A Dream Interpreted (Dream 21: Brother)

I was living with my mother and my older brother in Queens.

Note: I do not have an older brother in real life

I believe that many of the walls were either glass or mirrors, like an exaggeration of a gaudy/tacky Italian mobster's house. The decor was also distinctly mod---I was sitting in a very low, black leather couch in my living when I decided that I was angry at my older brother, and that to retaliate against him I would destroy all of his possessions.

In this dream, my older brother is played by my Uncle Ray, in fact my mother's youngest brother

A flash of me walking by my brother in the living room as he relaxes on the black leather couch, playing his guitar. There is a large crystal chandelier in this room.

When no one is home, I pillage the house for every picture frame that holds a photo of my brother. All of the frames I find throughout the house---on mantles, on dressers, on walls---are thick crystal: noticeably heavy, cut into complex geometric patterns, and very ornate. As I scour my house, each frame I find with a photo of my brother I hurl violently at the floor or walls, watching it shatter into a sparkling burst of shards. I would hold the frame in my hand to both feel its weight and briefly study its jagged texture, then throw it down with vindictive indulgence. I recall pickup up one particular photo that showed my brother and I in a brotherly embrace and smiling, somewhere outdoors. I broke that one as well.

Once every photo of my brother has been destroyed---and there are a considerable number of them, everywhere, so I really spend time in each room---I enter his bedroom, intent on smashing everything he owns. Some objects I notice are a skateboard and an electric keyboard. His walls are all glass, except the far wall, which is a mirror from floor to ceiling. The ceiling is also a mirror.

I hear my brother enter the house downstairs, and immediately my fear of him and his reaction consumes my emotions, displacing my mission. I seek a place to hide, an escape from his wrath upon the discovery of my raid. I know he is going to want to kick my ass, and that he is soon to find me.

Luckily, my friend Becky shows up and drives me (us) somewhere...Manhattan. We explore the city at night in the security of the theater of the front cabin of her Jeep, and the skyline is incredible...the atmosphere is so clear, that I all I want to do is admire how every building and street light is lit up. We cruise around all night, and the air is cool. Sometime later, she is sitting in my lap, and we are sharing a very intense gaze into one another, and I want us to kiss but make no advances. She either leaves, or something beckons her away. I am content with this ending.

Justine, Becky's sister heard an abbreviated (censored) version of this dream and offered me this psychoanalysis, based on her studies:

"You wish there was an older sibling, a boy, to whom you could relinquish the responsibility of maintaining familial structure and peace. You are angry and out of touch with those emotions in everyday life, so you resolve them in dreams. You smash his photo because you are distraught that someone else doesn't exist to carry the burdens that you don't actually deserve and shouldn't be responsible for. You want to be free of the family drama and your role as the oldest responsible man. Your father is not an option in your mind, so you want an older brother, the only other male figure who could potentially take this burden from you. You smash his photo because you are beyond enraged that he doesn't [actually] exist... that you've been dealt this hand, but in real life you're peaceful, so these feelings are resolved in dreams.

Your getaway [through] Becky represents the happiness you find in true friendship..."

Not having known my family situation at all, Justine happens to be right on the money. I'm actually surprised with how accurately she had divined a deep-deep-inner desire of mine (an older brother) from one of my dreams. Kudos, Justine. I guess textbook psychology has its merits.

Dream 20: Acid

7/14/13

My age is uncertain: I am at least 16, past the major developments of puberty, but I most certainly am still a minor. Therefore I am left with a generous two-year window to exist in tonight, and in which to experience all those feelings of anxiety, amorphous anticipation, and confusion associated with a sexual plot not even explicitly disclosed or defined between the two participating parties.

I have been driven here by my mother, to this vacation-style cabin, to visit some family friend, or perhaps just a friend of my parents. Her age is also unknown, but certainly different enough from mine. She's also about a foot taller than me---Amazonian wouldn't be an exaggeration---but she was dressed in fashionable outdoorsy clothing, relaxed, and her strong features, wide smile and eyes, and brown skin caused her to strongly resemble Carly Simon.

When the dream begins, the two of us have already telepathically committed ourselves to each other for the evening...the question of "how" was not consciously known to me, but the enabling circumstance worked itself out perfectly. It was late in the evening, a fire might have been roaring, and the seated conversations could be heard simmering down to a collective sigh. I was lying in a bean bag chair on the floor, eyes gently closed and focusing my attention on listening to the room. I was actually rather tired---enough so that the volume from my mother and this woman, and the other people with us, was wavering---but more than anything I was waiting for our chance. I didn't even know what exactly to expect, except I knew "it" would manifest into something that would consume the both of us together. And I was thinking about how beautiful she was.

My mother interjected something like "Oh, it's getting late, and we have a busy day tomorrow, so let's wake Joseph up and get everyone home." But this woman countered, so expertly, "But look at how he's sleeping soundly! Let him sleep over here tonight, he'll take the spare bed, and I'll give him back to you tomorrow, when we meet for lunch before going to...." and whatever we were to do as vacationers tomorrow was lost on me. Victory was secured. My mother caved too easily, moved by my peaceful composure on the floor, and she left with the other family members she was toting around.

As the cabin acquired a refreshing new tranquility after the last visitor had left the room, a warm glow began to permeate around the house, and low trace lights faded on to illuminate the doorways and molding around the fireplace. I opened my eyes to see the feet of this woman disappear into her bedroom at the end of a short, unlit hallway branching off from the main room. I kind of stared off into that space, satisfied that we had made it this far already...so far and yet still nowhere, but headed somewhere, is all I knew.

I get up and head for the bathroom, also in that hallway, and when I return she is setting up a makeshift bed in the middle of the floor, in front of the fireplace. Quilts are stacked to approximate a mattress, and even more quilts she is pulling back and already slipping under. Finally, I am standing over her as she casually reclines under the most welcoming and assorted array of blankets I have ever seen, and she acknowledges me for the first time with a few pats of her hand to the empty place beside her, coaxing me under. Ceremoniously I kneel down and enter the flap of quilts peeled back for me, and she says something, and I say something, and we proceed to awkwardly, clumsily grope at one another for a few minutes, still fully clothed and mostly silent. I'm feeling her---or individual parts of her in broken and miscalculated strokes---and she reciprocates by knocking into me with matched ambivalence. And although we cannot fully embrace even once, let alone find enough of one another in the dark, I am giving this all I have, because I could not have imagined wanting anything else from this moment, from her. I was inexperienced.

-

From my fumbling under the sheets, Sophia walks over and literally plucks me up like a ball of socks from a drawer. I am out of the cabin now, walking with Sophia along the Little Neck Bay around midnight, and the abundance of street lights from the nearby parkway give the illusion that the stars have descended to hover close above the bay. The night sky is dark and light at the same time, very golden while being very black. The rippling water is striped like a bumblebee from the lights' reflection. I am very happy to be with Sophia...it's such an uncomplicated and tangible emotion. We find my car parked near the dock, with a view completely unobstructed to the bay and the glowing parkway. From the front seat, the lights seem brighter than ever. The water and the sky are twinkling on a macro level from the density of bulbs lining the shore. Sophia and I have sex in the driver's seat of my car, and as I rock her in my lap we look out onto the water, and I am euphoric over the sight.

-

A bunch of guys and girls from Fordham have come over my Aunt Dolly's house---the regular Nick, Paul & Co. crowd. We decide to take acid, which Nick is amply stocked in. He starts distributing tiny paper wads to everybody, and as I receive mine I notice it is actually a series of individual wads cleverly folded over one another...Nick was stealthily trying to quadruple my dose. I said "Nick! What the fuck, why'd you give me so much?!" holding the unfolded strip of acid tabs out like an accordion paper craft in front of his face. His lips curl back in a wily smile, acknowledging that the trick is spoiled...he has been caught. I tear off one wad for myself and give him back the unused tabs, and take the acid.

A few minutes later, I get up from the plastic-tarp-coated dining room table and begin to pace the living room, anxious for activity and stimulation as I begin to peak. The entire group is vegetating on the couches or floor--- completely inert. I try to rouse them to action: "Guys, let's do something! Make something!" Anil responds for the group that he'd rather watch some television while tripping on acid, and I am indignant towards their lethargy and lack of inspiration. "Why would you guys want to watch TV right now? It's fucking pathetic that you all are just sitting there, when you could be creating something awesome." I give up on the group and enter the kitchen, where I dump a big barrel of Lego's on the table and begin to meticulously assemble this red-and-blue hovercraft-looking object. I am hunched over, holding the Lego model very close to my face and inspecting each individual brick before I place it.

Dream 19: Keys

7/7/13

We are waiting in the cockpit of a tractor-trailer, cruising down a highway late at night, somewhere between the coasts. We consist of I, Sam, and two others---at least one more female is present, perhaps KC. Who is driving right now, is unknown.

We pull over along the shoulder of the road and pick up a stranger, a man. Quickly he is in the trailer with us, and we have pinned him up up against a stack of logs, actually tree trunks, with hands and legs spread and face down, as if we were going to frisk him. I walk up behind him resolutely, and in one fluid motion I insert my house keys through the finger-gaps in my closed fist and punch the man in the back, hard. I grit my teeth as I see the keys disappear into his back and feel his spine jerk. He probably screams---I don't hear anything---but his shoulders flare up in recoil to the blow, and it looks like he's instantly grown a foot taller.

As the others (my friends? team? accomplices?) look on, I pummel this guy a few more times from behind, into his back, and I become conscious that my keys are really tearing into him---blood is soaking his shirt through a dozen small, scattered holes. I pull myself away, at which point the others join in beating this man, and I become consumed by the sight of my hand, smeared in his blood. Bright red streaks flash across my knuckles and wet the soft flesh in the crook of my thumb, and I am horrified, transfixed at this evidence of murder. As I stare at my hands in bewilderment, an acute sense of regret overtakes me. In my periphery I see my crew continue to kick this man with such speed that he remains standing through it all.

Later on, we are sitting in the cabin of the truck, again cruising through the night, staring out into the blackness before us. No one is speaking. For a few moments I watch the slice of road illuminated by the headlights spin beneath us. I receive a keen premonition that this crew will abduct and murder three more people, hitchhikers, throughout the course of the night. I retire to the back of trailer, to figure things out by myself.

This area of the trailer, the back right corner of the storage unit, has been partitioned off and converted into a liquid waste facility. A metal-grate walkway encircles a pool of greenish water, and I am standing along the back, slumped over the railing, ruminating, staring blankly at the floating waster barrels as they bob along the surface to the shifting inertia of the truck. Sam finds me back here and eagerly informs me that they picked up their next hitchhiker; somehow I know he is a tall, bald man.

I tell Sam that I have to leave, that I can't kill another person with them. She is hurt but not discouraged, and tries to lift my spirits and persuade me to follow her to the other area, where they are holding this man. At this point, KC also walks in and tries to console me, putting her hand around my shoulder in a maternal gesture. Whatever she says doesn't reach me, however, and I calmly step back and walk out of  the water area, open a side door to the trailer, and jump out onto the road, where it is so cold that I can see a trace of my own breath.

Dream 18 - Vegetables in Easter Hay

4/7/13

I had recently completed my online TEFL certification and had been hired to teach English as a second language to non-English speakers. My first student was a young Chinese girl, 5 years old according to my dossier, living just around the block from me.

As I approach her house, I observe that it is a perfect box-shape, like some sort of modular home, riveted together with massive copper plates. It resembles a treasure chest or deep-sea diving helmet.

Standing at the door, the mother greets me warmly and welcomes me inside. Playing in the foyer are a small girl (maybe 3 years old, still clueless), a slightly older boy (9 and obnoxious), and an older girl, 11, who turns out is actually my student. Shit, my lesson isn't age-appropriate...I'll have to improvise.

I go to turn on the sink in the kitchen, and it violently rumbles while coughing out dust. I notice the kitchen island is covered in a plastic tarp, which itself is covered in sawdust. The floor in the kitchen hasn't  been laid yet: I am standing on bare plywood. Forget about the bathroom, it's filled to eye-level with central air-conditioning units and aluminum siding, and the sink isn't even connected to anything. The central stairway in the house is only half-installed, and the grandmother is standing at the 2nd-floor landing, placidly observing us from up above. How'd she get up there?

Before I can fancy a guess, the mother shoves a steaming palate of colors in my face, and stepping back I realize it's food. Chinese food. The mother cordially insists I dine with the family before commencing my English lesson with her child. She made General Tso's Chicken, and it looks delicious.

Sitting around the dinner table, I watch the youngest child slap her dinner plate with both hands---broccoli rockets across the room like fireworks. This gives me an idea: the shelves behind me are lined with plastic models of vegetables...toys, in fact. I will teach my student the vegetables' names in English, using these "realia" (in teacher-speak) to spur the lesson and make it interesting! I excitedly shovel the plastic vegetables off the shelves into my open knapsack: Carrots, Celery, Tomatoes ('why not?'), Eggplant, Potatoes...everything goes in the bag.

Suddenly I notice that Sam is sitting next to me; I proudly tell her my plan, and she approves.

-----------------------

Dan, Alex, and I are in a theater watching a shitty disney/dreamworks/pixar movie, replete with nauseating confetti candy-coated scenery and special effects. It's the new Johnny Depp movie.

Bored to tears, Dan and Alex produce from somewhere these neon-colored paint-pens (Hot Pink and Screamin' Orange) and start tagging up their seats. Actually, they are tagging up everything, leaking globs of fluorescent paint onto any surface in the theater. In the bathroom, where we stop to take a piss before bouncing, Dan scrawls a massive splat of Hot Pink on the tiled wall next to the sink. it looks haphazard and amorphous, as if someone literally launched a handfull of paint at the wall.

We give less of a shit and head for the bathroom's exit when the matron of the theater---an old and grisly woman with her hair in a beehive, personifying "expired"---barges in and orders us to clean up our graffiti. She specifically points to the big pink mess on the wall, and actually doesn't stop pointing at it until we acknowledge its existence. The three of us just awkwardly glance at one another, not really wanting to clean it up and telepathically weighing our options, looking for an escape. Tensions are high as two bouncers of considerable heft float in to give the manager's threats some muscle.

Realizing there is only one sensible option left to us, I sigh, grab some paper towels, and begin to scrub off the paint as Dan and Alex watch me uncomfortably. However, I'm not so much cleaning as I am polishing...the paint is not coming off the wall. Rather it seems to be changing color, a metallic white with a navy blue border. Actually, the more vigorously I scrub the more the splat assumes a resemblance of...words? Gradually, where there once was a nondescript tumor of paint on the wall, there now appears to be a bona fide graffiti tag, in ornate block-style lettering, with a shadow effect, spelling out the name of the movie we just walked out of!

Suddenly everyone is aware that Dan has painted this beautiful typographical specimen with a magnificent 3D effect, and I am just stunned. I drop my handful of paper towels and back away from the wall, towards the exit, which is now unobstructed. "This is beautiful," I declare to the theater manager, who is only more infuriated. "I can't erase this."   Alex and Dan cautiously sidle toward the exit with me. I take one last look around the bathroom, at the fresco of pink and orange smeared all over the stalls---works of art also waiting to be uncovered---and walk out with my friends.

The woman screams, "SOMEONE has to clean this up!! Who is going to do it?!" Alex, Dan, and I break into a sprint across the theater's hallway and towards the parking lot, hysterical with glee, and I call back to our challenger, "I don't know! Why don't YOU do it!... HAHAHA!" as we slide down the handrails to freedom.

--------

(Actual) lyrics to the Frank Zappa Song, "Watermelon in Easter Hay":

"This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER. Joe has just worked himself into an imaginary frenzy during the fade-out of his imaginary song. He begins to feel depressed now. He knows the end is near. He has realized at last that imaginary guitar notes and imaginary vocals exist only in the mind of the imaginer. And ultimately, who gives a fuck anyway?! Excuse me. Who gives a fuck anyway? So he goes back to his ugly little room and quietly dreams his last imaginary guitar solo."

Sometime in the future, I re-enter the movie theater and take my seat near the back row, watching Frank Zappa perform live. A deep purple glow illuminates the theater. At intermission, he invites a member of the audience to assist him in the next song, and I am fortunate enough to be selected. I walk down to the the stage and take a seat at a table across from Frank Zappa---a table on which he lays an elaborate sampler pad, furnished with not only buttons but switches, dials, cables, and antenna you can flick to produce buzzing and whirring noises. 

The audience settles in, and Frank triggers a low synth back drop, against which he and I begin toying around with the pad and creating a medley of fleeting beats we continually evolve. We scrap one sound for another, our four hands and all twenty fingers weaving across the sampler, him untwisting what I just twisted, me hammering out patterns, him rattling, me scraping...for a few minutes it's just noise. But then...

But then I press these three drum-pad buttons, followed by two antenna that create "swish" noises, and Frank fiddles with a dial to fix the levels...and this is the sound that ultimately suits the mood. Resembling the opening to Animal Collective's "Cobwebs," it is minimalist, a little dark, and driving. Frank Zappa and I release the sampler from our clutches and relax back into our chairs as the groove loops onward and the stage guitarist licks a nasty solo for minutes.

After the song fades, before the crowd even realizes it's over, Frank exhales for the first time since the song started and remains dazed for another moment. "Wow," he breathes, staring into space, "that was amazing." I am beside myself with delight as I give Frank Zappa a hearty high-five in celebration of our impromptu opus. I shout "Yeah!" and take a victory lap back up to the nosebleed section to sit among my friends. 

Back in my seat, I am searching through my backpack, and dig up a large bundle of fireworks that I was not aware I had. Some commotion is reverberating through the audience, and as I glance towards the stage it appears that Frank Zappa has accidentally set a stage curtain on fire. Many people are confused or concerned, wondering whether the fire is part of his performance, as Frank is just standing downstage shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

I look back down into my bag and pull out the fireworks.

Back at the stage, the fire has combusted up into the scaffolding above the stage, spreading rapidly, while Frank Zappa doesn't do much besides fumble on the floor of the stage. People are rioting and looking for an escape before the flames overtake the theater, and pandemonium reigns. Scrambling out of my seat, I light the fuse of my handful of firecrackers and chuck them down the aisle towards the stage, and as I turn the corner towards the exit door I can hear their POPOPOPOPOP over the tumult of rushing, panicked crowds and an all-consuming flame.

Someone grabs my sleeve as I dash out of the theater---I recognize him as a friend of a friend, whom I consider a complete asshole---as if his intent is not to use my speed to help his escape, but rather only to slow me down. I shove the guy away and brush past a family as I clear the glass doors of the burning theater.

Dream 17: Moment to Impact

8/30/2011

...I run in from outside, after a long day...

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The wood of this room is old; I rest my hand upon the sill of the fixed window and stare out from my cabin overlooking downtown Manhattan. Sam (my girlfriend) and Nick are with me, but I am the first to notice the large object falling through the sky towards the city.

I focus intently through the afternoon haze upon what becomes a large yellow waste container with a bright red "nuclear" logo printed along the side, as tall as the container itself. Time begins to slow down : the container descends, by far the most sharply defined object in my vision.

"That's a hydrogen bomb," I realize, "and it's going to impact in less than a second." Panic paralyses me as the knowledge manifests that within seconds my life will end, and along with physically evaporating in the path of the blast, my consciousness will also die ::: my complete existence terminated.

(((("... these are the last thoughts I will ever have..."))))

I gesture mechanically to Sam and Nick; they see it too. By now the massive container, with the inertia of Jupiter, has been partially eclipsed by a silhouette of buildings. As I watch the bomb disappear completely behind the skyscrapers, a moment to impact, I tightly hug Sam, my girlfriend, and apologize inwardly that she must die also. I'm too afraid to realize that I am afraid. The scene dissolves to white.

Dream 16: Steaks

7/4/11

I was playing / socializing in the living room / bedroom of a house, when I remembered that I had left some steaks frying on the stove. The kitchen was fully furnished in black marble flooring, dark wood cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and mellowed in a blanket of refined, delicate, even sophisticated ambient yellow lighting.

The steaks were bubbling over the sides of the pan in coagulated, rich yellow fat and hissing grease, a pot of meat, smoking and salted. The butter popped and stirred, and I grabbed a fork and dumped the steaks in my plate, a juicy pile of slabs of flesh.

The steaks were salted; maybe someone had seasoned them earlier. Using only my hands, I gripped a flank and stuffed it into my voracious mouth, teeth tearing in as grease slid down my face. I chewed loudly and with zeal. My mouth never closed; it just kept on being fed.

Everything about the steaks was ecstasy. I smelled the meat still steaming into my nostrils -- I was breathing hunger. Every sinew tore in my teeth, gnashing fibers and slivers of the tenderest meat, dissolving on my tongue, melting as I chewed. And my hands were always reaching for the next piece: one groping the plate, blindly feeling around for the next piece, while the other in my lips, fumbling the loose bites downward, sliding along slick teeth and flapping tongue.

I grabbed a bottle of barbecue sauce, but I don’t recall using it. I just kind of waved it above my head and shook it like a rock, as I began to hear music and danced around the kitchen table in the hot yellow light.

Dream 15: Tension

12/6/10

The first episode of this warped nightmare is a series of false awakenings. First, I am in bed, dark dawn, exhausted, cross-eyed and babbling for Theo my dog. Theeeeeeeeooooooooo I moan, eyeballs itching from pus and contact lenses, hands slapping the side of my bed in search of fur and ears. Space itself is bending and I am quickly losing consciousness again as the dense grey of morning masks everything.

Eyes open - I must have been dreaming, and it is in fact almost dawn. With greater lucidity, I roll over and  l u r c h  myself up onto my bedpost, keeling over the rail blindly as I fumble for the light switch. My knuckles grate against the cold wall, fingers limply reaching for ... it. click click click click click as I throw the switch, but the light doesn’t come on. Damn it, I must still be dreaming, so I collapse into sleep again…

Dawn a third time. I must be awake now (please), because I need to get to class. I manage to get out of bed and numbly tumble into the dark living room, turning down the hall. I stagger through narrow grey, void of thought, but before I make it out the front door I wake up a fourth time. ARGGGGG After some confusion, I discover a sizeable tarantula under my bed and vainly fight it.

After this saga, I find myself awake and dressed, storming out of my living room in Long Island and running madly up to my bedroom, as I’ve just quarreled with my mom. Of course she storms in, and my sister follows to watch. And we have ourselves a good old-fashioned showdown. I get up in her face, like noses touching, naturally towering over her and my shoulders thrust forward, daring her to do whatever it was she threatened. Do it. You wouldn’t. Stone-cold fury in my eyes as I try to conquer my mom, intimidating her to retreat backwards around my room and leave or leave me alone. Defensively she grabs my neck, which is bulging and tense, and words end; we just stare grimly. Who will falter first? Who will win? Raw grit embalms my brain as I draw all power of intimidation into my brow and she keeps a steady grip on my throat. Her face is ice and she looks about ready to burst...so must I. 

Surprisingly, nothing happens. The tension dissolves immediately as I give up and dash out of the house with my sister in toe. I knew I could count on her! We pile into our Black Humvee and drive off down the street, me riding shotgun. Cruising slowly, looking for something as we pass through residential streets filled with people. We sense war in the air, the presence of a foreign threat, and suddenly everyone is a suspect. But I get the feeling that we, my sister and I, are in fact the terrorists.

The reality is still unclear to me even as I write this.

Pulling over, we leave the vehicle and head towards a tree, where four pistols are stealthily hanging from branches. We both grab two each, steel Magnums, and prepare to blast off down the road, armed and dangerous! Action. 

Pickup trucks and vans are pulling up next to and behind us, trailing us for a few blocks, then speeding off down side streets, as we continue our reconnaissance. I keep my sights on anyone and everyone, especially the motorists eyeing us suspiciously, one gun cocked and raised and aimed at the head. Pieu! I whisper as I pull a mock trigger and fire one imaginary bullet at a time at cars and pedestrians. Mock recoil. Pieu!

No one is chasing us yet, but everyone seems to want us dead, and my sister Kim at the wheel is doing a great deal of pitching as we accelerate to the point of speeding tremendously. My anxiety creeps up, and I pull the hammer back, as beat-up trucks begin to keep speed with us. Pulling into an underground parking complex below the mall, we abduct an older woman and her middle-aged daughter, Southern and middle-class, opening the back door and throwing them in. I fire a warning shot or two in the air and at an approaching van, howling and cheering. Kim, hit the gas! 

Climbing out my passenger window, I hang from the careening Ranger by the door handle. The door swings open as we run over some sidewalk and I’m hanging over the edge of the roof by my armpit, beating up against the side of the truck with the wind, shooting wildly, blindly. By now all scenery is blurred and we are the only car on the road. So we crash into the house of our hostages, right through the garage, and I scour the rooms for any more occupants as Kim holds the women hostage in their kitchen. I discover the den, and as I notice the TV is on, an older, heavyset man turns slowly in his lay-z-boy chair from his view of TV, towards me, and I’ve already drawn to his forehead, ready to fire.

“Who are you?!” I yell, Aim. His hands are raised for surrender but his calm demeanor shakes me, and I sort of snap out of whatever survival, autonomic fight-or-flight combat mode I was in. 

My gun looks foreign to me, and it’s awfully quiet everywhere. Who is he? A husband or something, I don’t know. I don't know. I stop knowing what’s going on. What’s going on? I slouch in confusion and exhaustion. I forget my gun and purpose.

“What do I Do now?”

Dream 14: In a Hotel

11/25/10

“Well, wait up for me?” My few friends already had their coats on, it was early Spring. We were ready to leave the hotel, but I realized that I first needed to take a shower.

“Sure.” They zip up, I watched them walk towards the station wagon in the dirt parking lot, and returned to the room. It was rather luxurious, lots of polished brass and white marble, and the sleeping quarters were open with large windows facing the late morning sun.

I enter the shower – multiple large heads, brass; stone tile surface; glass doors – then exit after some time…I realized that was still in my dress clothes, which were now soaked through. A minor inconvenience, no matter. Peeling off my brown silk pants, striped blue cotton shirt,  tan socks, I perceived people moving around in my bathroom…lots of them! Bodies large and small...colorful, or maybe just colors; But I turned my head in terror and there was nothing! Only, an empty bathroom, disheveled, much larger than it needed to be and full of furniture and clothing. The running shower sprayed SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS to my apparent solitude.

Despite the unlikelihood, I was certain I saw something, more than just suspicious. So to assuage my curiosity, I begin to casually pace between the bathroom and bedroom, actually pretending to the nobody in the suite that I wasn’t looking for them. I kept my eyes either fixed directly in front of me or locked on the steam-filled shower, carefully tip-toeing and making no sounds, ears perked and pupils wide. Again, flashes of colors and limbs in my periphery, so I break my mock trance and spin around, to a room full of life-size cartoon people: two dimensional, bold-outlined, colored-in-the-lines, four-fingered, wild-haired, empty-eyed cartoon people.

Not breaking stride, the flock of specters continued to mill around the bathroom, just all staring at me. Their faces displayed some curiosity, and even impishness, while mine probably just exhibited terror. I couldn’t even find words, just stood in the threshold between the two rooms and watched as they watched me for a few moments. I think I got the hell out of there quick, leaving the shower running and my wet clothes dripping over the rails.

Dream 13: Disturbances

9/3/10

It is possible that I’ve actually had this dream on more than one occasion…A recurring dream. My uncertainty lies in the fact that this realization was made by my dream-self during the dream’s course. Was this merely a delusion? Or archived memories being re-drawn, reborn?

I was meditating up in a tree-house, although not some slipshod, weekend hobby tree-house with one room and amateur carpentry. This was a home, in a tree, and made almost completely out of smoothed and polished wood. The word “autochthonous” comes to mind, since the structure blended almost seamlessly in with its surrounding sylvan environment. And my house had a lot of open space; the outer walls were practically all window (no panes of glass though…just open air, for a more complete synthesis with the surrounding nature).

            Boom! The crack of a shot echoed in the woods, and I felt immediately threatened. Someone had fired at me! A rifle, to be exact; I knew it was a sniper rifle, and that there was a sniper somewhere in the trees, targeting me. Boom! again. He was trying to kill me. I look out into the forest, over the canopy, seemingly miles afar into the treetops, in hopes of spotting my assassin. I see rustling, but nothing more. I cannot make out any human form. But I immediately get low to the ground and crawl towards my spiral staircase in the center of the room, to get down to ground level and a safer location.

            It’s around this time that I have the thought, the spark of lucidity, that I’ve been in this exact dream before. That my dream-self can actually have its own consciousness is amazing.

            Some adults are congregating on the floor below, men and women alike, and I recognize them as my acquaintances. They also are aware of the sniper, and report having been fired at as well. He’s going after all of us! BOOM! This time, the shot is closer, and although we are below the canopy now, I definitely see movement in the treetops, coming from the same direction as last time. Flash of blue wiggling and vanishing quicker than I can recognize it. Our assassin is advancing through the trees, approaching our dwelling for a better shot. I see the flash of some limbs flailing from a branch as our assailant leaps through the air to his next mark. The four (maybe five) of us crouch down and hustle behind a steel bookcase or large safe, whatever, for protection.

            At this point we discuss the necessity of defending ourselves, and that’s when I discover a black Glock in my right hand. As soon as I notice my weapon, however, four (or five) bullets WHIZ by my head in super slow motion, ripping and curling through the window space and through the room, around my head; they leave slow visual trails of bronze and nickel snaking like comet tails, thick winding coils wrapping around me, and past the trails I see a man in a blue shirt peeking out from behind a patch of branches…he’s only a few meters from me! A phantom, more than a man, acrobat with a deadly weapon, on a mission to end me. Instinctively I raise my right hand to eye level, close my left eye, aim my handgun, and fire three rounds into his chest. He falls from his perch.

***

Familiarity with the movie “Inception” is recommended, to fully recognize the action that takes place.

An individual builds his memory palace like a warehouse building, floor-by-floor. In the basement are his deepest, darkest, most sinister memories and ideas, monsters of the subconscious and irreconcilable regrets. As he enters the elevator shaft, enclosed by only an iron fence, and travels skyward, the memories become lighter, happier, more peaceful. At the tallest floor accessible by buttons reside the most magnificent memories, those of pure splendor and love, sunshine, the memories most frequently looked back upon with exuberant longing and adoration. This individual’s top floor is a beach, with his wife and children playing by the surf.

I am an intruder into this man’s mind. I have gained entry into his memory hotel, and am riding the elevator upwards. I know of a trick that hotel patrons use to access the exclusive penthouse suites, those located at the VERY top of the building, but which cannot be reached by the pressing of any one button. Instead, I know to hit the topmost buttons in all the columns simultaneously (granted, there must be more than one column…in this case there was). The elevator continues half a floor past the beach scene, and stops. I pry open the fence doors and climb to the next floor, which is concrete, barren, dark, and extends forever in every direction, like an infinite parking garage, absent of time. The only light comes from the beach below, and a perfectly square hole in the ceiling above the elevator car. I climb onto the car and hoist myself through the opening, up to the roof, the roof of this man’s mind.

Stepping out into the ascetic city streets, from the manhole whence I emerged, I recognize this place as the man’s subconscious. It resembles a post-apocalyptic New York City, where the sky is a churning stormy grey. My footsteps echo down the street, which is void of everything except the most plain, austere cement sidewalk. All cars, signs, coloring, has vanished. There aren’t even storefronts or entrances anywhere - the faces of the buildings are flat and windowless, stone blocks which may or may not be hollow. The face of the city begs for ornamentation and animation. Just then, the silent street produces three well-dressed agents, advancing quickly in my direction.

I suppose I am also an agent, but more likely a thief. My mission is to perform extraction or espionage upon this memory palace, the mind, and only now, once I have seen the raw, inner crust of the subconscious and its loneliness am I forced to face defensive combat against the mind itself. The three guards approach, question, and ultimately attack me. I manage to kill one of the guards in our battle. As the ringleader has my throat under his boot, however, his other henchman turns on him, rescuing my life in the process.

See, I had had the foresight to send a double-agent ahead of me to infiltrate the security of this mind: to establish himself with the reconnaissance team, and shadow the number-one until it was time for me to be hostilely confronted...at which point he would use the element of surprise and betray his own team and rejoin me. The plan worked; my accomplice takes me by the arm and pulls me up from the ground where I lay.

Dream 12: Makeout Sesh

8/24/10

After making out with Chelsea for a good 3 hours, intimate touching, rubbing, feeling, kissing, tonguing, etc., I had a dream that we made out for an additional two hours in the creamy pinkish light of our autumn afternoon. Throughout my dream, the Beatle’s “When I’m Sixty-Four” was playing from somewhere in the room, and astoundingly, every note was hit, even the clarinet solos! It was as if my brain had a vinyl recording of the song; it was hyper-realistic. For most of my dream, Chelsea I were staring playfully into each other's eyes.

***

After waking up, I related my fantastic and amusing dream to Chelsea, who was still lying next to me. I then fell back asleep, and dreamt that I was in an old yellow dusty courtroom, wooden, and the Beatles themselves were the defendants on trial. One of them stepped up to the interview box to give their testimony, but at no one's cue, the fab four broke out into song, again “When I’m Sixty-Four.” A live band carried the bouncy tune as the courtroom around me transformed into an elaborate, burlesque stage, complete with garish theatrics and choreography. It was a droll little number, and even I sang along.

Dream 11: My Bed

8/23/10

            Imagine a Desert Island. What do you see? Palm trees lining the perimeter? Crystal Blue Skies? Dark, ponderous ocean on all sides? The water trembled in the bright afternoon sun, hot and red. Quaking and rumbling, an almost imperceptible rumble enveloping the island.

            It was a small landmass, such that from the clearing in the center, you can easily see the entire shore all around you. It might have been as large as one football field.

            I was in that open space, lined by a circle of palm trees, filled with only sand, and occupying my space was a tower, grotesquely haphazard, built from large blocks of stone in no perceptible order. It looked as if some god had dropped granite dominoes from the sky, letting them fall as they may on top of one another, until it was tall and baffling enough to his liking. And at the top - the summit - of the structure was a savage woman and a fully furnished bed.

            I was not alone at the bottom, some burly man joined me. Samson-like, but at times we were one person, he was I and I he, especially when we began to climb up the stony crag. The wild woman guarded the top, taunting us gratingly, hissing, but posed no physical threat to me. I continued my slow climb, hoisting myself up multiple walls, like an infant pulling itself up a set of stairs, one by one, steady. The amazonian woman shrieked and flailed, but once I ascended the final rock and was standing at her level, she became docile and stood aside, even in a manner of humble servility, and gestured in silence towards the bed that stood at the edge of the cliff. I stood staring at the bed, which was my own bed, white sheets rippling lightly, almost imperceptible, in an invisible breeze. And as the sheets rippled above the island, blue skies and tan sand, the bed did not move.

***

            At the Stumpf house, I was having a sleepover with Alex, and he was teaching me how to shift gravity while sitting upright in bed. What he did was, sit with his back up against the wall, then  f o c u s. If you will it, gravity will begin to pull you towards the wall rather than towards the floor, and you can hover near the ceiling for as long as you want! I tried in vain a few times, then began to get the hang of it. Soon, I was floating out of bed, rotating slowly as my body levitated, like I were out in infinite space. Alex and I just chilled up there on the ceiling, in his room, for a while.

Dream 10: The Trap

7/31/10

Walking past Finlay Hall, I notice a student (somebody who in the waking world just looks like a wise-ass, although I do not know him personally) brandishing some long tire-iron / wrench tool, revealing to his friend in confidence that he will be removing the front door off Finlay this evening, as a prank. Not really troubled by this stunt, I made no move to thwart his plans; I was just curious as to how the campus -- staff as well as students -- would react to seeing the vandalism. In retrospect, if something like this had really happened, everyone would just be really confused, because it would just look like a door had been removed with a purpose, but nobody would be accountable for it. Anyway, the kid was compromising the security of the building, and that should have alarmed me, because no one ought to have to live in fear of foreign threats, especially in a gated community. But I learned this lesson through karma.

When I later returned to campus, I was about to enter my dorm room…in Finlay…when my door was no longer there. OKAY, NOW I CARE. Shit. So, being the target of a crime is the only thing that could make me feel morally aware? Well... I had to get on with securing my stuff, because now an invisible clock was ticking, counting down to whenever that kid planned to invade my room and disturb the peace. First thing I did was find a screwing tool, affix hinges to my thick, salmon-colored sleeping bag, and fasten the sleeping bag into a makeshift door. It shouldn’t work, but it did; the bag was flush with the frame of the door, assuming a solid rectangular shape despite gravity and other natural laws…whatever.

I then called my friend Kendall, briefed him about my missing door, and told him to keep watch for the evening; I must have had plans or obligations to be elsewhere. Nevertheless, I wanted to catch the criminal in action, or at least have him caught by someone. The trap was set.

=====================================================================

In a later dream, I promise myself to some girl, and later break her heart and make her cry because Yelena enters my dream and I choose to pursue her instead. Yelena, in this world at least, was the “one who got away,” whom no one could replace or be substitute for, and whom deserved to be pursued to the end of the world.

We are in her kitchen in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, preparing dinner together in the warm company of her family. I just enjoy washing dishes, quietly, by her side.

Dream 9: Recurring Spies

7/21/10

It was a hot day at the pool. People were crowded everywhere, the diving boards were popping and rattling with excitement, and the water cool. The black family that I had arrived there with, with whom I had just traveled back in time to prevent some catastrophe, pulled up in their white Cadillac and let me out, leaving me to conduct whatever surveillance I had to, or rendezvous with a contact etc., but  they waited at the gates as I joined the pool-goers on deck, monitoring me with binoculars. They were a man, his wife, and teenage daughter.

This area looked familiar to me, and though I had to stay focused on the task at hand I felt this buoyant certainty in my core that I had been there before, more importantly, that someone I dearly wanted to see would be there as well. So I walked around, scanning the pool and its patrons: dads, kids, suits, floaties…until I saw a chubby, black haired little boy, struggling to doggy paddle. His eyes were squinted to keep the water out, nose wriggling back and forth. Making more splash than speed, and hardly afloat, this boy was a young me.

My reaction was instant: touched with sympathy, grief, the feeling that I had to atone for something, a desire to make an impact on myself, to possibly rescue myself from future disaster. Even if it might jeopardize the mission, for just one moment I had to make contact with young Joseph in the public pool... I think I needed him more than he needed me.

So, apparently my bathing suit had been on this whole time. I slid into the deep end, and slowly drifted towards the child by the shallower water. There was no hesitation, anxiety, or doubts. As he resolutely slapped the water, I appeared before him, wordlessly taking his hands in mine. He didn’t question me, resist, or scream…just looked solemnly into my eyes and began to kick with confidence, keeping his head above surface with much less effort. I was probably smiling. We remained like this in the water for a minute, with I leading he in a slow and steady waltz through the shallow end, turning in slow motion, and the tenderness I felt for him could only be fully realized through the years which I spent searching and waiting for this moment.

Then, too soon, I had to leave. I don’t remember saying goodbye, nor the actual departure. Next thing I know, I was back in the Cadillac, I suppose somehow I accomplished whatever the mission was…maybe this was my mission.

In a later dream sequence, I am throwing snowballs at some girl as she is walking away from me. She wears a big furry ski coat, with the hood over her head, and though I don’t know who she is, but I think we are romantically involved. We are playing in an airplane military base in Siberia, where all you can see around you is blizzard. After a few tosses, I run up to her from behind, tackle her to the ground, and we wrestle and spoon in the snowdrifts, just yards from some austere-looking barracks, wherein an older aristocratic woman is spying us from afar through a large window, soundly, in the firelit warmth of her shelter.

Dream 8: The Dreamed Dreaming

7/19/10

In a deep, maternal redwood forest, upstate somewhere in mountainous New York, the Fordham grads and I were visiting John Shanley for an afternoon of celebration and brotherly sentiment. One of the first things I saw at his house was a mammoth rock wall in his backyard, menacing because of its supreme height and ornery problems, but also enticing. I left my friends in a sprint and leapt up that wall, scaling it with macho ease, swinging, shifting my weight appropriately, going for that hold just out of my reach…shooting my legs out in front of me…rolling my shoulder to its elastic limits…stretching my fingers out, and grabbing on. I was thankful for all that I had learned, about myself and my body’s athletic potential, at the Rock Club in New Rochelle. And I was pretty sure that I was impressing everyone stories below me.

Randeep decides to follow after me and, being a jackass, wants to throw me off the wall. He pulls at my shirt, shaking and jostling me, and I start to lose my grip, when all of the sudden I feel very solid and grounded, like the rock, and freeing one hand from the hold, I grab Randeep by the arm, and yank him of that wall and fling him down to the ground. This was a shock to everyone, as Randeep is way taller than me and occasionally has unnatural strength on his side. Unfortunately, he landed on his face, and wasn’t moving much. FUCK! I thought, I really hurt him badly! So I rushed down to see him, oh man he hasn’t moved yet, his face was just smushed into the earth and his eyes were squinted, and I asked if he was alright. “Yeah,” he responded, “I’m fine.” Ah, forgiveness. We’re friends, after all.

At that moment, I realized that if he hadn’t been the one to fall, I would have, and I would have smashed my face into the concrete or whatever it was, and so I figured that my self-defense was justified. I was simply playing fair. I mean, I could have just resisted pushing him off the rock face, and been peaceful, but since Randeep was antagonizing me then he should have been prepared for retaliation. Not really the best moral to a story, but a just one.

Afterwards, I was in a German-style beer-garden lodge, literally a log cabin, with an anonymous friend of mine (I drew no sort of association between this character and anyone I really know, but if I had to choose one person, it would be my cousin Erick). We were in the basement of the lodge, and I was aware that someone, a large German man, was tailing me, or spying on me. I went upstairs to get some food and a beer, but as a precaution I texted Erick the ominous message, “Someone is following me upstairs…I might die.” I figured that was warning enough.

Upstairs, I was waiting at the bar for my order to be taken, and the shady figure sidled up next to me and said something…a pleasantry maybe, while slowly unzipping a large…white…broad… confidently sinister smile from his hard face. I don’t think I responded, I just ordered a bratwurst with sauerkraut and relish (although I really meant caramelized onions, in retrospect).

Walking over to the dining area, away from the gentleman whom I wasn’t sure was still surveilling me, I took a moment to admire the beautiful Aryan girls all around me: one in particular caught my attention, a tall, dimpled mädchen with short, curly blond hair, parted behind her ear in a little, ivory clip. She was dressed in 1950’s garb, like a child of WWII, and closely resembled a celebrity. Like a cross between Scarlett Johansson and Nicole Kidman, she was gorgeous. And the way she pursed her lips when she smiled, leaving no wrinkle but only smooth, plush cheeks and two little red curls...beautiful.

For whatever reason, I last found myself in a dark warehouse full of hipsters. At first I mingled a bit, scanning the building for anything interesting, peeking into musky rooms with carpets, rooms without carpets, rooms with lights and those without, rooms with kids on dirty mattresses, and decided that my time would be better spent if I found a quiet spot to be along and transcribe a dream that I had the other night.* So I grabbed a plastic folding chair, walked down some old stairs to an empty garage/kitchen, sat next to the sink, and finally got around to writing the following dream…

…In which my dream self, in the kitchen where I now leave him, transcribes Dream 7, also known as “Many Upsets!”

Comment: I actually dreamt Dream 7 a few days before Dream 8, but I had been lazy about transcribing it. It was only until Dream 8 occurred, wherein my dream self took the initiative to perform what I had neglected, that I realized I no longer had an excuse to put off the task. I am pleased with my subconscious for being so responsible, for keeping my waking self motivated and focused.

In a way, then, Dream 7 actually follows Dream 8, both chronologically and thematically! Read both as if my dream self actually dreamt Dream 7 some time before visiting the hipster dump.

Dream 7: Many Upsets

7/15/10

It was the end of the school year, and I was saying goodbye to all of my friends, as well as anyone I ever associated with. I walked through locker rooms, classrooms, quads, giving hugs and wishing well to everyone. One of my guy friends was on his laptop, and I approached him with a favor to ask: I wanted him to look up this Biggie Smalls song, one whose title was eluding my memory, but which I recall being very “soulful” and despondent, like Cam’Ron’s “Harlem Streets” or Jay-Z’s “Never Change.” I even could vaguely remember how the melody went, but despite all my efforts I could not put my finger on the title! So I was extremely frustrated, because I felt it was an appropriate theme to our final parting. Peter White came over and tried to extract some more details about the song from me, but it was no use. I was disappointed, but got over it. As I left, I especially made a point to say goodbye to all the girls I ever spoke to, giving them hugs and of course a big smile.

Ms. Rosenbluth, one of my teachers at the time, was preparing for a yacht cruise, but before leaving campus she appointed me with the responsibility of delivering her a particular apple from a specific location. Then she left, purse swinging over her shoulder. I found whatever apple she had left for me, took it, and headed to the boat where she would be waiting.

While crossing over the aluminum bridge from the dock to the deck, I took a bite from the apple. Upon inspecting the gap I created, I discovered that the apple had been stuffed with prescription pills and other illicit drugs! The whole pulpy inside of the apple was like a landfill of chemicals, and I must have been the drug mule! Looking up from the apple in my hand, I see Ms. Rosenbluth sitting among a group of adults, poised and somewhat aloof, expectant…then she notices me. I’m speechless, mouth open, chunks of apple and capsules falling from my jaw, eyes empty with fear, staring at her dumbly. She looks ready to jump overboard and slice my head off, but she can’t because she is in public and among company. I only speak the words, loud enough to transmit, “I’m getting you fired for this.”

Ms. Rosenbluth’s glare responds in opposition to this threat, but as she’s getting up, possibly to seize the evidence from my hands, I rush out, then run like mad in no particular direction, apple cupped in both hands now, legs knocking into each other more than actually striding, because I am a scared lunatic. I have to find campus security and report that my teacher was either a drug abuser or dealer, but that nevertheless she had to be stopped!

At this moment, my dream self is struck with the unshakable feeling that it had once, at some former time, either itself dreamt this very sequence, or awakenly prognosticated the incident. Even more bizarre, my dream self recalls the motives it prophesied for his actions. Whether the prophecy was self-fulfilling or predestined, is indeterminate.

I feel a sense of accomplishment and gratification in busting my teacher for drugs – a criminal. Approaching campus, I think it best to show the security guard the apple. Instead, the black woman in the booth happens to be a moron and / or poorly trained, because the first thing she does is pick out each pill from the fruit and put them all in a metal tin, then walks me over to the headquarters to deliver the drugs to her superior. I was beyond appalled…the stupid bitch had just totally DESTROYED my case, because it could no longer be easily proven that the drugs had come from the apple! Instead, the contents of the tin were just a juicy mess of medication that could have come from anywhere.I was dumbfounded, stammering to the head honcho as convincingly as I could about what I had witnessed, with this bitch humming next to me, holding all that my life was worth in a box. Nevertheless, I try to explain what had happened. He nods when I’m done, then grabs the container from the woman and walks into an office, where other old, white, authoritative-looking men are sitting.

Everything was jeopardized, and to freak me out even more, at that moment Ms. Rosenbluth slides urgently into the office, doesn’t notice me thank God, and enters the chief’s quarters, probably to turn the story around to incriminate me! I creep around the office, laying low, feeling like a convict myself, wondering what will happen next, when I catch the security boss sweeping the halls, looking for me. Taking a risk, I make myself present, and he looks relieved; they believed my story and arrested my teacher!

Then, I became horrified: I actually took a bite out of that laced apple…who knows how many drugs I ingested simultaneously, and what sort of awful things are happening to me??? Am I going to drop dead any moment, or get so high and screwed up that my brain liquefies? Shit, Shit! I run to the nurse’s office, goddammit they won’t even let me in, I have to wait for the receptionist to buzz me in, then when I finally get to her desk, no one is there and I’m told to wait?! WHAT! And then, a bunch of Asians drunk off their asses blunder in, one of them slurring that they just got wasted on a booze cruise, and their friend needed immediate attention. For some reason, I grant them this; I forsake my health to let total strangers receive medical attention before me…why?

Well, when I saw the sick kid in question, I almost felt like throwing up, and my sympathy for his plight was more extreme than my own. This kid’s mouth was protruding grotesquely, his jaw might have even been unhinged, because there was a blockage of vomit in his throat. For some reason, his puke had dammed up in his mouth, and he was choking. I could see that he was getting no oxygen, and took control of the situation. Prying open his mouth with my bear hands, I inspect the mass of chum that is blocked up all the way from the back of his throat, as if his stomach were reversing itself out his mouth. I had his friends hold his jaws open, grabbed a broomstick, and jammed the handle (which looked like a toothpick, relative to the unnaturally widened, stretched-open mouth) deep down in there, shoveling out what I could to free a passage to the lungs. After loosening up the upset - bile and pink undigested food – by scooping globs of it out from his taut lips, the kid could freely vomit the rest up on his own, and did so, everywhere. He puked up his own bodyweight I’m pretty sure, as his friends looked on in stupefaction. I just ran out of there…I finally had to take care of myself.

Wandering the ship, I find a lonely perch of railing looking over the dark violent blue waters and force everything in me overboard.

Switch scene: From the fourth floor of Walsh Library, during finals week, I must run down to the first for some reason. Passing through a section of desks, I see Brandon Smith, completely wasted, annihilated, sick. His friend, a female, is comforting and coaching him as he vomits into a wastebasket next to his desk. His vomit contains an unnatural amount of dental floss. I don’t think I say much to either of them. I continue on until I get to the first floor, pass the help desk, then exit the place, intent on something.

Dream 6: Skeletal Michael

6 / 24 / 10

            Aside from universal neglect and abuse, I believe Michael was afflicted with immortality. His age, race, was indeterminate. But he was  over six foot and weighed less than 70 pounds. However much your skeleton weighs, was Michael.

            Michael was essentially a human corpse, matter that seemed to want to implode on itself at any moment, the taut skin - where there was skin - peeling itself over every corner and line of his grotesque face, actually so tight that he could not sufficiently open his mouth to talk. Or maybe he had lost that ability, or never had it to begin with. I saw Michael on just another day of his life, he and I wishing he would die already.

            Being near him, I was horrified. Even more horrifying was what I saw happen to him. He had been flayed alive, or skinned, or just starved so badly that his skin tore in places where it was too weak to contain his bones, that when I saw him flopping on the ground, I thought he had turned inside out. Oh My God he was just writhing there, growling and shrieking in the street! His limbs were trembling, and though he was stuck in the fetal position, he trembled violently from his narrow core, tossing his fragile head against the ground, because it was all he could do. If he could think, he might have hoped to finally lose consciousness (from head trauma), but his mind was never so alive. Like an animal wounded in the road, I wish I could have just shot him in the head to end his misery. Profoundly I pitied him, and couldn’t accept that the world had let him become so afflicted.

            Cops and officers rushed in, carrying blankets made of some mucus-y material, like whale blubber, a gigantic skin graft of sorts, or life-size band-aid, for the man with no skin and only hunger. They were trying to scoop him off the ground with their net of flesh, yelling at him like a beast who barely spoke their own language, “Michael! Get in the blankets!” And he just writhed and moaned guttural horror from his chest, becoming more wretched every second. At last they got him in their membrane-sac, a body-bag, sealed him up except for the head, and carried him away. The tiny drum-hole where his mouth once might have been still cried, whistled really, and his eyes were strangely full, the only organs with any moisture left at all. I recall feeling the tiniest bit of relief, knowing that at least he’d finally get some sort of medical care after centuries of withering, but it might have been better for them to just put him under by then.

*An anecdote related to me a few days prior to this dream: An old man had a heart problem, and was told that he would live for only a few more years. The diagnosis was that he would suffer for a while, then die. His doctor, in an act of grace, recommended a pacemaker. In fact, the doctor would not see the old man again until he consented to order a pacemaker. A few months after using the device, the old man developed severe dementia. He would live much longer now, since his heart was being regulated, but his aging and decrepit wife would now have to suffer as she cared for her vegetable husband until her last days. The old man lived longer, but no longer lived in his mind, as a result of the greed of modern pharmaceutical agencies. See, the doctor who recommended the pacemaker was paid tens of thousands of dollars by the manufacturing company for each unit he sold. His interest was not in the welfare of his patient, but rather his personal salary. The old man lived another ten years, retarded as a baby and, after his wife died, alone.

**In retrospect, I am ashamed to have been so nihilistic in my dream towards the ‘Michael’ figure. I did feel “the tiniest bit of relief” at seeing him finally rescued, but I reasoned that, given his unfathomable condition, his suffering had been and would continue to be too much for a person to bear. I preferred the act of killing him quickly to end his suffering. Such is the decision of many in the real world, no doubt; to pull the plug on a loved one, or not. I apologize to anyone reading this if I seemed insensitive and cruel, but this question is heavily moral and certainly real. Out of remorse, I’ll also note that, were there a ‘Michael’ among us, which there must be somewhere, I’d only want to see him alive and nourished, restored back to health if possible.

Dream 5: Opportunistic

5/12/10

* A party occurs on campus, among other trivial things *

In the final scene, I land somewhat in a hurry on Central Park West, bags and all. I am just trying to get home with all the stuff I had accumulated. I approach the ATM on the sidewalk, and as it senses me coming towards it, it dispenses a single dollar. “Oh, no….” I think, “this is some sort of test, and I don’t need any more trouble. I won’t take it.” Trying to ignore the menacing dollar, I punch in my numbers and whatever, get my money, and head downstairs to the subway.

Abject despair in the underground. Before I even got to swipe, a wretched beast of a black man was curled over the turnstile, homeless and rotten. I couldn’t even see his face. He was moaning indecipherably, but it was obvious he just wanted some change, or a swipe. I thought I could almost hear him crying, and thought he might have been crying all day. It was at that moment that I realize I almost had a dollar for this man, if only I had cooperatively taken the one at the ATM. Certainly, I could not surrender to him one of my own dollars. Nevertheless, I had to keep going, to catch my train.

Making my way further into the station, when I get downstairs, a phantom of a costume of Michael Jackson is leering at me. It is as if he is wearing a mask, for he makes no discernible facial movements… only an exaggerated smile, empty eyes, pointy chin, following me with a swiveling neck that leers lubriciously in my direction. Though I am not too nervous, I retreat a bit when I ask him bluntly and timidly, “What... do you want?”

“THAT is the Question!” he shrieks in response! And satisfied, possibly with the existensialism of my curiosity, he climbs onto a slow-moving bicycle and squeaks away, morphing into a shadow of a phantom of a costume of the artist formerly known as Prince in the process. But this was not the last I would see of him.

As soon as I made it through the turnstile, the subway platform was no longer... instead now a circular rotating disk, like some haunted carousel ride, and I in the center. All scenery melted into dark shapes, purple and yellow fog, swirling around the spinning floor, suspending me in this tortured limbo. “I want to leave!” I desperately cry, and exit, spiraling outwards, towards the outer edge of the ring, where I see Michael again, pedaling from far away. I call to him… maybe he has an answer! But joker as he is, he turns himself into a grotesque caricature of Spongebob Squarepants, bloated and decrepit, and itself assuming a multitude of faces simultaneously. He was of no help.

Dream 4: Temporarily Blind at Camp

4/19/2010

At camp, Adrienne H. had just woken up, and I was amused by her general physical / hygienic disarray. As far as girls without their make-up go, she really was unrecognizable for a few moments, as every surface on her face seemed to bulge or recede in the wrong places. She said a few things to me while looking over her shoulder and walking away, as if I were more of an afterthought than the words she spoke, and flitted away across the wooden floorboards in her nightgown. I watched her disappear through a door, and approached the door to follow. As I reached for the doorknob, a glint of light caught my eye, and my sight followed that glint as it sort of floated near my left shoulder. Upon closer inspection, the tiny shimmer looked to be either one of those cotton tufts that blow around in the Spring, or, even stranger, a small, silver, spinning coin.

Disinterested, I swatted the spinning coin with my hand, away from me, and proceeded to open the door to follow Adrienne. But then something struck my neck! It felt as if someone had come up behind me and jabbed the right side of my neck, or launched a blunt projectile at it. Seeing nothing around me, I realized that what I had previously swatted was an actual fairy, like Tinkerbell, and in retaliation she had attacked me! Although I suffered no physical injury beyond the immediate discomfort, matters soon became worse, as I lost my sight completely.

I was blind! The fairy had evidently put a curse on me, as a punishment for my aggression.

Now that everything was pitch black, I got real scared. I didn’t want to be blind!

But I didn’t believe I was truly, irreversibly blind either…I didn’t want to believe it! So I pushed and tumbled towards where I thought the door to the outside porch would be, because I was panicking and, like most people, I needed to get to an open space where I wouldn’t feel confined and threatened.

Stepping lightly, I felt my way around bed posts - round, brass bed posts, cold to the touch. The wooden floors were also cold, it was so early that morning. Nervous, I found the porch door, a wooden frame loose with age and decay. I considered that only the room had become dark, and once I opened the door, light would naturally pour in, my salvation. Pulling the door open, inwards…nothing. I still saw black, forever in front of me.

Until, the black grew into deep blue, through the glass pane of the secondary screen door. Then a brighter shade of blue! Then white streaks! It was morning rising, and I could see! I could see the woods beneath the house - the trees of Savannah, Georgia - and the dog, the yellow lab that was jumping up to lick my face!

Standing there in my shorts, I could see again. The dog greeted me…my opening the door let him in, and let me out.

Dream 3: Cruisin'

4/14/2009


This dream I actually had on a couch in a passageway in my school library, actually in the midst of writing a Lit paper. 

It was a very late, awfully late, night in the library, where time usually disappears from me and weary restlessness sets in. I didn’t want to be there, writing a six page paper for my Lit class the next day, but I had to be. And I knew it would not be long before I desired to sleep.

The library, believe it or not, is the worst place to work at night. Well, it’s the best place for people who actually want to work, because you feel so uncomfortable at those high tables, in those stiff chairs, in that stiff white light, that sleep does not come easy, and work is the next best option. But for people like me, who prefer comfort, the library is the worst place to work at night. And I was tired, but most of all Bored with what I was doing. It wasn’t easy.

After some time, I had given up on trying to convince myself that what I was doing was worth doing, at least at that hour, so I thought I’d treat myself to a nap on the couch in the Library’s lounge. It was uncomfortable, loud with the noises of people traffic, and not at all as dark as a room should be for sleeping. Crashing on the couch was symbolic of my giving up, of admitting weakness and poor focus.

But eventually I was woken up by the unlikeliest of people, and the night was saved…

"The Rescue"

Dan, my best friend, came and picked me up, he picked me up and out of the library, and we left the library. He put me into the passenger seat of his gold Cadillac and said we should go for a ride...so we did. He turned his headlights off and sped down the dark, midnight strip of shopping malls and restaurants, bowling alleys and gas stations, flying past auto dealerships in the streetlights like distant galaxies.

But the most stunning thing was that it was completely silent, and cool. I got excited for ourselves, and the fact that we had escaped. Leaning forward in my seat, Dan at the wheel, I stared out into the deep brown sky ahead, while it was still dark and round with mystery. Dan said little as he drove, looking ahead into the dark and rushing highway, and his peace affirmed my peace. We followed the low stream of lights embroidering the two-lane road, riding the middle.

It was take-off. Easing back, my tense body released itself into the seat, and

I could laugh!

Dream 2: No Skates

4/02/09

My cousins, or possibly Alex Dadras and Erik Stumpf, were visiting, and we were prepared to go out and enjoy ourselves for the day, as it was generally sunny and nice out, but first my mom insisted on buying me roller skates. So we wound up in front of a skate shop, on a steep and narrow commercial hill that reminded me of San Francisco, and my friends and I waited outside as my mom went in to purchase the skates. We had been standing out there a long time, and it grew dark out. I remember peeking my head in the store to see what the hell was taking so long, and just saw my mom bullshitting with the clerk, holding a box in her hand, so I assumed the transaction was almost done.

Music started to pump all around me, and soon enough my surrounding environment more resembled a dance hall than a sidewalk and street. There were teenage kids all around us, just dancing and mingling like some social event or college party! So, acclimating to the radically new scene, I started to dance as well. At that point, I had forgotten that I had been waiting for hours to get the goddamn skates so that my friends and I could be on our merry way. On a parenthetical note, now I understand why shops play music – to keep their patrons entertained, but more importantly, patient. Because waiting sucks.

But I was enjoying myself, dancing as I usually do to Gwen Stefani’s “Cool,” when the music turned off abruptly. Everyone around us got real silent and awkward again…it really was  like a college party! I popped back into the skate shop, where my mother was now at the cashier desk, and I screamed like a drunkard, “Hey! Can you put Gwen Stefani back on?!” So he did, and I started dancing again, until I realized that it was getting light out again, and we must have been hanging out like assholes in front of that skate shop all night, and I decided it was time to ditch.

Coincidentally, it was at that moment that my mother walked out of the shop with my brand-new pair of roller skates that I never wanted. However, she no longer resembled my mother, but rather a balding, middle-aged man, with glasses who dressed like a computer programmer. He insisted that we three – Alex, Erik, and I – sit down so that he may explain to us the significance of the roller skates before we use them. I stood up and started to walk out in disgust – through the tunnel in the side of the nearest building. He-Mom called me back in haste, still in a woman’s voice, pleading with me to stay “just one minute!” Realizing she meant well, and that she was, after all, doing this out of her own selfless sense of generosity, I cooled off and sat back down, still itching to leave.

Then he began to explain how to use the skates properly, going into excruciating detail and expounding on the useless features and mechanisms of the skates, how lucky I was, how appreciative I should be, what to do and what not to do in my skates… and I finally exploded in the most aggressive vitriol I ever thought I could harvest.

Shooting out of my seat, arms tensed and fists swollen with rage, head cocked forward, I ranted,

“FUCK your STUPID skates, if I ever had to go ANYWHERE I’d FUCKING RUN ON MY FUCKING TWO LEGS, I NEVER wanted those FUCKING STUPID SKATES, you wasted my FUCKING TIME buying those FUCKING things, if I needed to GO somewhere I’d FUCKING RUN OR FUCKING RIDE A SCOOTER THERE, If YOU think I’m putting THOSE FUCKING THINGS ON MY FUCKING FEET, YOU’RE FUCKING MISTAKEN, this is the STUPIDEST GIFT you’ve EVER BOUGHT!!”