DREAMS of 2008 3 of 3
MONDAY, 9/1/08: 1) 12:56AM: I walk up the stairs in a building like 167 Hicks to deliver two sheets about business to two women who I work with who live there, but strangely I don't know EXACTLY where they live, and the hallways are too dark to let me see any names on doors, so I go to turn on a kitchen light, hoping that will give enough light to see where they are, but wake before I can deliver the papers. They have something to do with FORTRAN, as I recall. 2) 2:19AM: Dream of long used-book science-fiction shopping with my English teacher, who reminds me of long-ago Sunny Simon from my old SBC office. 3) 2:54AM: I'm talking to Laird on the telephone about my past travel and some of my future travel plans. 4) Somehow between 2:54AM, clearly marked for dream 3), and 3:16, clearly marked for peeing: I'm overwriting two bills on the back of note-page 2: most probably 2:59AM: talk to Tris on phone about website. 5) Another notation of a dream-fragment, indecipherable, but I record the expenses: Ken: Sat lunch 62.05E, and me 8E at 4 Cats. [I'm finishing this at the desk as Ken pees at 7:40AM.] 6) 7:21AM: I keep being given pages on which the steps to enlightenment are written. I'll read one section, absorb the meaning, and as on a game board another section at another level of the multi-level pages will light up with the next step toward ultimate knowledge. I'm guided in this by a young man who seems a cross between a child and a God-child, who urges me on silently, with a large smile on his face, and an increasingly obvious erection folded into his taut but fleshy body, and his pleasure comes from my advancement, and my advancement comes from his pleasure. A previous dream had him in the shape of a pet like an armadillo, which I would rub back and forth on the bedclothes like a push-toy, and at first I had to worry that the head would turn around and its little sharp teeth would nip my flesh so hard that I feared they would draw blood, but it was like a testing device that I had to learn: how to give it maximum pleasure, how it could give me maximum stimulation so that I could in turn give IT maximum stimulation, so that we could work together for maximum enjoyment without saying a word---if the creature was even CAPABLE of saying words. I kept advancing from level to level, the colors getting more brilliant, the areas of color getting larger and larger, the lessons becoming at the same time clearer and more esoteric, so that I noetically knew that this was the proper and correct path toward perfect enlightenment. I was rewarded at the end with the knowledge that we could both enjoy an orgasm of sensuality unparalleled in the history of the universe, bolstered and strengthened and heightened by our mutually gained and given knowledge and understanding and sensation. Wonderfully attractive dream, and I finish typing this at 7:28AM, sorry that I hadn't brought in the note that contained the four or five dreams that came before this, but I'm looking forward to drinking more of my refrigerated water with the second-last Extra-Strength Tylenol from Spartacus in an effort to assuage the pain in my right heel for today's walking.
TUESDAY, 9/2/08: 5:27AM: Ken telephones me in this hotel room, saying he needs copies of pages that prove we can use the key to get in. I look through a number of sheets, including those whose titles are enclosed in quotes, to see which we need, and then decide to include all of them. What they need, they'll keep; the rest, we'll keep.
THURSDAY, 9/4/08: 4:36AM: I'm in a military cantonment in India (it's not clear if I'm IN the Army, or only a guest in a military household), and as a point of formality everyone must take a ritual bath before eating dinner. I'm embarrassed because (as on this Barcelona trip) I haven't changed shorts in a number of days, and I might have stains fore and aft which I wouldn't want anyone to see. I don't quite know how to phrase it, but I manage to communicate my problem to my host, and, as if he foresaw my problem, he has his servants present me with a truly military array of clothing: shirts, trousers, socks, jackets, and underwear, and implies that I'll change into these both before and after my bath. I won't even have to worry about the matter of towels. I feel greatly relieved, and begin to look forward to all these naked men in the bath. At one point I was furiously jerking off, and thought of continuing in real life, but had forgotten I was in a bedroom with Ken---of course I could try jerking off in the bathroom, but there WAS the problem of the smell, which I wasn't prepared to confront. Somewhat later, a phalanx of men, their backs to me, dropped their trousers around their ankles at the same instant, and I looked forward to the next step, which didn't take place in my dream, to my disappointment. Finish typing at 4:43AM.
FRIDAY, 9/5/08: 6:55AM: I'm living with a poor family in a very remote area of Tibet. All the people are tiny, living in very cramped quarters, and I'm trying to adapt without knowing any of the language. I'm supposed to be getting some kind of religious lessons, also, though it's more in the line of living the life, rather than learning a method of living that is APART from the actual day-to-day living. After many forgotten details about bedding and clothing and food and cattle and scheduling and food-growing, it's time for me to leave, and I know I have to go to the end of the road and wait for an ox-cart to take me back to town. It's like knowing that at some point it will start raining during our stay in Spain, because I'm standing in the open when it starts raining in Tibet, and all I have is the jacket without a hood that I'm already wearing, and a woolen sweater, possibly one that the family made for me, that I instinctively know will ward off the rain better than any raingear I may have brought, so I drape the sweater over my head and watch the rain drip off its edges as I see our vehicle drawing near, and maybe another passenger for it as well, and I'm relieved that I won't have any more time to stay (as I'm almost counting the hours before being FINALLY able to leave Barcelona!) or any more lessons to learn, and can get back to my usual, comfortable, Western way of life.
SATURDAY, 9/6/08: 4:21AM: I'm supervising filming something for TV or the movies, and there's a disaster: a plane crashes. I've got three or four cameras running, all of which record what happens, and so I'm in charge of editing the films for a public that has to be informed at some point of who's been killed in the accident and just when and how they died. So I have to set up four time-lines, one for each film, and decide how much to cut out, when to start showing images, and what information to give at what time. But even doing THIS is like being in a movie: no one's really WORRIED about what happened to who, or when, as if it had all already been recorded and somehow shown, and I'm just editing the time-line "for production reasons," rather than affecting any level of reality. All this is quite dispassionate, as if everyone concerned is just an actor and hasn't REALLY suffered or died as a result of the accident, and all my actions regarding the time-line are only editorial decisions, rather than any kind of actual manipulation of reality.
MONDAY, 9/8/08: 5:01AM: I'm shopping at a used-book shop, trying not to buy anything, but they've boxed large numbers, maybe 30-40, of books in makeshift cardboard boxes and put them on sale for a ridiculously low $11.95, and I just can't resist: surely there'll be SOMETHING good here! Glance through the covers, most of which have been torn off, and they're really trashy romance or science fiction, some anthologies that I think I might glance through to find a budding new author, but then, having bought them, I think of what a ridiculous amount of time I'll have to spend just looking through to see who might have some talent as a writer, and then begin to question how I can tell that: just someone who writes grammatically? Someone with an interesting plot and characterization? Something sexy? Something gripping? Why would I buy all these books---just to fill up my time?
TUESDAY, 9/9/08: 1) 5AM: I'm riding up in a VERY rickety elevator, on the outside of what could be the back of my old building on West 57th Street, which seems to be under some kind of major renovation, except that I'm going up to the 20th floor, as at 101 Clark Street. The elevator operator is new, or drunk, or stoned, and he has enormous trouble lining up the elevator with the bottom of the 20th floor: we keep scraping back and forth against the building while I can see bits of metal and black masking tape being scraped away before my eyes at eye level, since I appear to be crouching down on the floor of this makeshift elevator. Without transition I'm in SOME apartment, with lots of young guys in various stages of sexual engagement, and again most of the participants seem to be either very drunk or very stoned. I find a couple of Blacks who seem to want to kiss, which isn't unpleasant, but their facial hair isn't the softest. Someone's sucking on my cock, but I'm not really into it. I feel a semi-hard cock in my hand that I start to masturbate, and suddenly there are moans of orgasm and I look down to see that the cock I've been manipulated has cum, and mouths dive in from all directions to lap up the jism. I move away to something else. Then, somehow, I'm on a bus, going downtown, and I realize I don't have my clothes on. I ask around if anyone's seen a pair of black shoes, and some old dress shoes (a combination of an Army-type shoe and my strap-ons) come my way, and I observe, "Someone's taken my shoe-stretchers, but I guess I don't need them now." Then I ask if anyone's seen a pair of khaki trousers, after I realize that, somehow that evening, I'd come out without a shirt, so I can't have lost that. I see someone I know, who I know shares an apartment somewhere down here (look out to see that we're stopped at, like, Ninth Avenue and 22nd Street) with two or three other guys, but most of them are smaller than I am, so their pants probably wouldn't fit me, though they offer me access to their closets to see if anything would fit. Someone nearby, overhearing us, is reminded of a time he was dressing for a solo performance he was giving at a club downtown, and was careful to find the proper trousers, but when he got onstage he found that he'd forgotten to put on a pair of boots. I've maybe forgotten some of the details (particularly from the sex scene, which involved, say, 5-6 people, some of whom started reluctant to get involved, but as I'd caress their bodies, or nibble on their nipples, they would get into it and participate until some better opportunity came along), but this completes the gist of it. 2) 7:45AM: I'm sitting opposite Sadahiro at a breakfast table, and he points to the box of Quaker Oats on the shelf behind him and asks if I'd mind if he made a special dessert from it. I'm amazed, but say OK. Then, without transition, I'm totally naked, spread-eagled on my back on my bed with my legs off one side of the bed, enjoying the prelude to orgasm as rarely before: toying and enjoying and lingering and teasing and reveling in the feeling that I can cum with perfect freedom any moment I choose, and wake with an erection in a bed next to Ken and realize, with some sadness, that it will still be 13 days before I'll have the freedom to complete my orgasm in such an ecstatic state.
THURSDAY, 9/11/08: 1) 7:21AM: Don't remember the details, but the dream involved some cute mixed-race woman leading an ashram of some type which I was attending in Tibet. Maybe there was a test I had to pass or HAD passed, or a lesson she had to teach me or HAD taught me, but the details are gone except for the pleasant feeling of just BEING there, which I wish I could capture for THIS trip before it's over. 2) 9:03AM: I'm in London, walking up a rainy street with Ken to some appointment, and turn a corner to find he's vanished ahead, but I think we both know where we're going so I don't fear getting lost. Somewhere in the dream is a kind of pub in which we're talking about people we know, and I say, as a snob, to Ken that we'll be passing the house of my friend (and I almost say Miss Wimpole) Miss Barrett, and mightn't we just buzz her to see if she's in so I can say hello? Details forgotten. Type to 9:06AM.
FRIDAY, 9/12/08: 6:52AM: I'm studying somewhere in Saudi Arabia, where the students are allotted to classrooms according to the last number of their social-security number. Also, their tuition is determined by the FIRST digit of their social-security number, and I'm happy that my first digit is one, so I only have to pay ONE thousand dollars, or other monetary unit, for each credit, and some whose first digit is a lot larger can't even afford to go to regular classes and are thus automatically reduced to lower social status because of their lack of education. This feels so medievally unjust I can't believe the system still exists, but it does, and I continue to go to school in the system.
SATURDAY, 9/13/08: 1) 4:13AM: Images of violence: shooting people, chopping off parts of body, but no distinct details. Chanting some nonsense phrase, trying to get somewhere; vague images. 2) 6:10AM: I'm lying in bed at home with an orgy going on in another bedroom, but two bodies come to my bed and start having sex with me: a small Indonesian man, with an enormously thick, erect cock, lets me fondle him, and then turns around and somehow forces his cock between the cheeks of his own buttocks, which scene I don't care for, but I still find his cock itself exciting. Then there was a Black with a three-foot cock, and everyone so ravaged it that a foot-long section in the middle of it was torn and bloody, yet someone at the head-end was sucking with such determination that the whole length spasmed into a gigantic orgasm, and everyone crowded around to watch. A third episode ensued, but I forget the details. 3) 6:13AM: Maybe without transition, I'm in an opera house talking about a previous performance, and Dennis observes, "You must have stayed through the matinee to see the evening performance," and, pausing, I saw that he had to be telling the truth. Then it was the end of the SECOND opera, but the cast from the FIRST opera, part of Wagner's "Ring," came out for enormous applause, but then a manager followed them onstage from the audience to quiet the applause and announce to gasps that "Gertrude Wagner has died," and goes on to imply that Wagner's operas weren't going to be performed at Bayreuth any more, and possibly on NO other stages any more. Everyone turns to their neighbor in absolute shock, and the cast is left to mill about the stage in befuddlement.
SUNDAY, 9/14/08: 1) 1:15AM: I'm seemingly in a cartoon-type reality in which a frog loops his tongue around an IMPOSSIBLY distant object, and can traverse IMMENSE distances with no trouble. I can't imagine this is real, but he does it again and again, and I have to admit "I see it with my own eyes." Without transition I'm watching a late-night television program, something like "Sexy Saturday," and a character with the face of Eddie Murphy says, "Oh, there's someone coming to GET you," and he zooms up into the window of our car and aims his gun at the person NEXT to me, and shoots, and rather than MY car falling away, HIS car falls away out of sight, but not before I get a glimpse of his sexy crotch, and then some logo for "Sexy Saturday" comes up in neon, and I realize it's all been a TV program. 2) 4:40AM: I'm watching a ballet being recorded for TV or a film, starring a new male dancer about whom the rumor has been started (maybe by me) that he has supernatural powers, and that when he throws the ballerina into the air, he CHOOSES that she comes down in an ordinary amount of time in order to mask his powers, one of which is that he could suspend her in the air indefinitely. Another of his powers would be to hold an infinite point, and in one segment for which he's famous, the music can go into a repeat for as long as he holds his balance, and we're prepared for a new record as we think he's going to partially reveal his alienness, and he goes on point, the music pauses before its repeat---and to everyone's disappointment he falls off point with a disarming shrug and smile, as if yet again proving he's a mere mortal with only a great deal of practice behind him which can lend him the air of ALMOST performing supernatural feats of dancing abilities---yet the suspicion remains that he CAN do more than he lets on being able to do. 3) 8:02AM: I'm working on a computer project with a large number of people, and see one of the underlings reach into a kind of funnel and take out a light which essentially disconnects the entire system momentarily. She can then type in any of a set of special commands---like machine language---that gives immediate access to lists, names, and locations in the program. I ask one of her cohorts to identify who came up with this gimmick, and he names someone who I know to be a real expert on the innards of the system, who had come up with another shortcut which I had often used to advantage, so I knew to trust this new bit of knowledge. A meeting was going to be called soon, and I started making up a mental list of those in the KNOW who had to be there: most of the others in the group were inessential.
MONDAY, 9/15/08: 1) 3:58AM: I'm part of the committee that's going to put on "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," and I'm addressing the other principals on the investing team. "First we have to decide on your director. We've agreed, if he'll accept, on George Taylor. If he agrees, many of our problems are already over. Then we have to select one or two principal parts, and George will take over, and others will be hired that will start to see to areas like scripts, costuming, rentals of halls, advertising, etc." This goes on in some detail, me emphasizing how it will all be interconnected, like a tree, operating from us into the rest of the organization. I'm confident the whole thing will be a success. 2) After 5AM (which I didn't bother to record): I'm watching from afar, really somehow there rather than on a TV program or movie, as---now I can't remember her name!---Dale Evans, or whoever the gay television-show hostess is---Ellen DeGeneres!, tries to seduce two other women, both of whom seem to want nothing to do with her, and finally, in desperation, Ellen takes off all her clothes and throws herself on her back on her bed, saying, "Well, resist this if you can." The older, darker-haired woman looks down at Ellen's naked body, comes closer to look intensely at her blonde crotch, and can't resist burying her face in it. Ellen, in turn, buries HER face in the THIRD woman's crotch, and I think to myself "How simple it is with women, just faces in crotches and everyone's satisfied." 3) 7:58AM: I'm visiting Marj's house, which I didn't even know she had, and it's spread out over a large number of rooms in a semi-basement, with many windows that allow light into the rooms, and I even notice that there's a level below with openings in the floor so situated that natural light can reach even this subterranean level. Many clerks or attendants or servants wander around the upper floor, and a friend of hers and mine knows that Marj is currently on the lower floor, where she never allows anyone. This male friend of hers (nothing like Ron, but sort of patterned on him) decides, evilly, to open a secret entrance to her lower level and go down and have a look around, and almost dares me to join him, so I do. We descend into this lower area, surprised to find that it's so expensively furnished that there are areas of real grass growing under artificial lighting, as well as flowers and even small shrubs and trees. We know we're not allowed down here, and that Marj might get so angry with us that---we know she's capable of it---she may determine never to see either of us again. However, our curiosity drives us on, and we go into room after room, marveling at the variety of the uses of the rooms and the styles of their decor, somehow thinking we're circling in on some central "Holy of Holies" in which she's currently staying, probably knowing we've invaded her privacy but possibly not yet knowing how she'll react to it. Or possibly she simply doesn't yet know we've entered her private sanctuary. We continue to roam around, always amazed by the richness (not opulence, but only comparative luxury in what should be a rather dark lower basement) of the rooms through which we move, always wondering, with a bit of fear, what her reaction will be. Others appear and vanish on this lower floor, again a fleet of servants, but they seem ordered, or conditioned, that no one other than Marj is allowed down here, and so they may LITERALLY not see us. The mystery continues when I wake, thinking about the oddness of the dream.
TUESDAY, 9/16/08: 7:33AM: I'm trying to clear up piles of stuff on the floor, and see lots of notes on index cards that I have to consolidate with other stuff, so I gather them up (much like on this trip) and put them into a bag to be sorted later. Then I'm trying to set up some kind of meeting with John, and see him dining in the cafeteria, so I go up the steps and down the few steps to the level of the cafeteria to go to his table, but he sees me coming, shakes his head "No," so I know the meeting's not tonight. Turn to go back down the stairs and am astounded to see a father, trying to "strengthen" his son, leap down a whole flight to stairs to the landing below while carrying his son piggyback. They land with a crash, the father scrambles to his feet, the son starts to cry---clearly he would have smashed his face into the back of his father's head when they landed---but then courageously tries to stop crying while the father tries to assume the posture of someone who knows exactly what he's doing.
WEDNESDAY, 9/17/08: 1) 2:46AM: I'm attending a class of an opera school somewhere in Japan, and a young woman practicing some Wagnerian heroine is rushing into the room, arms waving, singing madly, brandishing a sword, and some of the younger students squeak with fear and others of the older students laugh with the audacity of the acting. "This is what we're training them to do from an early age," explains the teacher. We have what we call our "thirteen-year old Mimis, and here's one now," and this young girl starts singing an aria that I'm really not sure is that much better than any I've heard before, but she's certainly young. "We have weeks where we have three different Mimis in one week: that's how strong our program is." Without transition, I'm witnessing a domestic scene: a husband has been seeing his wife's twin sister, and the wife has just found out by calling a number which she thinks is the husband's office, that she found somehow, but is astounded when her twin sister answers, saying that the husband is there, without realizing that it's her sister who's calling. There's going to be a terrible argument after this! 2) I'm waiting in TWO self-improvement-project lines: a) a complete facial re-do: letting a group of specialists study my face and come up with a plan of shaving, ointments, makeup, eyebrow shaping, and other techniques to give me the best possible face, given what they have to start with; b) a haircut like I've never had before: reshaping the hairline from all directions: front, back, and sides; changing the color if needed, even parti-coloring if beneficial; thickness conditioning, possibly adding hair for, again, the best possible hair for my particular shape of head and rest of face---which of course makes me question which it would be best to get FIRST when, due to a fluke of scheduling for both lines, I seem to be third of a group of four who are next for the face treatment, which takes a shorter amount of time, and the VERY next for the hair treatment. I'm sitting in the group of four waiting for the face treatment, but I'm aware I'm about to be called for the hair treatment, so I dash to find someone to ask about my position. The first person I talk to refers me to a Coordinator who's sitting a distance away, so I race over there, and she tells me some specific information which entails my racing BACK a few blocks, where the gutter of the street is lined with pizza boxes both open and closed, newspapers, old cardboard boxes, and other impediments over which I positively LEAP with unnatural lightness and grace, TIPTOEING onto and off of each box, pile, paper, carton, as lightly as I'd skim over a diagram of these objects with my fingertips: that's how lightly and effortlessly I skimmed with my feet, marveling at my agility and fleetness, knowing that I'll be next in BOTH of these lines, and I wake up.
THURSDAY, 9/18/08: 1) 1:06AM: I'm a volunteer to show "pornographic material" that I've gotten in the mail. I've brought about eight boxes of stuff that I'd kept for years, but made the mistake of not looking through it first to KEEP what I wanted to keep. So if in any of the boxes I opened, I suddenly saw something that I wanted, I had to transfer it to a box that I knew I'd be taking back home. I tried to shock my audience with some stuff, but most of it was fairly tame, and some I wondered why I had kept at all. Nor did I take any of my really GOOD male porno; that didn't seem to be the point of my volunteering. They tried to remain interested in my stash, but toward the end it was clear that most people had gone home already, and we were about the last pair to leave, and I'd already accumulated about six shoeboxes of things that I wanted to take home, but couldn't find any box that I'd brought BIG enough to contain all of them, so finally I resorted to finding the biggest box I could, fitting the first four in the container, and then leaving the flaps open so that I could place the last two boxes on top and just barely tuck the bulky package under one arm, but it was so heavy I decided I'd probably have to call a taxi to get it all home without serious physical strain. Everyone had long gone by this time, and I was alone in the place, and would at times glance at what I'd discarded, or left, and would furtively put it back onto the pile that I was still keeping for myself. Anyway, I thought, this was a nice way to weed a collection that was getting too big. 2) 6:21AM: I'm teaching someone named Roseanne Barr (who's rather like Sherryl and Marj, but nothing like the TV star of that name) how to index. I keep saying that Bob Teitel (who isn't the Bob I knew so many years ago, but is similar to him) is the expert, and if she has any questions, she should ask him. As I'm speaking to her one day, Bob appears at my right shoulder and "Roseanne" figures it's him and breaks into applause, and I manage the words to introduce them, and then they solemnly shake hands. I now know that the indexing baton has been officially past, and am very pleased with it. 3) 8:03AM: I'm stopping by my old IBM office for the last time, and wonder if the old mailbox slots are still there so that I can pick up any last mail I may have gotten. Get lost in new offices, walking through cubicles in which the new workers have set up little displays of miniature villages on the floor between the desks, clearly to discourage anyone from walking through their offices. I can't find anything familiar. Without transition, I'm saying goodbye to a number of people with whom I'd had a training class, and some remember me with humor because, when I introduced myself, I put myself into a skit where my right hand wanted to do something I really shouldn't do, and I slapped it and said, "No," with a particular expression, and these departing former classmates would echo that "No!" with the same expression, and a fondness for me, that I found touching. Next, I'm in a bus that's going to particular airports in Paris, and pass the silhouette of a new white roller coaster that's been built in Paris, sort of the equivalent of the London Eye Ferris Wheel, and when the bus pulls up at a terminal, I can see the porcelain-white structure of the roller coaster right in front of the Eiffel Tower, which has been newly painted the same stark white color, and figure at least it'll be easy to find. The bus goes on to another terminal which clearly serves the United States, and everyone gets off, and I wonder if my ticketing is good enough that I can just present myself at the counter and check whether there's enough time before my flight so that I can take a quick ride on the roller coaster before I depart. Then, again immediately, I'm pulling on a rope which is suspending a trapeze artist over a circus audience. This artist has previously performed on the ground, doing a series of pratfalls onto a pair of shoes on the ground, and he falls so hard on the shoes that I have to assume they're really crash pads to protect his body from the impact with the hard floor. Now I'm pulling on this rope, knowing that at least one other person has a similar rope, so that the acrobat's weight isn't the sole responsibility of one person, but I'm still startled when the weight suddenly disappears: the acrobat has gripped a bar high above the circus ring and freed himself of his "flying" gear, which drops to the floor and leaves me holding a slack rope, hoping that I did my job correctly.
FRIDAY, 9/19/08: 1) 4:57AM: A female song-writing duo are sitting at a table in a restaurant writing a new song, debating how the lyrics of one line should go. One says that the line should end with the word "ni-pa," for the sound, but the other says that the line should be all "feminine," so it should end in "ni-na," and since one of the singers is Nina van Pallant, it seems appropriate, except that Nina doesn't want the song to appear to be about her. Other details of the dream forgotten, as were fragments of dreams before this one. 2) 6:33AM: From before: a photo of a black thin arm of a young kid holding the erect penis of an older man suddenly becomes animated, and I look closely, and think I can see the white cock cum, spasming slightly and emitting a thin stream of cum. I think this is exciting and wake vaguely aroused. Another, later, segment was more overtly sexual, but I forget the details except, again, for my arousal and thinking, "So I DO at last have a sexual dream that's arousing." At the end, a number of people, mostly older, are boarding a boat for a small excursion, but no one seems to be helping anyone get on board. There's a small porch-like entrance, and I reach up to take a head-pad away from above the narrow entrance, thinking "This will give everyone more room." An older woman tries climbing the five small steps to the left of the porch, but can't seem to muster the strength even for these tiny steps, and I wonder where the attendants are who should be helping with this. A corpulent red-haired man tries to push ahead of her, coming up from the right, but he seems to hit a weak part of the planking, which gives way, and he falls through with a "WHOOP" of surprise. I look down, expecting to see him move away, but he lies there with his eyes closed even though I'm absolutely sure nothing serious could have happened to him. I'm up on the top of the porch, looking around for how to get down past the bodies ON the porch struggling to make their way farther, and trying to avoid the people who have already managed to make their way down inside. I'm just amazed that the tour agency has allowed such chaos for such a simple boarding. 3) 7:56AM: I'm leaving England with a group of tourists, and the QEII is sailing out, down a river, and all the Brits are lined up waving and taking pictures, and we from the US think this is rather quaint. Go up a hill to a dining place, and Ken remarks that one of the guys looks kind of cuddly, but when I look up I see only two males naked: one a kid who's not even pubescent, another an older man, so I figure I've missed who he saw. Dream ends in a restaurant, choosing food I don't quite understand, but more I don't remember.
SATURDAY, 9/20/08: 1) 1:49AM: I'm in an Asian war zone---and as I type those words the general idea of the dream vanishes. It was in my mind when I woke, and I started rehearsing writing it, but now the details are gone. 2) 4:21AM: I'm in a kind of summarizing Actualism class, where we're asked to report on the teaching and personal qualities of the teachers. I start by talking about Bruce, saying that, as a teacher, he's very much more "human" than, say, Chrystal, who always seemed absolutely, unattainably PERFECT. Another teacher, sitting on a sofa to my right (who seems sort of a combination of Ann Messenger and Rebekah Groome, but who has her individual, long-curly-hair-fringed face who reminds me of someone I can't at the moment identify) completely agrees with me, saying that I expressed her opinion too. I go on to add some details that I now forget.
SUNDAY, 9/21/08: 5:35AM: I'm buying a set of seven things in a store, aware that if I buy all seven, they're all half price and will be in color. I do so, pleased with my purchase. But a friend of mine insists she doesn't want all seven, only four or five of them, but is surprised and a little angry to learn that she has to pay full price for each, ending up paying more for fewer pieces.
MONDAY, 9/22/08: 5:57AM: I'm attending what looks to be a funeral: a line of about twenty people is headed by the first six or eight carrying a body as in a solemn memorial service, but it turns out they're carrying the body of some comedian, like Jim Belushi, who had been gravely ill for six weeks, who was now coming back to work, and this was some crazy program like "Saturday Night Live"'s way of celebrating his return: as his body came to the head of the line of the "mourners," he would "raise from the dead" and greet each person, who in turn would say how happy they were to see him back from the dead. I thought, "This is going to take a very long time, but I guess they've planned it out, and it's going to happen in the right amount of program time allotted to it."
END OF SPAIN/FRANCE DREAMS
TUESDAY, 9/23/08: 1) 2:45: I'm visiting a church which has been photographed through the years each time they changed the locations of the vigil lights: with each new location of each light superimposed on all the previous locations of that light. I think this is ingenious, so when I add a new vigil light, I take a picture of it and add it to the catalog of previous pictures. 2) 6:57AM: I'm walking down a hallway to a meeting, and the woman just behind me introduces herself as one of the speakers. I offer to shake her hand, but somehow my MOUTH gets too close, and I wet her knuckles and have to make a joke about how old fashioned I am: I still believe in kissing the backs of ladies' hands. Another woman walks up who's even more important, and AGAIN I manage to contact her elbow with my mouth, but now I'm too embarrassed to say anything. Without transition, I'm standing on one bank of a very clear river; each bank has a very smooth wooden or plastic jetty on which people can stand waiting for a boat to pass, onto which one may step, take two steps, and step out on the other bank. I remark that it was silly not to put the banks closer so you could merely step across. Someone waiting simply jumps into the water as an amusement, and we all sort of laugh at her, but I kind of envy her courage in jumping down the six feet from the pier to the surface of the water, which might be quite cold. But I'll wait for the boat to come along to get to the other side.
WEDNESDAY, 9/24/08: 5:08AM: I'm in an "Indiana Jones" type movie, expected to perform outlandish deeds of bravery and daring while remaining my aging self. I stand for a long time on a rocky ledge over a dank lake, "knowing" that I have to dive to the bottom and retrieve a golden-bladed sword which, when raised on high, will reveal the location of some invaluable treasure. However, the water is deep and dark, and I have no confidence at all that I'll dive in JUST where the sword is to be found, but, somewhere in the back of my mind, I KNOW this is a movie, so OF COURSE I, being the hero, will do just what I have to do to win the prize. Don't quite muster the courage to jump in before I wake up.
THURSDAY, 9/25/08: 1) 4:16: I'm driving a short distance to a cloisters, knowing that two cars are driving there, but we'll all four of us end up in the car to continue sightseeing. Then I'm directing a famous European actor in a movie, and I ask him first to talk to a child in Russian, and he makes various gibberish sounds with a Russian accent; then I ask him to do it in German, and he expertly does that; then I request French, then Italian, and then ask him to combine them all, and he comes up with an absolutely perfect accent which I tell him to use for the entire movie. Everyone thinks I'm a genius director, and I hear the producer talk into a walkie-talkie: Mr. Zolnerzak, for Direction of a Motion Picture, and I know he's nominating me for an Academy Award and feel very happy. Later, we go to see models for the set, very elaborately done on a very small scale, and I remember reading an article somewhere about a very elaborate production of a classical play in a remote Chinese province which used 5000 extras on a multi-million dollar set created to be watched by millions of Chinese throughout the year, except when it's cold and snowy.
FRIDAY, 9/26/08: 4:08AM: Paul M. and I are visiting some shop in lower Manhattan in the evening, and I know Mom's out of my apartment this evening. We've finished whatever we came to the shop to do, and I start rubbing his VERY long cock, pointing downward in his trousers, and it gets harder and harder, and finally he whispers to me, "Is there anyone at your place?" And I say, "No." And he says, "Then why the fuck don't we go THERE?" And I reply, "I thought you could cum here," to which he responds, "Don't be crazy, let's go to your place!" And I look forward to it a lot.
SATURDAY, 9/27/08: 1) 3:46AM: I'm walking down a dark street, putting a pair of orange-handled scissors into my right pants' pocket, hoping it won't be too obvious that I'm carrying a "weapon," or that it will be "taken as a sign of fear," (as discussed with Charles when talking about Mildred's warning about my not going to Egypt because of the kidnapping of nineteen tourists last week). In the distance I can see the shadowy forms of six or seven teenagers approaching, some riding a bike, and I try to look nonchalant as they pass, and they barely notice me. There was another, unrelated, segment, but I forget it now at 3:51AM, waking EARLIER rather than later. Ear bothering me. 2) 6:05AM: Clearly obsessing about the guy with his dog moving into 21K, I dream that my three-room apartment in an old building is suddenly being shared with three other guys. I'm sitting reading in a room when one of them, rather like Paul C., turns on a radio for some unpleasant music that chases me out of the room to find a quieter place to read. I go into a sort of bedroom and pull out a chair which turns out to have only two legs: it's meant to be attached to a kind of desk one of my roommates has brought in. Then I go into a bedroom to find THREE of the beds occupied, and I STILL want someplace to read. Think of the bathroom, but that's not really an alternative. Just don't know what I'll do next: I just feel trapped in a situation where I DEFINITELY don't want to continue to be! 3) 8:06AM: Dennis and I are climbing flight after flight of stairs in a yellow-painted stairway in a "haunted house" in a makeshift amusement park, and I remark that I'm glad it's still daylight, with the stairs faintly lighted from outside, because at night it would be totally dark and quite forbidding. I expect a jet of air, or a loud noise, or something surprising or frightening at the top of the next, or last, flight of stairs, but nothing ever happens before I wake.
SUNDAY, 9/28/08: 6:28AM: I'm in a kind of summer camp on a lake, and I keep wanting to just look into the waters and see the big fish suspended in the deeps, lit by the sunlight, and try to get near the shore so I can find what kind of small life exists there. I'm sharing a cabin with a number of handsome young men, and one comes in, dressed in a WWI uniform, saying, "I'm glad this is supposed to be the only day of rain while we're here." He then sits down in a chair and starts to undress, but I suddenly recognize that he has a comrade in his lap, his back to him, and he's running his hands up and down his comrade's back with what can only be called affection, and I envy their relationship. Without transition, I'm supposed to be researching some real-estate prospects for which I have only a phone number and the briefest possible description, like "Congress Street," so I figure to at least phone the number to get details about the property. But I don't have a telephone, only a small gadget comprised of five or six small metal pieces which can be brought up to form a small keyboard. But when I look at the first configuration, I can't figure out how to get all the numbers from only five or six keys. When I "loosen" the keyboard, the components fall loosely apart, and I can see that each component has four or five numbers on it, and it seems to be something like a court-reporter's keyboard: combinations of keys have to be hit to produce a specific number or letter of the alphabet. I try to figure out how to work it, with some degree of frustration, and wake up.
MONDAY, 9/29/08: 7:13AM: Rita, aged about 7, is visiting my very messy multi-room apartment in November, but I still think I should find my colored-light Christmas wreath to hang on the wall, but I search and search among piles of boxes in my bedroom and can't locate it. Objects are slipping off tops of piles of boxes, and at one point I put on a pair of three-replacement-old eyeglasses and discover my error and throw the glasses back on top of the rickety pile. In my search, I've dislocated a geyser spout on the top of a large white box, like a grocery-store freezer chest, and try to balance it back on top, like the perfectly operating one on the freezer chest behind it, but I have trouble locating the balance point on the sloping chest's top and get sprayed with the hot water as I try to find its correct location. Then I'm aware there are small crab-like bugs crawling on a piece of plastic that's covering piles of stuff, and I fold a corner of the plastic over to really try to cut the bug in half to kill it, but it's remarkably tough. Find some other toys in the stacks of stuff and wonder if she's too old to be entertained by such toddlers' playthings. Another dimly remembered segment has to do with a large group of friends gathering to go to some kind of evening's entertainment, but the details have been forgotten.
TUESDAY, 9/30/08: 4:46AM: 1) A previous dream involved trying VERY hard, fruitlessly, to jerk off, panting and sweating and straining, and it JUST isn't working. 2) Now, I've arranged to meet someone for an early dinner, around 5:30PM, and we end up in some apartment but make no moves toward sex, though it seems clear that it could have been a possibility. We go back somewhere for a drink, and go toward separate johns down a hallway, and I see he's dropped papers on the floor outside the john, and I debate picking them up and putting them into the trash, but can't think of a good reason why I should be cleaning up after him. We then, somehow, share the same john to pee, but still maintain our distance.
WEDNESDAY, 10/1/08: 7:30AM: Three fragments: 1) A sex dream in which I'm teasing someone toward an orgasm, coming close myself, and wake briefly feeling aroused. 2) Someone is throwing birds, maybe pigeons, maybe as large as ducks, into the mouths of bulls (from "The Bullfighter and the Lady," yesterday), and if the head is positioned just right, and the bird is flapping just right, the bull can chomp down on the bird, cutting its wings off on both sides of its mouth, very neatly, in one chomp. We remark how efficient this is. 3) Barbara (from the Games Group) is packing my movie screen to fit into a small bag, and she thinks she has it very tightly rolled to make a long, narrow pencil of it, when she had a brainstorm, breaks it in the middle to form an object half as long, and then unwraps the whole fabric in order to refold it in its new, halved, form, feeling very triumphant about her progress.
SATURDAY, 10/4/08: 1) 5:35AM: Michael B. and three others are having breakfast around a table much like our table so long ago at 1221 Dietz Avenue, and I can't decide where to sit since there are TWO empty place-settings among the current eaters. I go to the fridge, again from that early kitchen, and see an uncapped wine-bottle of orange juice sitting alone at the very back of a top shelf next to the tiny freezer. I bring it out, saying I have no idea whether it's spoiled or not, and offer Michael a sip in his cup to taste, but he refuses, and I think that I might take a tiny sip, but then consider: if it's bad, even a TINY sip might cause some terrible stomach problem. 2) 8:17AM: Breakfast in an IHOP-type place, but what appears to be ONE portion is being cut into TWO messy portions by an ill-trained waiter, and I look on in amazement as an incredibly tiny portion is served me in place of what had been a substantial breakfast. I pour tea into my hot chocolate by mistake, mess up the plate with too much syrup, and just get started when some of the people in my group, who look surprisingly attractive even though I haven't had any alcoholic beverage for breakfast, talk about using their discount tickets to go to the Thalia to see their special program on Tom of Finland (no doubt caused by some of his cocks in the Homoerotic Slide Program at the Center last night), and I somehow know I've already used my ticket, but debate going with the group and trying to sneak in without having a ticket. Someone passes and says, "I'm still hungry," and I sympathize because of the small size of my breakfast and suggest he goes somewhere else after the movie to get a proper meal.
MONDAY, 10/6/08: 1) 5:24AM: The fellow (call him Jim) from SAGE that I met in the elevator before the Erotic Slide Show at the Center on Friday, Dennis (who never appears, but I know he's part of our trio), and I have volunteered to participate in some HUGE project carting junk (it was never clear WHERE it all came from and WHY it had to be discarded: at one point the "junk" was Clark Bars, and I thought I'd never BUY one again, since here we're throwing them away by the boxful) from an enormous central warehouse to (and it was never quite clear WHERE we were supposed to take it: to a dump, or an incinerator, or another disposal area?) its final disposal point. But (like signing up at the Ukrainian Institute before going on the tour, which we didn't do because we would have missed the start of the tour, but did after the tour) we were stopped before we could leave by a bureaucrat who asked who I was, who wanted to see my permit to do this, who wanted to see my signed agreement to adhere to whatever rules they thought I had to sign a paper to adhere to---and I just wanted to get to the truck and drive to the final point, since we'd already loaded the truck full of stuff. I kept asking WHAT the purpose of all this rigmarole was for, but they could never tell me. At one point, to no one in particular, I described my work at SBC on job cards: it was a VERY long job, but it greatly simplified record-keeping and time-logging, and everyone admitted my brilliance in my design of a single card that both recorded the time and formed the sole record that needed to be kept for future reference for auditing the time spent on any job. I kept trying to find out WHY we had to fill out these forms, WHO organized this stultifying system, and WHY it couldn't be changed, or even eliminated. No one would listen. Finally I asked Jim, "Who rented the truck?" He said, "I did; do you just want to leave?" And I said, "Yes." A simple answer, simply given, to contrast with the complex system of mumbo-jumbo we had to satisfy before "serving" this disposal system. We looked for a way out of the building, but couldn't find it before I woke. I had a HORRIBLE sense of frustration: we're only trying to HELP, and they're only trying to IMPEDE our help! 2) 5:59AM: Two-part dream: a) I'm paging through an ENORMOUS book that seems to have been compiled from dozens of volumes of an exhaustive encyclopedia from a few hundred years ago, and it's largely pictures of people and strange flowers, fruits, trees, plants, and animals, but also contains text of varying interest: I find something that I want to keep track of, but find it's on page 32,000, which is followed by page 25 from some subsequent volume, and turning back to the Table of Contents, I can't find any entry that adequately reflects how I can re-find page 32,000. b) I'm wandering in fields whose nature is halfway between a botanical garden and a forest, and I'm going to be late for work, which is supposed to start at 8AM, and I still have to go home to have some soup before going to work, and it's well past 7:30AM, but I can't resist going to a set of plantings that I'm VERY familiar with, as parts of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens which I know very well, and see, to my surprise this late in the spring, that the hyacinths and poppies are still in bloom (though those aren't the two that I noted, which I've now forgotten: bushy orange blossoms---and poinsettia!). Have inadvertently crossed a stream to re-see these plantings, and for a moment can't find where I crossed (places I see immediately are just too wide and deep and fast-flowing to step into), but find a narrow crossing-place and jump across easily, and follow a well-trodden path with dream-like ease, skimming over the ground while barely touching it with tiptoe-feet, and get back to where I can return to my apartment quickly and try to get to work NEARLY on time. Feel cold at the end of the dream, and wake cold, out from under the covers on a fall-like morning, and type this to 6:13AM after peeing and drinking some lovely ice water.
THURSDAY, 10/9/08: 1) 4:47AM: Wake to "phone ring." Elaborate dream of "guessing game" of someone's brother-in-law writing something, and a guy from the group phoned to say it was HIM. AS he phones, I look out to my back yard and see two men starting to fight, and a third, a bum, lying in the alleyway in the distance. 2) 7:52AM: a) Show MY one-hour tape to a group like Actualism, and know they have to fill up the second hour with something else. b) Rolf is slipping at 1221 Dietz!
FRIDAY, 10/10/08: 3:03AM: There's a contest for the highest fly-fishing cast, exceeding old record of 18 or 19 feet, going to 20 and MAYBE 21 feet, but we need visual proof. It goes on to many episodes, even after I wake up and go back to sleep.
SUNDAY, 10/12/08: 6:13AM: VERY odd dream and aftermath: in the dream, I'm one of 18 people who seem to be in a movie or TV drama (rather like "Lost") that have us in an environment that's totally new, totally foreign to us, and we have to made do however we can in this "new world." The dream focuses around preparing food in pairs for each other, yet it develops that the room in which we live is set up for only EIGHT pairs to shift between food-preparer and food-eater. I seem not to have a partner, but when I ask what happened to my partner, who seems to have been named Andy, there's reticence on the part of the group, as if maybe he'd died and they didn't want to tell me, but only assured me that a PAIR of food-preparers would not only prepare food for their opposites, but for me also, which left me with the question, "Do I then have to prepare food for TWO people?" The question is never answered as they sort of look puzzled but try to hide their quandary from me. I wake, slightly disoriented, as if I might be waking in this "new world" rather than in my bed, and me feeling of dissociation is increased when through my right earplug I hear the SLIGHTEST touches of noise coming from very near me, as if there were some small animal moving about very near me, or as if someone upstairs or downstairs from me were making some very slight adjustments in furniture, trying to be quiet, but the slight bumping of one large object against another, in their shifting of furniture, despite their efforts to be totally silent, were being transmitted through the floor or ceiling to my straining ears. I take out my right earplug to, at first, total silence, but then the VERY TINY sounds occur, as if it might be raining outside, or, again, someone in the next apartment is moving very slightly, or, thanks to my overindulgence in food and drink yesterday, I'm hallucinating at some level, or have IN FACT been removed to a new world in which relationships to my apartment aren't quite what they were before I went to bed. Debate typing all this, or at least getting up to see if it's raining, and then DO retrieve my Neo from under some Healthy Heart menus and start typing, having forgotten many of the details from the dream, which seemed to go on for a VERY long time, maybe the length of a planning afternoon in this "new world,"---and now, at 6:24AM, there's a DISTINCT three-tap, VERY quiet, yet somehow QUITE near, which I can't identify at all, rather like the sound of someone tapping three keys on a Neo in the next room through a closed door. Another "hollow drum" sound, as if in echo to some other, louder, noise in a more-distant room, and then a distant siren realistically comes through the double-paned bedroom window. I have to pee, so will now get up to see if it's raining, though I suspect it's not. 6:56AM: It's not raining; I pee and shit and read New York magazine. Type this and put in earplugs and go back to bed, not REALLY feeling any kind of hangover, but not feeling 100% either. Just...plain...tired.
MONDAY, 10/13/08: 5:41AM: I DASH down the dark aisle of a grocery store to get to a redemption booth before 9AM for four coffee cups, which are hard to discern in the ad, because they're not in ITALICS (with slanted sides), to distinguish them from the rest of the copy in the ad, but are only set off by being printed in a faint purple/pink hue. GET there and SHOUT for a clerk.
WEDNESDAY, 10/15/08: 9:38AM: 1) Fragments from before: a) Bob Teitel has some kind of job that demands he's on duty for twelve-hour stretches, and he comes in at a time when he's ten minutes early, so he has to stay just that much longer. b) A red-haired boy on television is revealed to be, actually, a badger that only LOOKS like a human being. His younger brother is played by a human, and they show his immature penis easily, but the mature brother-badger's penis is always carefully kept underwater so that no one can see what it looks like, though I'm very curious. c) Some kind of display has only two shapely legs which could be either male or female, with a black bulk above standing in for the body, and then there are two bright red ribbons dangling from the waist. 2) Woke from earlier dream at 7:30, peed, and went back to bed and had another very clear dream, but I've forgotten it, typing more so that I hope the memory returns. I was so happy I'd have something fresh and detailed to take to Sharon this afternoon. 10:19AM: Quest for memory unsuccessful.
THURSDAY, 10/16/08: 1) 3:34AM: Finishing off something in "the last ten seconds." 2) 5:36AM: A young man, like the early Tom (later, recall that his name is ALBERT) Finney, is accosted by a young woman outside her house, and she drops his trousers, likes what she sees, and starts dragging him into her house. In doing so, she hikes up his shirt and the bottom of his cock can be seen as he's hustled backward up the stairs. An older man meets them halfway up the stairs to the porch, and he passes her cunt by and takes a look at "Finney"'s cock, and starts playing with it. The woman protests, but the older man dismisses her with "You're still too young; this looks more interesting," and starts sucking on the astounded younger man's cock, and I think this is a very interesting production (whether on TV, or in a movie).
FRIDAY, 10/17/08: 6:24AM: I'm preparing for some morning meeting, waiting for an alarm to ring so that I can get up and get ready. Many details lost from memory.
SATURDAY, 10/18/08: 1) 4:17AM: Lots of us are at an orgy, and at first I think there are no women, but someone says there are at least two and maybe more, and scores are kept of the number of encounters that are somehow related to Netflix movies. I look forward to participating. 2) 8:07AM: I've attached myself to a family of three who has just seen a movie at a place like the Museum of Modern Art, and after the movie we try to find a set of chairs in which to have lunch. I try a raised central area, but others get to the tables before I do and take all the good places, and I finally find the family at a side table with empty seats all around them. "Are you trying to lose me?" I say in jest, but when they don't respond, it occurs to me that maybe they ARE. I sit next to them and find they've acquired another young boy like their son, and he keeps saying he isn't hungry and doesn't want anything to eat, while the mother keeps insisting he MUST be hungry and should eat something more than the nacho chips he's already ordered. I take one of them and they're awful, so I figure to solve the problem by asking if he likes these, saying, "If he likes THESE, he's hungry; if he doesn't, maybe he really isn't hungry." He never answers. I'm then drawn to small rose-bush cuttings that have been put into tiny bowls filled with light sand on the table, and I finger the thorny cuttings and look at the dry sand and idly ask if they really think these are going to take root, but recall from some time before that there had been actual roses growing on cuttings like these, so maybe they CAN blossom in the right season. The family doesn't interact with me at all, but I continue to sit near them and wonder when we're going to order food for ourselves.
SUNDAY, 10/19/08: 9:27AM: I'm touring a very famous person's house-museum, and I could ask a set of questions whose answers would be given me only after I completed the circuit of the tour. But I could see a diagram of the answers superimposed on the house-plan, so I could see that the "answer trail" led right down the CENTER of the itinerary through the rooms, so I knew there were no "unexpected" answers, so I had nothing to gain by getting the answers. When I got to the end of the itinerary, I saw that the rope at the end, which before had been indicative of the fact that I had to return on my path to exit the way I came in, had been moved to block off the return trip, now ending at a door that would lead me to a lower-floor exit, or maybe even the garage, which I hadn't seen before, so I was about to leave the building when I heard a loudspeaker saying, "Mr. Zolnerzak, Mr. Zolnerzak, please return to the entry room to pick up your belongings," so I knew I had to go back and get my answers---and I may have left something else there, as well, which I'd forgotten.
MONDAY, 10/20/08: 6:21AM: Seemingly continuous three-parter: I'm taking photographs of a museum exhibit which shows three stages of an excavation: a) the unexcavated site with a bit of Roman road peeking through the contemporary soil, b) the Roman road's surface cleared of soil, but showing how it curves over an even earlier road, and c) the earlier road excavated as much as it can be. Then someone, who may have been in the museum with me, is going to meet a friend at Commander's Palace, which has newly opened somewhere close by, whether in New Orleans or New York I don't know, but I've never been there and have wanted to go, and finally tell the person that I'll meet him there, if he thinks they'll have room for me at his table, and I just won't go back to work this afternoon as I'm supposed to. Then I'm in my current living room and have spilled cracker crumbs on the floor, which I attempt to pick up piece by tiny piece with my fingers, and the more I pick up the more there IS to pick up, and I think it'll really be simpler if I just get the vacuum cleaner and do all of the area at once.
TUESDAY, 10/21/08: 9:30AM: I'm visiting London, and I'd written a note to a distant acquaintance to ask if I could stay in his apartment while I was there. I entered a private entrance in a brick row-house on a quiet street in London and knocked on the plain yellow door in the boxy undecorated lobby. The door rattled in its frame, and I could hear distant voices inside, so I just waited until the door opened. The family of six or seven were seated around a table where they'd just eaten, my friend wasn't there, and after some time they produced the note that I'd sent him. I'm embarrassed to see that it's on the back of a used greeting card, but on the other hand I'm glad they were at least aware that I HAD written in advance. "Well, you can always rent one of the council-property rooms upstairs," the head of the household said. Then I'm upstairs, deciding to settle there but anxious about the amount of the rent, and I'm pleased to see that the room's been cleaned recently, except that one part of the floor hasn't been dusted and I got down on my hands and knees and whisked dust-balls out of the crevice where the wall met the floor. Now I could look forward to my stay in London.
FRIDAY, 10/24/08: 7:36AM: To know each other makes better partners at bridge---walnuts are breasts. Note transcribed three days later.
SUNDAY, 10/26/08: 5:54AM: I'm waiting for a friend to come to my apartment to watch some of my travel slides. I'm sharing my apartment (or I'm sharing someone else's apartment), occupying the middle room: one "roommate" is in a room to my right. He might want to see the slides, but it's up to him to come into my room if he does. Another roommate is in the room to my left, which is the front room of the apartment, so when my friend arrives to see the slides, he'll have to ring the bell or knock on the door of that room, so that roommate will have to let him in and let my friend into my room so that he can see the slides. To pass the time, I'm reading some books, one about the paintings of Cezanne, and I've already finished that book, so I can return it to its owner. It's past the time when my friend should have arrived, but neither of the roommates seems the least bit interested in the slides on their own, so I'm content to sit in the middle room for the rest of the evening undisturbed if I don't hear that my friend has arrived. Feel a slight bit of disappointment that no one's going to see the slides this evening, but am prepared to go on reading until someone knocks on my door or it's time for me to go to sleep.
TUESDAY, 10/28/08: 5:32AM: I'm cleaning out silverware drawers in a kitchen that's not quite, but close to, 1221 Dietz. I look at the date of the newspapers I'm replacing and see that it's just under two years since I changed the papers last. Some of the papers don't quite cover the entire bottoms of the drawers, and the thin linings are slightly torn and covered with what might be tiny mouse turds, though I don't remember being troubled with mice. I've also been soaking stamps off envelope papers, and a bowl that held the papers now has a caked-on rim of solidified glue from the stamps which is hard to scrape off. In another section, I'm in a gym, showering after exercising, and am rather surprised that I feel somewhat erotic, getting slightly hard, and I'm wondering how I'll excuse that if someone notices and remarks about it, and wake feeling the slightest bit inclined to think about jerking off, but change the subject in my mind. Type this into the computer by 5:35AM.
WEDNESDAY, 10/29/08: 8:10AM: Woke about 5:50AM with the memory of a dream in which a young man with INTENSE blue doll's eyes pressed me up against a wall and DEFIED me not to be attracted to him, though I couldn't imagine why he'd want to have anything to do with me save for scamming me in some way by my physical attraction to him. But I had to admit I loved staring into his beautiful eyes, wondering what might happen next, and he made some remark about how our bodies contacted each other below the waist, which I couldn't discern.
THURSDAY, 10/30/08: 8:20AM: I'm visiting a nuclear-test site, which is about to give a demonstration at night (probably connected to trying to see the "Pulse Park" lights at Steve's last night), and I'm simultaneously talking with people on the ground and watching the demonstration from a low-flying airplane. An arc of light, like a set of water fountains, curves around the test area, and at two or three places what appear to be white balloons are inflated and then are allowed to deflate into wrinkled white surfaces on the ground. I ask if these are supposed to be simulations of nuclear explosions, and I'm regarded as wanting to know too much information for my level of clearance. I'm not sure of my status: am I privileged to see this demonstration, or have I just stumbled onto a test that I'm really not supposed to see.
FRIDAY, 10/31/08: 1) 2:55AM: A god-like Adonis is planning to take a play's heroine flying off to Pannonia/Elysium, after all the names have been changed properly so that the correct action can be taken. 2) 6:30AM: A beautiful woman wants me so bad she gropes me, but I really want her handsome, possibly gay, boy friend.
DREAMS FROM EGYPT
TUESDAY, 11/4/08: 0:12AM: I'm organizing some kind of sex show but don't quite know how to go about it. Details largely lost. Type in file 7 to organize thoughts.
THURSDAY, 11/6/08 [actually WEDNESDAY, 11/5/08: 11:15PM]: 1) There's a diagram saying that someone has to approve my poem before I can submit it to the New Yorker magazine for publication, but the diagram is in the form of a mobile which someone knocked into and changed the components to read that someone ELSE has to approve the poem before it can be submitted, and it now, in a complicated way, involves Mildred. Coincidentally, Mildred is running a race which she's sure she can't win (though there are no other competitors), and so I dash to her starting line and announce the race like a sports commentator: "Now Mildred has left the gates, but she only had one minute to complete the race---but she's gotten off to an excellent start and is much farther ahead much sooner than anyone has predicted---in fact she's got all of ten seconds to complete just a very little of the race---" and Mildred is running very fast indeed---"and will have to finish in nine, eight, seven---" and she finishes---"And she finishes ahead of the record!" Mildred is flushed and panting, but finds out that Marj has not only to proofread MY work, but also Mildred's work, and she's found three or four terrible errors, which embarrasses Mildred terribly, and she refuses to participate, but she's laughing so much because she won the race that Marj and I, equally amused by the situation, can easily cajole her into accepting the task of reading my poem, even with the inverted logic, and Mildred might even, in good spirits, accept my poem as adequate, making everyone happy. Wake feeling triumphant that I've finally had a dream on this trip that is really a DREAM, and not some sort of wishful feeling for or against this trip. And I'd gone to bed about 7:30PM, so I've already slept almost four hours and it's only 11:26PM, with a chance of another dream tonight. 2) 1:25AM: Three representatives of a snack-food company are testing me on different forms of cheese-based chips, and the first one I try is a kind of chip I've always liked, but subsequent ones have been changed or "improved" in ways I don't like, and I make it very clear that that's my honest opinion, and they're VERY impressed that I identified the first as the "original," and they begin to think of me as some kind of advertising representative. In an associated section, I've changed my shirt to a blue cotton with a broken button, and they start to enthuse about my adaptation to a perfect look they've been trying to capture in their advertising campaign, and they start praising me to the skies for my taste and appearance, which of course pleases me very much. They start to confide what they're really trying to find out, and it's almost as if I'm conspiring to give them exactly the answers they want to hear, which pleases both them and me very much. A bit later, I have an embarrassing moment when I urinate on top of a pair of blue jeans that happens to be set too near the toilet seat where I'm urinating, and everyone tries to make the "accident" into some kind of omen of my perfection as a subject to work with them in the future, and we're all feeling just wonderful about the beginning of our highly productive association. Wake feeling almost elated, not to mention enthusiastic enough to get out of a comfortable bed and record this second dream, with the possibility of even a third in this extended night of sleeping and dreaming.
FRIDAY, 11/7/08 [actually 11/6/08: 1) 10:06PM]: I'm talking to the Stage Manager of a play (maybe mine) and there's SUCH an intense sexual attraction I feel for him that I feel he MUST feel the same attraction for me, and fantasize lying on a beach when it begins to rain, but remaining there anyway, knowing he might be coming onto the beach and would lie down next to me and we'd start the sweetest kiss in history. Then the play has actually started, and I'm in the back of the audience as a Joan-Sumner-type narrator introduces one young woman who moans about her attraction to a young man in town who will never, ever notice her, and the audience laughs gently and the Joan-type, pleased, smiles a genuinely sympathetic smile, and then a second attractive blonde in the center spotlight moans, "And it was the only time I had a chance for a mink (and she rises up to shed remnants of a mink coat) while I still had the ASSETS to get a mink coat" (and falls backward with her large, magnificently formed, and almost too-pointed breasts in a tight yellow sweater rising yearningly into the air), and the audience laughs so loudly and knowingly that again the Joan-character has to smile and smile and let the audience feel the sadness of the lost chance for a mink from this girl who will never be so beautiful again as to merit a mink from a man. I want the dream to continue with the attractive Stage Manager, but can only wake with a rueful heart and take my Neo to the toilet and transcribe this to 10:12PM, sad that the dream will never be. 2) 12:47AM: I'm standing on the sandy shore of a lake looking at a group of Bedouin on camels. I'm asking someone, who might be Dale, what they're doing here. "They can't be grazing, because there's no grass on the beach. They're not watering, because the ocean water is salty. So what are they doing here?" Dale can't answer me, but I still feel they're some source of danger, and someone should do something about them. 3) 2:40AM: Rather mean dream of being on a train with someone who's quite mentally and physically disabled (rather like the one-armed guy from the Center) and he's making nonsensical noises, and I make nonsensical noises back at him, slightly fearing that he might attack me in some way, but he doesn't. Then I'm sorting through a pile of brochures which might be mail, of very odd shapes, some with no addresses which would imply they are NOT mail, and I'm sorting them into what I want to keep and what I want to throw away.
SATURDAY, 11/8/08: 1) 3:09AM: Two people are trying to get a starring role in a play, and their qualifications are more dependent on how much money they can invest in the production than on any acting abilities or fitness for the role. Computer displays show how they're competing against each other with amounts of money, both their own and from their friends. 2) 5:16AM: ABSOLUTELY CLASSIC nightmare! I'm coming home from a trip overseas, but I'm totally disoriented. The dream starts in some kind of grungy office in lower Manhattan, where I'm trying to get some kind of information, or orientation, from someone vaguely like Dror, with whom I may have been traveling, but I've forgotten where I've been, how I got to this unidentified office, and exactly who I'm talking to (and for what reason). I try to ask sensible questions like "Where have I been?" and "Where am I going and how do I get there?" but the only answers are either pointless remarks, aimless jokes, or disparaging remarks about my memory. I leave the office, figuring somehow to get home without having gotten any information from this uncooperative person, and in the middle of VERY run-down streets (no real shops, no addresses, no street names, no one ON the streets to ask where I am or where I can find the nearest subway station), and I'm carrying a large plastic bag---more like a three-foot-square envelope that's developed a tear along the lower edge from which small pieces of hardware keep dropping to the ground and which I try to keep track of, though very soon it's clear that I've already lost so many objects that the final construction of whatever it is I'm carrying the parts of would never be complete. I reverse the orientation of the bag, hoping to get an intact side of the container on the bottom so that nothing more will slip out, trying to fold it in half to make it more manageable to hold and carry. In the middle of this I realize that I must have left my SHOES behind in the office where this nightmare started, and for a few minutes I try to remember what kind of store or shop this office was on the second floor of: was it an Associated Foods at the far corner? more like an office building with no real identifiable shop on the ground floor? As time goes on and I wander more and more streets, trying desperately to locate where I am, I realize the futility of returning to where I had been and concentrate on finding the nearest subway station. I seem to be way east on the Lower East Side, where none of the streets meet at right angles, none have numbered orderly names, and many are unnamed, though those that are, like Truck St., are no help at all. Pass a child-like person on the street who seems to be drunk, and figure there'd be no help asking him where the nearest subway station was: he might not even be able to speak English. No signs anywhere give me a clue of the neighborhood or the ethnicity thereof. Maybe I'm thinking of some of the Arabic signs I've recently been seeing in Egypt. Go toward one direction, but it's not only DARK in that direction, but it seems clearly to be heading toward the East River, where there would be NO subway stations whatever. Look down MANY blind alleys, devoid of shops, even of doorways with any kind of identification. Try to move toward a more familiar neighborhood, figuring I have to find SOME landmark that I can identify, but the streets are so narrow, it's so dim, the buildings crouch over me so I can hardly see the sky, let alone any distant recognizable tower or landmark. Come to the edge of what may be a public park, but no part of it rings any bell in my memory. I begin to rationalize my terrible position: if I never see my shoes again---well, they were either my traveling shoes with the holes in the sides (not considering whether they had or had not my new orthotics in them), so they were ready to be thrown away anyway, or they were my old "dress black" shoes which could easily be replaced. I wasn't cold, so I didn't lack a coat or jacket against the body-temperature weather, though it seemed it might start to rain lightly, but even that didn't seem important. I again thought of finding the original second-floor office, but I'd wandered so far from it I knew I had NO chance of finding it. I hoped only to find out how to head definitely west, toward the central spine of Manhattan, to find a subway, and maybe more to the north, where the stops would be more familiar, though in the dream I had no clear idea of where I'd TAKE a subway even if I found one, or if I had any money or card with which to gain admittance to the subway itself. More blind alleys, more unknown streets, more vacant alleyways with no one to ask. At one point toward the end there was a mangy mother dog trying to tend three or four pups which were clustered at about crotch level around a substantial tree, and I found one pup sort of seeking out my touch, smelling at my hands to see if I could offer him any food, and I petted his thin body and wondered at a furry mass that was his stomach: did starving dogs manifest the swollen stomachs of starving African children? Then I feared the mother might attack me for touching one of her pups, or the pup might nip at me, however playfully, and I didn't feel safe with them and moved away. Maybe toward the end I even lost the plastic envelope I was carrying, dismissing it as being useless anyway, and felt an even greater sense of utter loss, dissociation, desperation, and finally woke up with a WEAK sense of relief since I had no longer any energy to feel a STRONG reaction to waking up and being released from this totally consuming nightmare: no inkling that it was a dream occurred anywhere during my wanderings, no hope of rescue from any helpful person in this desolate neighborhood seemed possible: it didn't even seem reasonable that anyone would speak English, though this was more paranoia than reality since I really didn't SEE anyone from whom to ask directions or information or assistance. Totally abandoned, seemingly early-morning streets, no chance of finding my way anywhere without waking with relief from this overwhelming nightmare. Type to 5:41AM, seeming to feel small movements in our ship, though we're not supposed to leave until after 7AM.
SUNDAY, 11/9/08: 1) 1:51AM: I'm working on a legal case and look at a list of dates, five or six of which end in a year ending in 8, and this takes on some kind of significance in my choice of lawyers for a new case. At one point I make a sort of joke, testing their tolerances, and say, "You don't mean you'd be against the idea of sex in the Presidential limousine? JFK having sex with Jackie on the way to the White House after his inauguration, for instance?" This also has some strategic use in my pursuit of winning a particular case in a court. 2) 4:10AM: I'm sitting in a living room that may be my own, with four or five young guys undressing for sex. I sit on one side of the sofa while others go down on each other, and then a young guy comes over and goes down on me. I reach up and play with his tits, and he seems mildly excited, continuing to do me, but he doesn't seem extremely interested even though he starts thrusting and maybe there's even a little pre-cum. Then, with little transition, Aunt Helen is sitting in my living room, saying she admires the "circular arrangement of my apartment," but "What are all these people doing here?" I look around in panic and see four or five young people (one or two females) sitting around my living room, but go into another room full of sofas full of people (and more women), and then into a bedroom where people seem to be waiting for her to leave. In a panic, I tell everyone to wait until my aunt leaves before they start anything, and they seem, reluctantly, to agree. Back in the living room, she seems to be gone, but there's a box, roughly gift-wrapped, for me sitting on the floor, and I open the door to the hallway to see three or four large cardboard boxes with addresses to others in my small apartment building, and I have the confused feeling that "I'm glad I don't live in this building any more (as if it were a building like 167 Hicks where people would leave a mess in the downstairs hallway)," even though I'm clearly still living in whatever building this is. Glad that she's left without any indication of being scandalized by my "friends," (some of whom appear to resemble younger versions of people on this trip) and leaving without saying anything negative to me. Finish typing at 4:22AM, having wiped up urine from the floor for the SECOND time, and since this time I DON'T remember leaving any when I peed before, it MUST be Dale who's leaving it, but I don't say anything to him.
MONDAY, 11/10/08: 1) 1:05AM: Two therapists have showed up in my quite messy apartment, and though I try to joke about it, SHE, in particular, is more upper class and annoyed with the junk on the floor that I try to scrape away with my foot and minimize, while he just tends to go along with her. I'm given three situations (maybe losing a friend, losing a pet, and losing a favorite object), to which I have to describe my reactions in three ways (maybe at home, on a trip, and as it would have been in the past), with another three variables (say when I'm feeling happy in general, depressed in general, or neither). I tear out pieces of paper, label each with one of the three variables, and then draw three pictures in which I depict another variable, and think to attach a piece of paper to each picture that will describe the third variable. But, like writing postcards this afternoon, OTHER things happen that delay my actual descriptions of my reactions: I have to get rid of some other junk, a phone rings, someone knocks on the door---and the whole thing begins to resemble a comedy routine in which she finally suggests they come back some other time when I'm more organized and ready to discuss my actual FEELINGS about these situations, without getting so involved in HOW I'm going to depict my feelings in each situation. I feel vaguely cheated, as if I'm not being permitted to show that I can do what they want AND control my environment to their satisfaction at the same time, yet I have to admit I'm doing a poor job of it and making a VERY poor impression of myself on them, about which I feel sad and guilty and incompetent. Wake with relief and finish typing at 1:12AM, very thirsty. 2) 4:10AM: I'm witnessing (or watching a play or movie of) a motion-picture audition in the 30s, and the actresses are desperate to get the parts, over-emoting, begging, and willing to do anything. One slender actress, told she has an audition, is so eager to get off the bus on Fifth Avenue to go to the producer's apartment, and pushes her way out the back door of the bus so quickly, that she falls flat onto the sidewalk to everyone's horror. But she immediately gets to her feet, hardly brushing herself off, and dashes into the building. We KNOW she'll get the part! Earlier, another famous actress wants to have her part changed, and her success seems less assured. 3) 5:53AM: Mom has told me she's going to phone me at home to do something for her in an hour, but during that time Spartacus calls and says I must join him downtown for some reason. We meet in a grungy Lower East Side coffee shop, and I figure we're near East 11th Street, where I'm supposed to pick something up for work, but I don't have the phone number: I've left it on a notepad at home, so I'll have to call Mom to read it to me (of course this doesn't make sense!). But I don't remember my phone number, since I never call it. Ask Spartacus if he remembers it, and I try 6146, but that's HIS number. Ask the waitress if she has a Brooklyn white pages, and she rummages among a pile of papers on the counter and says no. I turn back to Spartacus, but he's being tormented by a group of Spanish bad-asses, who have him under a table and are forcing him to taste some kind of seasoning they're putting under his nose and into his mouth; but since he's taking it willingly, doesn't look concerned, and the guys don't look particularly evil, I guess he's holding his own, but I have no idea what to do next---when I wake.
TUESDAY, 11/11/08: 1) 3:30AM: Complicated dream about crowded apartment and sex, the details of which I've totally forgotten, though I know they were there. 2) I'm looking at a tiny note-card on which I've recorded what I've taped from TV a very long time ago, and the last item isn't finished, and by some coincidence someone else seems to have borrowed and be playing the Shakespearean play corresponding to my last item. I trouble him by asking him if I can see what HE'S recorded as being this item, and he grumbles but produces his OWN aged note-card which says something like "Love's Labour's Lost" in the Something version that runs for 90 or 120 minutes. I put on MY videotape and THINK that it has only a few minutes of the start of the play on it, but it goes and goes until one of the comic characters at the end comes on with an obvious climax line like "And it wasn't impossible at all," after which the audience at this clearly live performance applauds the final curtain, and I update my note with the title and the fact that it seems to be complete, which means I can watch it at last without fearing that it'll be cut off before the end. Other details after this, in the dream, have been forgotten.
WEDNESDAY, 11/12/08: 1) 3:31AM: I'm watching a stage show, and the men seem to have their bodies heavily made up, and one of them has an incredible set of pecs and abs, and, almost as if I'd wished it, they come out one by one as if to model their colorful designer costumes, but then take off their tops to reveal transparent undershirts that display their bodies to perfection, and the fellow with the BEST body takes off his shirt to show his naked torso painted with deep blues and reds to accentuate the musculature and definition of his wonderful body. I wake, think of the dream, and wonder if I can continue it in some way in my imagination. 2) 6:31AM: I'm attending an amateur production of some play, and the woman next to me on the left keeps pushing me as if I'm taking too much room, but in fact it's SHE who is taking too much room, so I push back with hips and elbows and feet until finally she gets the hint and starts leaning to HER left to avoid me. Then there's some kind of accident which messes up the floor, but the dirty water comes down under the seat next to mine, leaving my jacket undamaged under the seat, but everyone else in the row has moved out, and I take a vacant seat on the aisle, assuring myself a good, unobstructed view of the stage. For the next act, a group of extras portraying local college students come down the aisles from the back of the theater, in character, since the stage is too small to hold them all. Then two of them, obviously intended to be gay in the most outrageous way, start smiling and hugging each other, all the while attempting to "hide" their homosexuality but being by far the more obvious in doing so, kissing on the cheek and drawing back in mock horror, as if they'd thought they were greeting a female instead of a male, and one of them, with a very small face with beautiful features surmounted by the most enormous glossy black pompadour wave, making me think that, even if he DOES happen to be straight, he has a very beautiful face, starts making a comment like, "Well, there just isn't ANYONE in this town who's even worth a SECOND LOOK as far as---uh---personal GROOMING is concerned: everyone looks just so NORMAL," he simpers, jutting out one hip in a grotesque caricature of someone who's gay but thinks he isn't giving anyone the slightest clue, but absolutely SCREAMING with faggotry.
THURSDAY, 11/13/08: 1) 2:59AM: I'm returning home at an intersection which might be patterned after the gnarled tree overhanging the water from the First Cataract, since there's an enormous tree dominating the intersection which is TOTALLY underwater: pedestrians are staggering around in water from their ankles to their knees and even above, trying to get past this murderous intersection and up to dryer land on any side leading to where they're going. After a lot of sloshing around, I'm in a doctor's office, presumably seeing if I got any infection or infestation from this water, and the doctor's being very negative about even taking tests, maybe even implying that someone so close to death doesn't merit such expensive tests. Not really a NIGHTMARE, but truly menacing and with a bad feeling after I wake and type. 2) 4:41AM: Brief but touching scene: Rita and I are lying in bed, and I say, "Well, we have to accept the worst of it (meaning one of us may be close to dying) (and we caress in the tenderest possible way), but not right now," as an attempt to somehow meliorate the desperation and sadness of the situation. 3) 6:05AM: Paul C. and I have met in the early afternoon in NYC to do something, but he has to go to the john in some public place, and I walk to the corner and start talking to someone, but then figure he's come out and is waiting for me, and we wave to each other, but HE's met someone he knows and has made other plans for the next few hours, so we agree to meet at 7:30PM and do something for the evening: I have in mind a spectacular movie---which reminds me of ANOTHER dream: we're touring a movie set, and they let in lots of tourists to watch, but it's a period piece, set during the Depression (the 30s one, not this one) and we see an enormous crowd of extras, in full makeup, driving past in vintage cars, and figure they're filming this from an overhead camera from which we visitors can later be edited out, and it goes on for a few concentrated seconds. There's a distant cry of "Cut," and everyone reverts to their normal selves, and we visitors are told it's all over and we can leave now. Maybe this is the movie we're going to see later in the evening. Anyway, rich sequences of dreams.
FRIDAY, 11/14/08: 1) 12:32AM: I'm playing a leading part in a criminal-law play in which I'm falsely accused of murder. I haven't memorized my lines, but my only speech in the first scene is something I said in a newspaper article, so it makes sense if I read from the script. A volunteer has a woman's part, and she reads her lines, and then another speech requires her to play yet another character. Still, in all, I think the first part of the play goes well. 2) 3:41AM: I open my apartment door and there's ROLF, looking older, but still very sexy and VERY well-dressed, and he comes in with speed and avidity and HUGS me and kisses me and shows clear sexual interest, and we rub our cocks together and they're VERY hard and we're VERY turned on, and I wake, turned on. As a continuation, we're talking of meeting later for dinner together, but he has some kind of business dinner at 6PM, so it seems unlikely that we can meet at 9PM and have dinner AGAIN, so we wonder what the next step will be, though we seem to want to meet, now only for dinner together.
SATURDAY, 11/15/08: 1) 1:10AM: I'm looking through a ten-or-so-part prospectus for a new community, maybe on the South or West Coasts, and I have to think of what to do next. Many ideas occur to me: a) Find who wrote this prospectus, and what they want me to do with it. b) Find who else has been appointed to do what. c) Have a meeting to discuss what everyone understands their responsibilities to be. d) Make some kind of Progress Report to submit to everyone. e) Figure what steps need to be taken when. f) And more: a huge project with enormous consequences, and I don't know the first thing about it, but look forward to working on it for a great number of years. 2) 3:10AM: Four of us (in a play or TV program?) are competing for a job. I'm NOT a business type, and when asked to pose for a job-application photo, I determine NOT to smile in order to stand out as someone who DOESN'T particularly want the job. Another guy says something rather harmlessly sexist, and the woman stalks out in indignation, and we (as part of the interviewing process?) discuss whether it WAS sexist, or whether she just overreacted, and what this will do to our chances of getting the job.
SUNDAY, 11/16/08: 1) 1:33AM: I'm recording six or seven steps that have to be done in the next six or seven days, and an attendant knocks on the door and I say I'll be ready in about ten minutes, because I've copied two or three of the steps (one reversed in order with another) and need to copy the rest before I can leave the room. 2) 4:50AM: Not remembered.
MONDAY, 11/17/08: 6:08AM: Remembered earlier dream about looking at an index that needs a lot of correcting: a) an entry of "inverted" is either out of alphabetical order, or it should be made a sub-entry; b) random "1"s appear to the right as separate lines, seemingly beyond the last sub-entry of many entries; c) words are misspelled. I'm not quite sure how to correct these, or even if I'm responsible for pointing out they should be corrected. Another segment had something to do with further competing for a job, but I've forgotten details now as I type at 6:12AM.
TUESDAY, 11/18/08: 5:10AM: MANY dreams: 1) I'm in a grocery store, on a roof with much produce on shelves, and an enormous wind comes up and starts blowing large boxes of breakfast cereal off the shelves and into the aisles and off the building, and people race after them to grab them for free for themselves. An old man in a newsstand cowers behind his papers and looks out, bewildered by what's going on. 2) I'm reading a newspaper, and there's an article about a famous author, it may be Robert Heinlein, who set a record by holding his breath underwater, concluding, "It may have been a small feat, but all his fans thought it was of great importance." 3) John and I are getting out of a car, taking packages out of the trunk, and I have five: two bags and three large envelopes that I have to strain to manage, and he opens the common mailbox and takes out two or three rubber-banded clumps of mail. Everyone from the building clusters around to find if any of it is for them, and John is so slow opening the packets that they crowd around demanding to do it themselves. Many of the envelopes are filled with bulky green food-discount coupons labeled Binnies, and I'd heard of them before but never knew what they were, and suddenly everyone in the building but me seems to be getting them, and I loudly demand to know what they are, but no one answers me.
WEDNESDAY, 11/19/08: 1) 1:33AM: Grandpa is hollering across Dietz Avenue to Grandma, who is standing on Mrs. Farris's porch (and at first I think it IS Mrs. Farris, but then it occurs to me afterward that it's actually GRANDMA), that "You're just an old woman and will die soon, and what good will all your listening in on the telephone and opening others' mail do you?" And she hollers back that "You're just an old fart and have no right to be hollering at anyone about anything."
THURSDAY, 11/20/08: 1) 3AM: More a thought than a dream: Dennis is persuaded to move in with me, able to cook his favorite meals again, and to investigate new recipes, some of them successes, some of them disasters. These are only calm thoughts, though I'm concerned about breathing through dry nasal passages. 2) 5:47AM: A real dream: Dale says something offensive and a guide who's sort of a mix of Tarek and Ra-ab says something worse and they shout at each other until they actually "put up their dukes" and start circling each other looking for a physical battle. I step between them, figuring it's the only way to stop them, and we dance in a circle for a bit, but then they relax, I make some comment, and both kind of laugh, and the situation is defused.
END OF EGYPT/JORDAN DREAMS
MONDAY, 11/24/08: 6:33AM: MOTHER of all nightmares! I'm sitting, reading, in a bus station, where my bus has stopped for a rest stop. At first I figured that the movement of the rest of the group would tell me when the bus was reloading for its next leg of our journey, but then it dawns on me that I've LEFT the group and am now traveling on an itinerary of my OWN, and that the bus I'd been waiting for has probably LEFT already. Gather my wits and try not to panic: I don't seem to have any luggage, so nothing's been left on the bus that may have departed already; I locate my theater-ticket-sized bus-ticket stub in my pocket, so I know that I'm somewhere in Ohio, bound for Davenport, which I am calm enough to recognize is in Iowa, to the west, so I sort of assume I've left a group in New York and am now crossing the country by bus in order to do more sightseeing before ending my own trip. Go out to the front of the station and look at the array of busses parked at all angles, but none of them are bound for Davenport. I start by going inside the building to find an information booth to inquire about the next bus to Davenport; this is such a small town that there must be many, I think tentatively, busses each day to Davenport, so I won't have to spend a night wherever I am. But I somehow end up in a greasy-spoon restaurant next, in some way, to the station, but go out the wrong door and can't see the facade which I recall says "Bus Station." I look down the block one way, but can't see anything familiar. But it HAS to be in this building somewhere, since I haven't crossed a street---or have I? Find myself below a street on which a truck is dumping water in great quantities: it rushes to the curb above me, washes over the curb in a wave a couple of inches high, and sweeps down the slope to wet my feet thoroughly, and I wonder how I'm going to get the chance to dry out. Then the truck dumps MORE water, and this time people near me are aware of what's happening and are scrambling to get out of the way, but there isn't any refuge: the water comes cascading down, and some kids are actually forced to swim to stay in one place, and I'm wet well above the knees, and then to the waist, and I worry about the contents of my wallet getting soaked: the money will stick together, and paper identification cards will become unusable as they stick together. Without transition I'm in front of another building that looks like it might furnish an entry to the bus station, but I first find people being ushered into some kind of church service, which I certainly don't want to be caught up in, and then I'm in the middle of a kind of Mennonite community---women in cloth caps, men dressed all in black---who seem to want to serve me dinner. I try to question my way out, but they don't seem to speak English. I keep fingering my ticket stub as a talisman of "reality," knowing I can get out of this eventually, but, in the grip of the nightmare, I'm convinced that this IS happening to me, I have no one but myself to rely on to get OUT of this, and I have no idea how to do it: I've lost the location of the bus station, am no longer convinced that there WILL be another bus as the day begins to darken, and I'm COMPLETELY lost, though the idea that I might actually be in some part of AKRON had passed through my head with a degree of irony that I don't find very funny. Desperately try to think of my next logical step when I finally wake up, numb with relief that it was only a nightmare, obviously based on my recent return from the trip with PILES of things to handle in my apartment before I'm the LEAST bit caught up. To make it worse, I rely on the clock by my bed to assure myself that it's 7:23AM, so I've gotten marginally over seven hours' sleep, but then my desk clock shows the real time as past 6AM, and I've not had as much sleep as I would have liked, but pee, blow my nose many times, take a half-melitonin, dress, and finish typing this at 6:55AM, content to start the day.
TUESDAY, 11/25/08: 12:50AM: Jest like an Ole Western: I'm protecting the person of a beautiful young widder who's living in a trailer on the villain's property, and he's demanding she be off it, and I'm trying to think of ways to prevent him from chasing her off. Many times I shout out menacingly "Bartley!" but it don't do no good, as he's determined, and damn his bones but he IS in the right. He wrests her back and forth, flowered skirt flying, and I grab her from spinning out of control and hurting herself, yet there seems to be no solution to the fact that it IS his property and she IS trespassing, and should be off it. Many old-western situations occur, but the result is always the same: he seems permanently to be the winner.
THURSDAY, 11/27/08: 6:14AM: Compound dream: 1) I'm printing something, but I've already printed lots which I haven't taken out of the printer, and I have trouble distinguishing one set of print from another. Also, I inadvertently printed a very highly colored picture, and the ink is so thick and pasty that it sticks to the roller and has to be pried away carefully so it won't tear. 2) This is in a strange living room, and a woman on the sofa across the way is talking about visiting a relative whose husband's ghost visits her. I try to get more details out of her, but she's reluctant to talk about it. Then a phone rings behind me, but I'm not sure it's mine, so I pick it up quietly and listen to another woman talking on the phone, so I know it's not for me.
FRIDAY, 11/28/08: 5:20AM: Mom's driving us through a grassy field at the edge of an amusement park which features a number of roller coasters. She's in her forties and I'm in my thirties (this is a dream, remember). She says, "We'll park here and start our rides with the Silver Streak." I'm delighted. But as she's parking, she runs off the side of the road onto a steeply sloping shoulder, and the unbalanced car gently tips onto its right side. It's suddenly become a convertible (which we'd never had), and the windshield JUST clears the left side of a car parked in the field below the road, and the body of the car (the tops of the doors of the convertible) comes to rest JUST behind the rear ends of two other cars parked there, which rapidly pull out, as if they're being attacked and are hoping to escape any damage from us. Without transition, someone resembling Bill P. is asking for a ride to town, but now everyone seems to be a single passenger in one-passenger cars, so no one has room for him. Another fragment involves the fact that the US dollar is worth 1.1 times some other currency, and I'm trying to figure how to convert various purchase prices to and from dollars, but it seems to be a very difficult problem to puzzle out.
SUNDAY, 11/30/08: 8:50AM: I'm searching for relics in what had been a dumping area in what may be the outskirts of Cairo. When questioned about the continual finding of old items even though the area had been search previously, the theory was advanced that periodically the area was paved over, maybe to minimize the stink, or just to "freshen up" the area, so that we'd go through one level and get down to the level below that without realizing it. Each of us had a kind of contract for a sub-area maybe two or three yards square, and all of us were content to continue until we couldn't find anything old any more.
MONDAY, 12/1/08: 7:02AM: I'm in a strange village in Europe where the people are divided into groups of six, arranged in rectangles: the northeast group speaks only French, while the five other groups (southeast, north central, south central, northwest, and southwest) speak only English. The French-speaking can communicate by phone; the English-speaking can communicate by phone. The village has found a way to live with this. I'm in charge of directing a group of actors to represent these people onstage in a play, and have to figure out a way for the French conversations to interact with the English conversations: where are translators, how many of them, at what times can they translate, how will this be presented to the audience. There were a few emotional overtones in the dream: pride of speaking one's language, each convinced his language is the more expressive and reluctant to learn or use the other language. The PURPOSE of doing a play like this isn't entirely clear.
MONDAY, 12/8/08: 9:28AM: I'm having breakfast in a company cafeteria, but I don't want to spend any money, so I look at a distant table and see that Mom has left her breakfast more or less intact after she finished eating what she wanted, so I go over and take her slice of pound cake and butter and bring it back to my place and eat it. Glance over at the heavy-set man across from me sorting through his large container of vitamins, and think he might have taken mine by mistake. But he has many more than I usually take, and I find my own container in a pile of napkins and debris at my place setting, though when I look through I find that, by mistake, I seem to have taken four or five of the little vitamin E capsules instead of seven or eight omega-3 capsules, but figure I won't do any harm by taking those just for one day. I'm eating a large bowl of corn flakes that have sat in the milk for a long time and have gotten very compact and mushy, and I wonder if containers of milk are among the items that they give away free, but when I glance over at a counter I see a clerk selling portions from quart containers of milk, so I guess it's not free. Think of the idea of buying a ten-pack of one-portion Kellog's Rice Krispies and bringing one each morning for my breakfast, but that seems expensive, though I tell myself that I'm worth it. Lots of people are beginning to leave, and waiters are moving among the tables clearing off the empty plates, and I figure I'd better finish fast and leave pretty soon myself.
WEDNESDAY, 12/10/08: 4:52AM: I'm playing poker with Glen Close, who might be cheating because she always seems to end up with a large number of threes. She triumphantly puts down her winning score and doesn't know what to do next. I say I'm going to leave, so we can decide independently what to do. She doesn't appear to like this; she seems to want to be in control, but I can't get her to say what SHE wants to do, so my only solution seems to be to leave.
THURSDAY, 12/11/08: 9:15AM: I look down at someone's lap, and think I can see the shaft of his penis: reach down, and pull out a LONG cock with a VERY dark foreskin, which I enjoy working back and forth, and then it shifts into being MY cock which I'm VERY much enjoying playing with, and wake hard and j/o AGAIN!
FRIDAY, 12/12/08: 9:45AM: I'm annoyed because some part of a building isn't close enough, for my purposes, to another part, and I try to MOVE an enormous block of construction ten-or-so feet closer to a stable block of construction. In doing so, I find that I'm stretching what at first I think is only a string connection at the foot of the block I'm trying to move, but when I try to cut it with a pair of scissors, I find that it's really a fine mesh of wires that I can't cut easily. So I content myself with stretching it as far as I can. Some time later, I'm called on the carpet by some authorities who want me to confess moving the block, but they don't ask me DIRECTLY, and I, perversely, am determined to only answer the exact questions they put to me. "Why did you do it?" "Do what?" "You know what you did!" "Of course I know what I did, but I have no idea what you're asking me about." And it goes on like that while they get angrier and angrier, and I get more and more stubborn that THEY have to ask me PRECISELY about what I did and why I did it before I'll give them ANYTHING that they can use against me. Somewhat later, somehow connected with the first episode, I'm in a restaurant, ready to order, and watch a waiter coming down a line of tables; his sole job seems to be to carve a pineapple (which looks more like an elongated pine cone) into a shape desired by the diner. Everyone is fascinated by the performance: he first uses something like a hair clipper to take off the outer husk, leaving a rough surface of fruit on the outside of an object that looks like a fuzzy, thick popsicle. Then he uses a finer razor to smooth the shape, leaving the cross section in either a geometrical shape like a square or a pentagon or a hexagon (from indexing my math book last night?) or a circle or oval, with an overall shape that's uniform, like a pillar or column, or curved, like Calatrava's spiraling tower in Stockholm. I can't wait for him to get to my table, because I have a good idea of exactly what I'll request. Other people at my table, who may be from the earlier "questioning" session, wait impatiently for me to get what I want so we can start eating.
SUNDAY, 12/14/08: 8:32AM: I don't remember which of these two parts came first. i) We drive up to a motel in the twilight, but get told that there're no rooms available. I ask about the possibility of cancellations, but she says she's already phoned everyone who isn't here yet, and they've all said they're coming. She then refers us to another motel down the road. 2) Either as a TV game, a board game, or as reality, we get a parking lot which is a grid of dots. As the dots are highlighted, some groups form a number; if we get two adjacent numbers, we know that this is a place we can park a car. We continue to activate dots until we've gone through a sequence of cars, and we figure we've won the game.
MONDAY, 12/15/08: 9:18AM: I've found a room I hadn't realized could be entered from my bedroom. It looks to be from an older, more rustic house, with warped wooden floors and bare wooden walls and a door made out of tree branches that seems to have no lock other than a long, gnarled stick that is pushed through knotty supports to wedge the door shut. No furnishings occupy the lovely empty space, and I visualize moving in bookcases and cabinets from my bedroom to use this space that appears to belong to no one else. Then someone else says that the doorway itself is necessary for some safety purpose, and I try to think how to ask that the REST of the room, not used for any other purpose, could be taken over by me for some much-needed additional storage space.
THURSDAY, 12/18/08: 9AM: I have an indexing project of impossibly complicated material: a single book of over a thousand pages in at least three formats: 1) text, comprised of long sections of fiction or nonfiction, sometimes interspersed with comic-book-type drawings and illustrations; 2) dictionaries, with very tiny print displaying numerous italicized words which are defined at OTHER places in the book; and 3) linking devices, which are rows of four buttons, rather like the snaps on my coat-hood, that have to be physically put together to reveal supplementary information which I'm not at all clear about. And there are 16 columns of these four-button rows, making 64 possible links, each of which leads to a different part of the book. I have the idea that I'm supposed to be well along in the indexing process, though I've just started to read two long sections, one fiction and one nonfiction, that cover about a hundred pages each, which are seemingly as easy to index as regular books, but I've gotten bored with reading them and have no real idea how much of the book this type of material encompasses: I haven't yet gone through the pages to categorize what kind of material extends for how many pages throughout the book. Now, gathered around what could be a duplicate of our dining-room table at 1221 Dietz, my boss is telling me that my co-workers have finished their projects with other books and are now ready to participate in the indexing of THIS book, which means that others will be wanting to look at it just at the time when I should be looking at it full time, which implies either that we SHARE the book or make COPIES of sections of it so we can all work on the book at the same time. I've tried indexing the FIRST italicized word, using my first linking device, which leads me---I'm not sure where, and start a list of questions that have to be answered before I can continue. At this point the job seems TOTALLY impossible at ALL, let alone in what seems to be only a week left for a major part of the job to be completed. Wake, glad that I don't have to deal with such a complicated indexing job, but when I get to my desk to type the dream, looking at piles of things to be done, the dream is obviously a reflection of my concern about the number of things I want to do today, not least catch up with my journal and call many people about Sherryl's death. Finish typing this at 9:17AM, already well into a morning where I've not yet had enough sleep time.
FRIDAY, 12/19/08: 2:22AM: A cutie who rather resembles Malcolm S. is sort of a sexual surrogate for me, watching a movie called "Digging Deep," in which at one point we seem to be participating by driving poles into muddy, sandy ground trying to find bedrock underneath. Then we're merely in an audience for the movie, and I see him across the aisle from me and am impressed by his good looks. Then a therapist seems to be looking at each of us, on either side of him, saying, "You don't seem to be excited about this," and in fact we look down and see no suggestive protrusions in the fronts of our trousers. But then I sort of hug him, and can feel that he DOES have an erection, and I put my hand on it and it spasms and cums and cums and CUMS, endlessly, and he almost WEEPS with relief and frustration, and I and my therapist find it frustrating also.
SUNDAY, 12/21/08: At 6:08 make a barely readable note about a dream of a guy who MUST serve booze which I don't remember at all.
WEDNESDAY, 12/24/08: 7:20AM: I'm looking at an elaborate drawing of flowers, which seem to be surrounded with halos of dots, but the dots are actually letters that form words, and I have a checklist in some form, which means that I can search for specific titles that are spelled out in the dots, if only I know where to start and in which direction to follow the dots. Three or four main areas of dots give multiple starting points. Somehow related are titles which are printed over each other, letter by letter, but some of the ends are decipherable, so that titles can be eliminated, I figure, and it should be easy to find all the titles with systematic elimination of those that I've already found. NOT a very opaque reference to my life, in which I'm massaging words and pages and titles in my website, in which I'm about to transcribe my 2008 datebook into LIFELIST form, in which I've just ordered a 500gb hard disk to supplement by strained-to-the-limit current desktop 35gb-with-only-5gb-left hard disk. Finish typing this at 10:55AM, having left word with Tris, and can now print THAT page.
THURSDAY, 12/25/08: Dream: fitting of suit with sleeves too long.
SATURDAY, 12/27/08: 7:25AM: Dream of getting ready for VERY modernist song festival on WQXR.
MONDAY, 12/29/08: 7:08AM: I'm in a museum in what seems to be Iceland (maybe from the ISP tag on the gay couple's luggage in the elevator last night that turned out to be from Islip, rather than the Iceland I thought he said), and though the exhibits are very simple, they seem to touch me deeply, being about common people who had to be courageous in the face of possible German occupation. At one point I was actually on a hillside, watching a group of women come down the hill with their portable flame throwers: an invading army had to come through a narrow gorge before reaching this valley, and women on the hill could then defend the valley by sending a cascade of flame down on the invaders. They had only small tanks that looked like fire extinguishers, but they were determined to defend their villages as well as they could. One of the displays back in the museum was a bread board with a photograph of the man who had owned it, and I felt great sympathy for the man in the photograph. Thought to record these small details for Sharon's benefit this evening.
TUESDAY, 12/30/08: 1) 4:30AM: I'm heading for a subway, but I don't know where the entrance is and ask someone on the street to lead me there. Rather different from the usual dream of this type, the person leads me through CLEAN, even LUXURIOUS streets, rather than grimy, abandoned, lower-class streets that seem to be far removed from midtown Manhattan or Brooklyn. Also, I don't seem to have any PRESSING appointment with a time that's growing dangerously closer. So I can look on these glittering intersections and rich store entrances with curious interest as we pass, rather than feel a mounting desperation as we walk and walk and seem to get no closer to any useful destination. 2) 6:30AM: I'm on some kind of judging panel that has to make a political decision. The two political sides are very clearly defined, and each party seems respectful of the positions and tactics of the other side. Our side has defeated the other side, but we want to be so careful of the pride of those on the other side that we take great care to identify the particular color which they chose to symbolize their position and give it great honor verbally, exalting the color even though we're glad that their position has been defeated.