un unidentified younger woman with the same hairstyle. She has an urgent look on her face and is mouthing some words to me. It almost looks like she is shouting, but the volume is turned off. I keep looking through the tall bars of the swaying bike at her face as she does this. I become aware of this low humming all around us... it sounds like something from an electronic music score. It seems to be building and building. I keep looking up at the person on the bike, I still can't see who it is. Then I keep looking over at Macha/the girl and trying to figure out what she is trying so urgently to tell me. The humming/music is getting more intense and I think I hear a kind of pulse/beat thing rising in it. The whole situation seems to be rising in intensity.
Suddenly... I hear Macha/the girl's voice starting to crackily break through... almost like through a bad phone connection. She is shouting at me to look up at the bike rider's eyes. I look up and try to notice the rider's eyes even though I can't really see them. Even though I can't see the eyes of face, it looks like the bike rider is moving along intently and is very focused about where he is going... very confident. I look back over at Macha/the girl. She keep shouting "Look at his eyes! Follow their gaze!" and I keep looking up but them but don't see what she is referring to.
Then it hit's me. I somehow "know" that the bike rider is not just riding a bike at his own will, at all under this spotlight... he is actually following something ahead of him in the darkness, and taking directions from it. I slowly follow a straight line with my head from the bike rider's eyes, out to my left and look way out into the darkness. I try to focus my eyes in the light but only see a black void. Then, slowly... I start to make out the shape of something moving out there. I can barely see it at all, like only the faintest blues and grays... and they are moving. It's very spooky. Whatever it is, it's moving forward (ahead) out there in the darkness, and the bike rider is following under a bright spotlight... copying it's motions, and doesn't want anyone to know. I somehow "know" that the bike rider thinks he is copying the dark shape and that everyone around him hasn't figured it out, but this dark shape in the shadows is secretly controlling the bike rider. It's hard to figure out who is exploiting who in the situation, actually.
3/30/04
No dreams.
3/31/04
I am in some nighttime, outdoor camping situation with Ed Shepp. We are in the woods and I sense that maybe there are tents and trees around us. There is a very large campfire going that seems to be bigger than it normally should, almost like a bonfire. Ed and I are just standing there next to the fire talking or whatever. We both have sticks that we are poking into the fire as we talk. Every time one of us moves or rustles a log or something with our sticks in the fire... bright orange sparks fly out of the fire and the heat carries them upwards into the black sky where they eventually go out. The amount on darkness around us is almost unnatural... you'd think there would be moonlight or something. It's just the flickering glow of the fire on us. Plus, I have that weird sensation of hot, accumulated campfire warmth against the side of your skin that is facing the fire - contrasted with the rest of your skin in the cool outdoors.
As Ed and I are standing out there I suddenly can kind of "see" these weird homemade patchwork quilt that I know Ed has been working on for years. It is a typical patchwork quilt design... but is much more complex that a typical grid-pattern quilt. It has that kind of Amish design to it... a totally symmetrical circle//Mandelbrot/kaleidoscope circular pattern with really intricate stitching and colored shapes... I think it might even have beads sewn into it. I kind of "see" this quilt hanging around Ed's head as we stand there and talk, and I somehow know that he has been working on this quilt for many, many years.
Suddenly, Ed has faced away from the fire and is looking directly at me. He is about two feet from my face and the under lighting of the flickering fire is making spooky shadows on his face. He's just standing there looking at me. I soon realize that the reason that it's so dark around the fire is because we are actually in a giant tent. The tent is made from Ed's giant, complicated quilt! And every time sparks fly out of the fire they rise up and burn a mark in the quilt. I somehow know that these burn marks are ruining the symmetrical design on the quilt... but that this is okay and part of the design process of the quilt. I wonder why there is no smoke accumulating in the quilt tent. Ed just keeps standing there looking at me and as I look over his shoulder, I notice what looks like a barrier of yellow "do not cross" crime scene barrier tape surrounding the parameter of the giant fire. It makes a huge circle around the fire but parts of the tape have melted from the heat and fallen away.