DREAMS of 2010 2 of 2
WEDNESDAY, 6/9/10: 5:51AM: I'm part of a group about to set out on a flight, somewhere in the South Pacific, to an unknown island. At the same time, I'm not only writing a book about the journey, but I'm constantly concerned about how I'm going to index the final book. However, even though I'm thinking how I'll describe the seating of the eight major characters on the plane, the first part of the book has already been written, and somewhat later in the dream I find that much of the remainder of the book has been laid out in an elaborate notebook of paged, bound, plastic folders which contain photographs and bits of text that form a dummy for the final book, so that while I'm "writing" an early part of the saga, the entire book seems already to have been sketched out in this dummy. We talk about the storm which might delay our takeoff, seemingly to the south to discover the island of our future adventures, and toward the end of the dream we're already in flight toward this island, with a segment showing a small boy running out onto the open platform that forms the tail of the plane, so that his mother screams his name and tries to grab his arm as he carelessly plays dangerously close to the edge of the plane, possibly about to trip and fall off to his death. Some mountain-like object, which is of great importance, either on the plane or on the island, for some reason has to be described according to its orientation, with the summit pointing due south, and various items on the slopes of the mountain "importantly" being described, and indexed, as being on the east or west sides of the mountain. Elements of "Lost" enter into the dream, and my functions as writer, indexer, and adventurer are constantly invoked at different times in the dream, which, like "Lost," seems to shift from the time perspective of "about to happen" or "completed event as text in the final book." Wake with many fragments in my head, and have no trouble remembering some details, though others, like the names of the characters, which seem to have been established in the dream, are forgotten as I transcribe the dream to 6:03AM.
THURSDAY, 6/10/10: 6:49AM: I'm supposed to make dessert for a group dinner being held down in Dennis's old apartment on Hicks Street, and first I have to take two stacks of two items each out of his grease-encrusted oven to make room to bake what is supposed to be something like a sponge cake. But the "something like" included, oddly, VERY FINELY CRUSHED GLASS in the batter, and I knew I'd made a terrible mistake when I couldn't find a hammer to really PULVERIZE the glass bowl that I broke with the bottom of another bowl, producing pieces and slivers of glass almost as big as dominoes that I figured just COULDN'T be right in this batter, so I started fishing them out and setting them aside in a pile, which grew larger and larger, as the batter contents got smaller and smaller, and at one point I grabbed a handful of a chocolate-chip cupcake and threw it into the watery batter, just to add volume and texture, when it became clear that this gruel-like mixture, even with HOURS of baking, would NEVER wind up like a batter which would cool into hardness in the Bundt-pan where it was destined to be served at the end of a dinner that was still hours away. I had no hope in hell that it would come out OK, and I'd have to find some excuse to throw it out before anyone could ingest any of the glass that I knew still remained in large quantities in the deadly batter. Even in the dream I kept thinking how totally ludicrous all this was: why was I even trying to CONTINUE with the baking of this impossible dessert?
SUNDAY, 6/13/10: 1:38AM: Wonderful applause greets the climax of absolutely beautiful music, played in the dark in a grand space encompassing four enormous rooms. The dream had started with my being prepared for some elaborate dental procedure in a foreign hospital, but the dream would be preceded by some period of time during which I wanted to read, and I insisted on taking a chair from a group of chairs and moving it to where I wanted to sit, high up on a ramp, with good lighting, away from anyone else, and when I KNEW that "the directress" would complain about my wanting to be away from everyone, I protested, "Would you want me to sit in the middle of this sports event? Or anywhere around this conversation group? NO, I want to be AWAY from other sonic distractions to read peacefully until my operation." She began to protest, and I cut her off, "I KNOW it would not be where YOU would choose to have me sit, but I insist on sitting where I choose to sit," and though she's furious, she really can't muster the energy to battle me, since I'm SO determined to do what I want. I read for a bit, then it darkened and this supernal concert started, with luscious strings, stirring brass, and interpolations by exotic instruments scored for their beauty and delicateness of sound, and I listened, rapt, as did everyone else, and then there was a wonderful crescendo of applause from a WONDERFULLY scattered area as EVERYONE showed their appreciation for such marvelous music. Wake vivified, to type to 1:46AM. 2) 8:03AM: Endless semi-dream of having to REINDEX "Pediatrics," trying to remember how I cross-indexed everything, how I got so many entries, looking at my marks and abbreviations and almost giving up on the idea of generating anything as good as I did the first time around.
MONDAY, 6/14/10: 4:04AM: I'm in a group touring Russia, and one of our group offers to pay for all our lunches if we stay at this particular restaurant, and it'll make the rest of the day easier if we all agree with him, so we do.
TUESDAY, 6/15/10: 1) 3:15AM: Tours of some European city are organized around types of tourist attraction: museum, cathedral, gallery, monument, plaza, etc., each of which is indicated by a particular color: maybe gold for cathedrals, blue for museums, red for monuments, etc. The idea is to collect strips of colored material as one goes from site to site, as if there were a contest to see which tourist could amass the longest strips of every color, and then sort them together, so that the tours are "better organized." 2) 6:11AM: I'm back working at IBM, and I came in 15 minutes late this particular morning, and my boss noticed and made some sarcastic comment about it. I also knew that I had theater tickets that evening, and would be leaving work early to go to dinner before the theater, and feared I'd come in for adverse comments when I left before 5PM. I wanted to make sure my desk didn't look TOO messy when I left, so I threw out bunches of grape stems from which the grapes had been all eaten, and pushed piles of note cards and programming sheets into the top center drawer of the desk, and was surprised to find that everted frying pans remained at three locations at the top of my desk, so I put those together into one of the side drawers, glad that I had room to put them there. That left only a few items, like a head of cabbage, on my desktop, so I put those away too, being left with only a messily open roll of aluminum foil, which I decided to put into another drawer to hide it, and put three oranges into another side drawer, hoping I'd remember to take them out and eat them, or throw them away, before they started rotting and smelling. I was sorry that I didn't have a damp cloth to clean off the surface of the now empty desk top. As I was storing the last objects away, someone for my department came up to ask if I had time to help solve a department-wide problem, but even before the problem could be described, I protested that I was just about to leave, and my schedule was filled up anyway, so it wouldn't even do any good to take my time to tell me what the problem was, because I wouldn't have any time to devote to it anyway. I realized that people were looking at me as if I considered myself exceptional, but my position seemed solid, my reputation already established---in fact as something of a maverick and nonconformist, so I didn't have to worry about being fired. And I really had to leave almost immediately. I remained very calm during the denudation of the top of my once-cluttered desktop, and during various coworkers' negative comments about coming in late and leaving early.
FRIDAY, 6/18/10: 6:06AM: Ten people have ten-digit IDs, but two numbers are slightly off (like my SSN on my NYS IRS statement?), but new rules seem to allow minor discrepancies.
MONDAY, 6/21/10: 1) 4:20AM: I'm arranging for an apartment in a duplex already shared by two gay guys, and they insist I take the upper-floor penthouse for "$800, $700, $650," in a strange REVERSE bargaining that delights me. I may even have one of them as a possible lover. I'm somewhat younger and more fit in the dream than in real life. 2) 8:02AM: I'm sitting in an aisle seat in an almost empty theater, waiting for the production to start, and someone sits EXACTLY in the seat in front of me that blocks my view. I make some nasty comment like, "Of COURSE she had to choose the seat DIRECTLY in front of me," and she turns and sneers at me and moves one seat over, which works until the place fills up and almost EVERY seat is taken, and I almost feel like leaving in disgust.
WEDNESDAY, 6/22/10: 1) 12:55AM: I'm looking at an old loaf of bread at 1221 Dietz, and two of the last slices are slightly moldy. I look at the last-opened loaf and put in two slices to be toasted just before leaving for Actualism at 2:20PM, calling in to Mom in the bathroom that I'm leaving, but she doesn't reply, so she will have to take the empty house as evidence that I've left for my meeting.
FRIDAY, 6/25/10: 8:25AM: I'm looking at a man with blue eyes. As I look more and more closely at his eyes, there seem to be no irises, just disks of variably hued blue. I'm fascinated by these eyes, looking at them intently. He responds by moving his head SO close to mine that we're literally touching noses, and his eyes fill my field of vision with their blue disks. I feel very strange.
MONDAY, 6/28/10, 5:44AM: I'm at a kind of summer camp, and we're supposed to be playing basketball for three hours in the morning. I know nothing about how to play, and at first there seem to be only five or six of us, and it looks like my "opponent" might be a ten-year-old girl. I try to review the rules: "I throw the ball to her; if she gets it she tries to make a basket; if she misses it, I get the ball back and try to make the basket." No one agrees. No one seems eager to start, and I'm aware that it's now about 10:20AM, so in ten minutes the morning session will be half over and no one's done anything yet. Then the group, having grown larger, decides to move off to the side of a stream, and I notice a large number of tiny frogs in the grassy ditch in which we're walking to get to our new gathering place. Most of them aren't moving, and I feel it's going to be inevitable that I step on one or two frogs with every step that I take, since they don't seem to be very good at anticipating where I'm going to step so they can leap out of the way. I seem to notice small swarms of flies sort of hovering over the frogs, making it easy for the frogs to just stretch out their necks to tongue in a fly. I think of the still-living flies buzzing around in the frogs' stomachs just before they're digested, and think of the unlikely transition from fly to blood that takes place over some period of time in each frog. I wonder what the group will do when we finally all gather at our new meeting place, still listlessly totally aimless in the sunny morning. Another section of the dream had me regarding the sun rising behind a range of rather steep hills, leaving the farmhouses on their western slopes in deep shade until rather late in the morning when the sun would rise above the hilltops to light the farmyards from their morning shade, noting that some students wouldn't "come up to speed" until the sun shone on them, which might be at a time somewhat similar to the 10:20AM in the later section of the dream. A very lazy, listless feel to both episodes of the dream.
TUESDAY, 6/29/10: 9AM: Dream of HUGE BLIMP rising outside my bedroom window, while I'm talking on the phone with Mildred. I exclaim about how LOW it is as it struggles to gain altitude as it moves south out of my line of sight. Dream seemed VERY real at the time!
WEDNESDAY, 6/30/10: 1:11AM: I'm cleaning classrooms for grades 1-4 in a school building, and looking into rooms for grades 5-8 to see that all is in order, and then a gang CHASES us when they find us in the school.
THURSDAY, 7/1/10: 7:45AM: Fragment of pouring milk that smells slightly sour over the TOP of a box of cereal, ignoring the mess that I'm making on the table. [11AM: Type dreams from an old note (and I don't want to reprint previous pages) from Friday 6/26: 6:42AM: Total nonsense dream of having to MARRY an "unacceptable" blond, for 49/hr, so as to get 2 back from $1, because CHILDREN of blonds are "preferable." 8:57AM: I'm in a shower at the gym, digging impacted turds out of my ass.]
SATURDAY, 7/3/10: 1) 2:15AM: Fragment of telling a young kid to hold tight to his spurting cock to experience maximum sensation. 2) 8:17AM: I'm organizing an outline of a paper and having trouble with a draft that has random lines without identifying levels or level identifiers.
THURSDAY, 7/8/10: 3:41AM: I'm fumbling with my keys at the lock on the front door at 1221 Dietz while a train is VERY slowly pulling out in my driveway, and I KNOW I can control the speed of the train and grab a handrail and get on the train if I can JUST dash down the front-porch steps quickly enough. Wake before I know if I succeed.
FRIDAY, 7/9/10: 5:57AM: The audience is applauding wildly after a ballet performance, but when I look around, the seats are about three-quarters empty, and I recall that the work had been reviewed as being somewhat esoteric, and I thought it a shame that that scared many prospective viewers away. Later, I was in a car that was being parked by a group of us going to some kind of benefit in the Long Island countryside, and we nosed past cars already parked along a line of hedges to park into the very corner wedge of the parking lot. Then I was seated in the front row at the start of another performance, and noted with approval that a young man, who seemed to be an athlete that I knew slightly, and a young woman, rather like Laura Linney, with whom I was marginally acquainted, both dressed in skimpy bathing suits, were wordlessly debating where to sit on the apron of the stage, which obviously represented a beach, and they came closer and closer to my seat and sat, with a slight smile at me on both their faces, just to my right, but probably not blocking my view of future action on the stage, and he bent forward to whisper something about Litchfield, probably referring to the costumer for the production, providing him with a robe, and she leaned forward to whisper another comment to me, though this was clearly a personal touch, rather than something demanded by the production. I felt pleased with the whole arrangement.
SUNDAY, 7/11/10: 6:15AM: Another car dream: I'm sitting in the right front seat of a car, but I know that it's "my turn" to drive, and I reach for a gear-shift lever between me and the guy in the driver's seat, and some slat from the left side of it flips out to hit the guy in the leg, and I apologize wordlessly and realize that the car is veering off to the right, and I reach over for the steering wheel, wondering why it can't be moved more in front of me, if I have to drive from the right-hand seat, but that's the way the car is built and I just have to accommodate to it.
TUESDAY, 7/13/10: 1) 3:22AM: I'm setting up a representation of a series of 25 horse races, with horses of different colors representing different kinds of races (pacing, trots, handicaps, etc.) with different numbers of horses in each race. But the authorities can't grasp the transition from my representation to the ACTUAL races, no matter how many times I explain it: they're glued to my plastic horses and refuse to see how they translate into a sequence of actual races. I get more and more frustrated with their inability to go from my setup to the races themselves. 2) 5:40AM: I'm going to address a large audience with an attempt to summarize a book of lottery tickets with differing odds and varying ways of taking chances on winning, trying to phrase it without actually admitting that it's a type of gambling, but only a "challenging" set of games to try to "best the odds" while emphasizing the fun of the choices and not the fact that most people won't win anything at all. A dog keeps barking in the background which I hope won't distract from my presentation when it actually happens a few minutes from now.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD DREAMS - July 19-25, 2010
TUESDAY, 7/20/10: 1) 5:35AM: I'm in a huge medieval cathedral, where "magic rooms" transfer me from one era to another---sort of a "Masque of Red Death" atmosphere, with reality characters mixed with odd "Alice in Wonderland" characters. Elaborate sets and costumes dazzle me, and I fear getting lost. 2) 7:35AM: Tiger cubs and kittens are fighting, tigers are chewing at tourists' heels, and people are leaving garbage and laundry in halls.
WEDNESDAY, 7/21/10: 3:51AM: Dream of a VERY detailed index taken SLAVISHLY from text lists, and I finally convince the editor of the second edition that I can rationalize and "redo" entries to "make more sense" and "make it easier to use," and make MUCH money on a book that may sell MILLIONS of copies and make a redo WORTH the cost.
SATURDAY, 7/24/10: 1) 6:01AM: I'm packing four messy jars of mayonnaise into special sections in the top of my suitcase. 2) 6:31: I'm getting two stuffed bags for packing into my already full suitcase as a last-minute addition. 3) 7:16: I'm stuffing mouthfuls of rice as "cleanser" operation in a shower while a guy watches incredulously.
SUNDAY, 7/25/10: 4:25AM: Get up from a seminal, transcendental, all-encompassing dream, and I'm determined to capture as much as I can of it. It seemed to last for HOURS, and started, as near as I now remember it, with a group of people, possibly only men, and---now in a moment of fantasy---possibly only gay men, which would at least establish a BASIC commonality among the participants which would make the incredible situation, or CHANCE of an incredible situation, that much more feasible. Somehow, leaderlessly, with no one seemingly "trained for the training," we were to interact in a creative, supporting, loving way to produce a transformative personal experience that AT ONCE would benefit the entire group, and AT THE SAME TIME glorify EACH INDIVIDUAL in the most beneficial way possible, without having in any way "predetermined" the process of transformation. Sounds incredible, improbable, and even impossible, but that was the basis of the dream. In some way my current vacation on Martha's Vineyard established the framework of the dream: all the participants were healthy, intelligent, caring men, "chosen" in some way to be qualified to react spontaneously, without prior instruction, to effect maximum results from such an "ad hoc" genesis---just as everyone at this moment on Martha's Vineyard is, by the definition of the logic of the dream, or HAS BEEN, by that same logic, placed on Martha's Vineyard FOR SOME PURPOSE, and this dream has the temerity to "be worthy" of determining and describing that purpose---this wording is leading back to the specificity of the dream: this ALREADY SPECIAL (at the basic level, merely being present on Martha's Vineyard; at the level of the dream, being present IN the dream) set of circumstances which forms the background, the beginning, of the dream. We're gathered in a large field, in perfect weather, without mosquitoes, dressed casually (though, in an extension of the fantasy, prepared to be naked in every way: emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually), and all, to greater or lesser extents, WANTING to participate for the individual and total group benefit. Though there's no "guru/leader" visible, at a point as near the beginning of the dream as I can recall, we begin to run across the field. I participate in the running, vaguely puzzled by how we know that we're supposed to run, and am pleased to see, at first, that everyone seems capable of running at about the same speed, in the same direction, in such a way as to maximize the (as yet unknown) purpose of running. Then I'm aware that I'm either in the vanguard of the running mass of men, or bringing up the rear, and thus in a position that's somehow SPECIAL, as if the purpose of the transformation of the GROUP is (of course, this is MY dream) centered around MY transformation, or realization, or accomplishment. Somewhat later, we've stopped and have somehow selected a partner with whom we're, in a gentle way, wrestling on the dry, soft, supportive grass. I sense that the interaction has a possibility of a sexual component, and become aware that my partner has an erection, which gives me permission to have an erection, and I think, for a moment, that this will "simply" turn into a massive, though rather routine, orgy. But that moment passes, as if everyone had that TRANSITORY idea, and then all spontaneously agreed that this opportunity was given us for something MORE important, MORE revolutionary, MORE group- or self-aggrandizing. And, as usual in one of my "more Messianic" dreams, it gradually becomes more SELF-aggrandizing than GROUP-aggrandizing. THIS IS ABOUT ME!! Maybe it is at a point like this, in the dream, that I semi-wake, and begin to embellish the dream along the lines of my favorite fantasy: that reality can be DIRECTED toward a specific end, that I can "cause" this entire group of people to achieve MY aim---of making MYSELF important, the leader, the source of inspiration for the benefit of the group, though, at bottom, for MY benefit and glorification. Then, probably, my brain takes over totally from the dream-consciousness, at whatever level THAT is, and I go through the familiar vacillation: "Is this just a dream?" "Is this some kind of pivotal actual experience which can, somehow, change my life for the better?" "Is this my moment of death, where I determine at what level I'm going to exist AFTER I die?" "Am I going nuts?" "Is this another fruitless fantasy which will lead absolutely nowhere?"
END OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD DREAMS
MONDAY, 7/26/10: 2:42AM: Dick Sime phones and says to send him his ticket for tonight to his e-mail address commoncause.com, and I wonder how to DO it, except that he's coming to my apartment at 57th and 3rd, but we must get to 72nd and 7th by subway, because the taxi is too slow, by 9PM and it's 8:45 and we have to cross a department store that has a moving belt displaying dresses that we knock over as we attempt to cross it without going all the way around it. Joan Sumner keeps saying we'll never make it, and I say, "It always starts late." I'd also gotten a phone call from ANOTHER organization, touting something free at the Promenade Theater, but I decide that we can't get there, even though I really don't even know the night it's for. EXTREMELY frustrated throughout dream, desperate to do something about it, but not knowing what to do.
TUESDAY, 7/27/10: 1) 3:30AM: Students have to write essays convincing an audience of one specific point of view. The teacher is very impatient that I didn't get to class on time. 2) 6AM: I have to get to the same class, and don't really know where the classroom is, and sort of question the fact that I'm still going to school. Other details forgotten.
SUNDAY, 8/1/10: 6:04AM: I'm waiting on one of two lines in the lobby of a midtown Manhattan hotel to talk on a telephone to confirm my reservation on a flight that's supposed to leave for Japan at something like 6AM tomorrow morning; the current time is never established, but I eventually get the feeling that it's getting close to midnight. I'm about third in line when the person, or the telephone, that my line has been waiting for suddenly disappears, and there's no real line for the only remaining service, only a mob around a desk with no one visibly helping anyone. I shout out something that has everyone in hearing distance turning to stare at me, and everyone ignores me while I try frantically to get someone's attention. Finally, at a desk, one of the clerks asks me if I've signed some kind of contract. I say no. He hands me a badly xeroxed copy of something that has no clear place for a signature on the side that appears to be in English, and when I turn the paper over, it seems to be only in Japanese on that side, so I turn the paper BACK over and scrawl my illegible signature across the blank space near the bottom of the unreadable text. Then another voice from far behind the desk call out, "Are you Robert Zolnerzak?" Where could they have gotten my name from. "Yes," I say calmly, hoping now to be helped. Nothing definite happens after that, except that I figure my best plan would now be to try to take a taxi from this unhelpful hotel to the airport, where at least I could talk to someone directly connected to my possible flight. Wake with my situation totally unresolved.
TUESDAY, 8/3/10: 7:58AM: 1) I'm shown a copy of a sketch of a theater with an associated parking lot: the pencil drawing is very rough, and I know everyone in this kind of contest is given exactly the same picture: the theater looks like a box with the top partially peeled back so that seats can be seen to be very loosely sketched, distributed around the squarish stage at one side; the parking lot is roofless, with oblongs of cars indicating a time when they're leaving after a performance, clustered around the single exit leading to a road that's merely a pair of parallel lines, just as the walkway between the parking lot and the theater is also indicated by a single pencil line. The contest is to design and specify the actual construction, sizes, distances, and estimates of the number of people, seats, and cars that the complex will handle in operation. The contestants aren't qualified architects or planners, they're merely competing with other entrants to win prizes for the practicality of their solutions. 2) A bit later, but clearly connected in theme, I dream of an empty museum-like space, with irregularly angled walls enclosing a single room, and the idea (rather like my apartment-reorganization scheme) is to submit suggestions for hanging paintings and drawings, and displaying sculptures and other three-dimensional items (like my souvenirs) in this specific space, which might be part of a large apartment being designed for a personal friend, who wants the advice of a small number of acquaintances without paying a professional's consultation fee, though there's a hint that some reward, maybe a small legacy, is possible for someone giving a good solution to this particular display problem. Meticulously type what I remember to 8:15AM.
WEDNESDAY, 8/4/10: 7:54AM: I've been late for a tour of upper Manhattan, missing the first of I-don't-know-how-many segments. There had been a photo, from the air over New Jersey, of a unique house, or apartment, whose top level was at the top of the cliff-face that seemed to be just south of extreme-west 42nd Street---though that didn't make sense, since the cliffs, like the Palisades, only really start in UPPER Manhattan---down from which descended a thin elevator shaft to the middle level, maybe eighty feet below, halfway down the cliff, and another spaghetti-strap tube dropped to the lowest level, on the bank of the Hudson River. I hoped the first segment of the tour didn't include that, which I hadn't even seen from the top, let alone in its entirety. The current segment of the tour enters a private seminary, or military academy, that I hadn't been aware existed on this part of the island, and when I try to ask a question about where we are, the guide brushes me off to address the main part of the group, which is entering a building in order to go into the basement to a brunch stop, for which I'm grateful since I'd wakened late for the tour and hadn't had a chance to have breakfast. I somehow lose the group even here, but then Ken shows up to herd me into one area, and it appears Charles had also been there earlier, so at least I could get a description of what I'd missed. Later, I exit the building to find that the bus has gone, and I panic again, trying to figure out which exit it had taken so I could catch up with it, but I had no idea what its next destination was, so I had little hope of returning to the tour if I couldn't catch the bus. Totally frustrating dream.
FRIDAY, 8/6/10: 4:55AM: I'm having breakfast at an enormous Walt Disney-type amusement park that has a fixed-price breakfast of $2.99 (like the roast chickens at Key Food all priced at $4.99), but at the end of a table different from the one at which my friend, including Joe Safko, are eating, and I get salad and dessert and beverage, quite a bargain. Then we decide how we're going to meet to take the bus back home, I knowing that I have to get off one stop before or after Joe at Kent State. Before, we looking in at a dinner theater with an enormously wide screen across one end of the dining room, with an incredibly clear picture, and I wondered at the advances in technology, just as I had been amazed by the entire rows of different foods and packaging (whole sections of soup broths; different brand-names on large bags of what seemed to be candied or preserved fruits; new kinds of sodas and soups) at Key Food after my dental appointment Friday---as if I'd been plunked in the middle of a new state in which I'd never shopped before. I feel increasingly OUT OF DATE---maybe thinking of tonight's adventure in Coney Island.
SATURDAY, 8/7/10: 8:54AM: I've just completed a long psychological process in a doctor's office in midtown Manhattan. It's 7AM, no one has slept all night, and there's another session that's starting in the office: lines of men, dressed in suits and ties, sit on sofas in the rooms we'd used for our process, and we have to get dressed and leave as soon as possible. I try to gather all my belongings: my camera in my shoulder bag (as at Coney Island last night), my jacket, and my clothes; but for some reason I'd taken my shoelaces out of my white gym shoes (which I don't own), and I can't find my black wrist watch, which I stupidly think is a Rolex, rather than a simple Swatch-type el cheapo watch. So I look in my wallet and find a used business card of mine, turn it over, cross off a prior message on the back, and with a blunt pencil try to write that I've lost my watch and would like it returned to me. Find a ditzy woman behind a desk, and she says she's some kind of receptionist for this office, but it seems she's been up all night and seems to be drunk, so I'm not really sure this is the best person to entrust with my sloppy little business card, so I try to look for a sheet of printer paper I have in my shoulder bag to write the message on. Everyone else is leaving, the next meeting is starting, and I can't figure how I'm going to get home, though my laceless white gym shoes seem to be staying on my feet as I shuffle from room to room trying to get my message to a responsible persona and just get OUT of this office and get some sleep! Typical "lost something" frustrating dream.
SUNDAY, 8/8/10: 1) 3:30AM: I'm sitting on a foreign toilet, trying to shit, but it's impacted, so I have to use my finger to pry a walnut-sized turd loose. Think I'm finished, but the internal pressure continues and I have to do it twice more before I feel emptied out and can wipe and flush. 2) 6:38AM: I'm traveling in the extreme west of southern Mexico, knowing that I've never been so far west before in very dry, almost desert, conditions. Here, or maybe somewhat later, I have to sign a form for an employee, saying that monthly I have to make some kind of automatic payment (I don't know the exact amount, which varies from month to month, like my payments to Tris and Marj) that makes the process somewhat complicated, but I'm willing to do anything I'm advised just to make the process, which might be connected to crossing some kind of political border, as easy as possible, without causing any problems.
THURSDAY, 8/12/10: [Stolen from note made 7/31/10]: 6:45AM: Indian guide lures me into city, for tour and performance. I get lost. Girls talk of going to "WTC at 42nd St." in August. Then the guide FINDS me again. [Stolen from note made at 8/4/10]: 2:54AM: Dream of not being able to find my COAT in cars outside areas overrun with others searching, knowing we have LONG WALKS back to our hotels.
FRIDAY, 8/20/10: 8:25AM: Just as I have endless things to do in real life, in this dream there are endless numbers of tasks waiting for me. I look at a sink in an over-occupied apartment (never do find out how many are living here), and never find the light switch to illuminate the area to be worked in. The sink is first filled with glassware and stove ware, and when I get rid of that, thinking to drain the water, I reach in and find it about half full of cutlery and silverware, and I don't even know where to put it after it's dried, and the plastic container in which it would dry has a layer of liquid in the bottom that I can't figure out whether it's drainage from other items dripping off, that can be decanted, or some kind of disinfectant that should be kept. At another point, as in real life, I put "toilet paper" as something to be bought at a store, but on the ground floor of this walk-up apartment is a supply cabinet filled with rolls of toilet paper and other supplies, though when I bring some rolls up to put in a small storage space in the apartment itself, I find that someone ELSE has just brought up five or six rolls that fill the space. My thoughts to change my sheets are echoed in the dream also, though I have no idea where the dirty sheets go nor where the clean sheets would come from. It's like being responsible for the maintenance of a household, as if I were visiting a lower-class Martha's Vineyard, but still in Manhattan, in a place where I have no idea who's responsible for what. Type dream and can only think about going back to bed.
MONDAY, 8/23/10: 1) 5:53AM: THAT nightmare again! I've got to get somewhere by 8PM, maybe a fancy restaurant, maybe some concert or movie uptown on the West Side of Manhattan. I'm coming from NORTH of where I'm going, for some reason, and I RECOGNIZE this neighborhood as being NORTHWEST of Columbia University, but somehow EAST of that, since I'm in HARLEM, in an undeveloped area where all the buildings are old, the streets are unknown, and there are no "east" or "west" streets or avenues on which to orient myself. At one point I KNOW I've been on this cross street: it's north of 125th Street, parallel to it, and I just have to know that I'm going WEST on it, but I can't trust anyone to ask which was WEST is, so I ask about going toward Columbia University (this is like taking the wrong subway to Columbia when I was a student and ENDING UP in Harlem on 116th Street on LENOX AVENUE, rather than on Broadway). At another point I RECOGNIZE a green diamond-shaped sign nailed to a lamppost, with arrows pointing to the four compass points, but I'm not exactly sure, since the sign is VERTICAL, so I can't tell where "up" or "north" is, and it's not exactly aligned with the street, so I'm not even clear which way "right" or "east" is. And VERY few of the streets have NAMES or MARKERS, since they're more shopping alleys or even long-abandoned carriage ways that don't even have curbs or well-demarked corners. I see old mansions, fallen into disrepair, some abandoned, some derelict and shoddy, and I think "I've got to remember where this is, so that when I have more time I can come BACK here and really LOOK AROUND and ORIENT myself, because it's an area of precious history that almost no one knows about or visits anymore." Three- and four-story wooden houses haven't been painted in decades; old houses behind unmown lawns seem to have been in the same family for generations; one "house" even seems to be on wheels, which would be impossible since the base of the house slopes over the top of a small hill, and looks to be an old traveling trailer, though maybe only from a CIRCUS because it has such a crazy look. I keep checking my watch, horrified to find that the crystal has broken, or fallen off, and the analog hands are now subject to breaking because they're not protected under glass, but I console myself that it's an old, cheap watch which wasn't working well anyway---though I can't conceive how it could have broken. It's dark, or cloudy, so I can't tell the direction from the sun. It's about 8:10PM, but I still have hopes of getting to a subway, or even a taxi, to get me where I'm going not TOO much past 8:30. But then I'm hungry, and search out an old fast-food shop where they appear to have a small stack of pre-cooked hamburgers, so I push ahead of three or four people at the counter and order one, and the counterwoman takes a new bun, smears it with blood-like ketchup, and seems not to be ready to present me with a pre-cooked one. I know I have twenty-dollar bills and only four singles, and I select two singles, which I hope will be enough, and when I ask for the price, she mumbles that it's expensive, and quotes "Two dollars and sixty-three cents," and I'm not ready to pay that much. Later I find a more "together" place, and she asks if I want a baconburger, and says "It costs extra with extra things," and I debate settling only for a less expensive cheeseburger, but again they don't appear to be ready and I don't have TIME to wait for them to cook the burger, or even to melt the cheese atop a pre-cooked burger. So I'm back on the streets, at one point even entering an earthen RAVINE, narrow and about head-high, that seems to have been dug in the sandy-looking, but solid, soil and been there long enough to have moss growing on the walls and grass and trees on either side above the slot, and I'd love to follow it, but it stretches WAY into the distance and clearly doesn't lead anywhere I'd want to get to. Scenes change swiftly: at one point there's a street sign with the name "Columbia" on it, but I'm not sure if it's a (east-west) street or a (north-south) avenue, so I can't follow it with any surety. At other times I recognize the type of shop I'd seen before "up here" and hope to get to the end of the "unknown" area to a place where I know where I am, but that never happens. Time passes slowly, so I'm in many places in just a very few minutes, and I still hope to get SOMEWHERE in enough time to enjoy SOME of what I'd been scheduled to see, but it goes on so long that I begin to console myself that the ticket wasn't THAT expensive, so it's not going to be a great loss if I don't get there at ALL, but I've just got to get home and I'm still hungry and TOTALLY lost when I finally wake, exhausted, and start typing and finish now at 6:20AM. Check; it's already the fifth line beyond a whole page of transcribed dream. 2) 8AM: I'm shopping for a new house, one that seems to have about three different buildings on a rural grassy lot. A woman is showing me around, in one house popping out from under the bed to show some feature of the one-room cabin, and then slipping back under the bed for some reason. In two of the cabins the bathroom fixtures are totally new, but one bathtub is papered in sky-blue contact-paper for some reason. This bathroom appears to have no shelf space for supplies at all. I figure maybe I can rent out the other cabins; also remark that, even though I like to be alone, it seems strange to have to dress warmly in winter just to go to the kitchen, for example. At the end, it seems I've already accepted possession, and just have to figure when I'm going to move in. The idea of where I'm going to put all my STUFF doesn't even occur to me in the dream. 3) 9:21AM: I'm looking at a sudoku-like puzzle in a newspaper, centered around a target in the lower-left corner, where the squares get much smaller, and I can't see how there are enough clues on the page to even get started.
WEDNESDAY, 8/25/10: 1) 12:01AM: Ask Mom for a 41 and a 10-1/2 stamp to replace a ripped white envelope that I'd wanted to mail, in which is a folded letter enclosing some kind of manila insert, and she points to the stamp seller in the lobby of our building. 2) 3:23AM: I'm having a kind of blind date for a sordid British night out. My "date" talks to others in preference to me, ending at a sort of "event" where the "winner/loser" has a sock-cap/hood pulled over his head to the acclaim of all the other "loser/winners."
SATURDAY, 8/28/10: 1) 3:38AM: I'm aware that my large, upper-right-front tooth is becoming loose, and I'm trying to find a good way to hold my mouth and lips and tongue so that it doesn't become looser or, horrors, come out. Wake briefly to check that it's not actually as large as it seemed in the dream, and doesn't seem to be loose at all---what a relief! 2) 8:32AM: I'm at what seems to be either a rehearsal or the first production of a new type of quiz program, about to be described as it goes on the air, where one team writes an elaborate question describing a famous (or not-so-famous) person as elliptically as possible, and the other team determines who the person is. The setting is kind of an open field, with the stage on a platform to one side. Some seats are occupied, sparsely at first, and other areas in front and to the sides of the center of the stage provide spaces for small groups of people to set up their own sales or advertising areas. What appear to be paid commercials are read into a microphone---it's not clear whether this is part of the actual program or just in preparation for it. Then, as I sit at the end of one of the sets of rows, I, quite clearly, hear my name, and ZolnerZone, talked about, and I feel delighted (and a bit fearful) that someone is actually going to announce my website, or, even, I am going to be asked to the microphone to talk about my website. I try to think of what I'd say, how I'd describe it, somehow particularly centered around Actualism: what a revelation it will be (though I peripherally think I could describe "Gain" as an independent novel that is based on the lessons from Actualism), and how I can protect myself against charges of stealing part of the actual content of the website from the philosophy itself. Wake and consciously think about how I could tally "good" and "bad" comments, and maybe even exhaustively list, in a special area, what everyone has to say about the contents. Would that it would be so!
SUNDAY, 8/29/10: 1) 8:02AM: Groups were being organized into "science" or "community," and I wanted a desk in the "science" section, but there were problems and I felt vaguely impatient and irked. 2) 9:07AM: Someone, maybe as a joke, put many PINS into the back of my jeans, which were so padded that I didn't feel any PAIN from them, but they were just awkward to take out because they were spaced so closely together. Seems somehow connected to the extremely sadistic movie "Hard Candy," about a teen's vengeance on a "pedophile," that I watched last night.
MONDAY, 8/30/10: 1) 3:09AM: I'm meeting someone, maybe Ken, in Antarctica, where, since he's flying from NYC to Bali on the SOUTHERN route, he seems to be having to stay for TWO nights, one at one Antarctic coast, the second at the other. 2) 4:52AM: I'm boarding an enormous plane (like Bea Lillie's "When does this place get to London?"), passing Madge (or an American version of her) in the front in "normal" plane seating area, where I say, "I think I'm not sitting with you?" And she replies, "No, I think you're way in the back." I pass an enormous buffet area backed by huge plate-glass windows, in many rows of panes both horizontal and vertical (I'm amazed the plane is SO big---and will be SO steady in flight that these huge selections of meat, fruit, and desserts won't be tossed around in turbulence), and pass a formal dining table with signs that it's only used for a grand Farewell Dinner on the return flight, and I round a corner (again, this plane is GIGANTIC!) to see a series of aisles with room doors down either side, and flag down a harried stewardess, dressed like a waitress, to see where my dining table and roomette is, and I jot down both numbers as she reads them off to me, "276" for my table, and "Your room is with Mr. Somebody, who happens to be right here," she says, motioning toward a casually dressed service person, who waves at my ratty short-sleeved shirt saying, "Ah, a $1000 shirt, purchased at A&S, I take it?" "No," I laugh, "that elegant sports place nearby." "Oh, yes, Modell's," he grins. "Great taste." I'm about to ask whether we take off or eat first, but I wake to get up to type dream.
TUESDAY, 8/31/10: 5:19AM: I'm imprisoned in a jail-like building that, from the outside, has a brick facade with tiny windows on each of its six or seven floors; four or five entrances give access to elevators with no inside doors, so riders can see the concrete floors move past them as they ascend or descend, with the second floor having an extraordinarily high ceiling. Each floor is a maze of rooms reached from intricately turning hallways that sometimes intersect and sometimes don't. One room is a library with metal shelves filled with very dusty books (clearly a reference to my REORGCHR) that I take down to look at. A young teenage boy gently requests a young teenage girl to accommodate his sexual urges by allowing him to rub, through the cell bars that separate them, the crotch-front of his cotton pajamas against her leg, which allows me to wake feeling very slightly aroused.
WEDNESDAY, 9/1/10: 11:15AM: My dreams were in two parts: at first I had a vivid memory of the second part and only dimly recalled something about the first part. Now, over two hours later, I dimly recall the first part and have, for the moment, totally forgotten the second part. The first part involved someone like Stephanie Marcus and me sharing the same room in a hotel; in fact, we were sharing the same, rather small, bed! But when we were asked about it, we had to admit that we'd slept in the same bed for the past few nights, and both of us were so exhausted by the trip that we both fell asleep immediately, with no thought of any problems that could be caused by the other sleeping nearby. The second part also had something to do with a trip, something rather crowd-filled and happy, but typing brings back no more distinct memory of it. And I had thought of it as interesting on the morning of seeing Sharon. But now it seems completely gone.
THURSDAY, 9/2/10: 7:52AM: Four of us work FAULTLESSLY on a literary anthology, and I'm concerned how the table of contents will fit neatly onto one page. An air of competence and productivity lend the dream a very positive air. In another fragment, a couple of us go to a car that is parked in a crumbling cement-block building that looks more like it was an apartment building rather than a garage, and I congratulate the driver for having found this in crowded Manhattan, though it's way on the edge of town and it's not clear how we're going to steer the car through the maze-like hallways to get to the street---not to mention surmounting the weeds that surround the area.
SATURDAY, 9/4/10: 1) 3:26AM: Three dreams: in the first I'm at a meeting like the old-time Mattachine, where people are talking about transvestites in the organization, and some criticize someone who looks like Barbara Sugarman for being much too dark, and I wonder if she ever came in her masculine persona. Then I'm in a sex scene where two people I rather respect stand on either side of me and try to get me aroused. I feel semi-erect when someone to my right goes down on me, and I immediately feel self-conscious and go down, but make the effort to appear to be satisfied, and think I might actually have some kind of ejaculate that makes the person think I came, and that person goes off thanking me. Then I'm in a ratty hotel room where someone like Ken has gone to bed without pulling down the shades of the windows, and I push aside a sheet that's being used as a shade to roll down two emormous orange window shades. When I get toward my bed, dressed in a cotton muumuu, I sense that I need to use some more deodorant, so I continue into the bathroom to get that, prepared to excuse myself by saying, "Well, even I have to put up with my own pong." 2) 7:20AM: Three more fragments: an old son is showing snippets of videos he's taken of his mother, who refuses to pose for a picture, and he freezes the shots when she's looking her best, even though they're usually at a form of her sneer. Then someone VERY wealthy doesn't even believe in MENUS, since they should KNOW what's on the table before her, but even then she insists that her companion have some of her marvelous salad greens, and is surprised when the other has exactly the same salad. Lastly, there's a quiz on geography that seems to be about the beginning or end of American wars: first about the town in which the Revolutionary War ended, second a very long description that's a metaphor for Lee surrendering to Grant after the Civil War, and the third clue is simply "Aloha."
SUNDAY, 9/12/10: Transcribe note that I dream of indexing "ceramics" streets, content forgotten by Monday.
MONDAY, 9/13/10: 1) 2:25AM: Probably since I'm cold in bed, I dream of standing on the corner of Dietz Avenue and Eva Avenue in Akron, looking up Eva toward Herbrick, and seeing the snow that's accumulated, and continues to accumulate, with a strong wind blowing from the east, and somehow I know I'm responsible for shoveling the entire block-front, and also know that I'll only be able to take care of the first fall, maybe two inches, before it solidifies, and after I finish there'll be new snow that I'll have to remove. 2) 5:26AM: Long, elaborate dream of going to a party, in the "pattern" of many dreams of the past where I'm at a party in Don M.'s enormous, multi-roomed, apartment, not knowing where the real "action" is until I find it in a small room off in one corner. Before that, a sort of Master of Ceremonies greets people as they come in, some in costumes, ready for a night of revelry, and he directs some people into a room where a cluster of guests are gathered around a table filled with food, and other people are standing in a bare-walled room that turns out to be enclosed with a wooden curtain on three sides, which rises slowly to reveal---the real walls of the room, decorated according to the motif of the room for that particular evening. This happens in another room, yet I still haven't found what I want to find, so I go through a series of turns in a narrow corridor, empty of people, that makes five or six turns before I'm in the room that I've been searching for: a naked kid, familiar to me in some way, lurches toward me and hugs me, though I get the impression he comes to me simply because I'm the only other person who appears to be gay. I put my hand on his cock, slippery with pre-cum, and he gasps and falls into my arms, saying something foolish, and I prepare for a lovely evening, in the dream, when I wake quite hard and aroused and get out of bed at 5:26AM to gather "my supplies" and go into the living room, knowing that I have to finish by the time the painters will come up on the scaffold to start painting the floor of my terrace, supposedly this morning.
TUESDAY, 9/14/10: 6:02AM: I'm sitting in a Roman Catholic church, murmuring the words to the Pater Noster, as a small figure, swinging a censer, starts down the long aisle in a large church with maybe two dozen people scattered among the pews. Someone, previously, said that I had to do this for some reason.
THURSDAY, 9/16/10: 7:35AM: I start by arranging computer files of photos of food, but end in (long) lines waiting for REAL food: "OK, chicken broth is THAT line," says a clerk, pointing to a window in the far left corner.
FRIDAY, 9/17/10: 7:30AM: I'm on vacation in the countryside of what seems most likely to be Ireland, and a small group of us have gone into an old cottage, possibly for some kind of lecture or lesson, but no one tells us where to sit, so we perch on the sides and ends of beds that appear to be the only articles of furniture in the small rooms with low ceilings. We look toward a shadowy figure sitting in a corner with a tiny body and an absolutely ENORMOUS head, almost a mask, with large, staring eyes and a tiny circular mouth that hardly moves as it says, very quietly, a word or two, which might even be a name, and no one has the nerve to suggest that the odd figure speak louder. I'd looked at the ground, or a low outcropping from the wall, and found an object that attracted me to pick it up: it was neither, definitively, a rock nor a piece of metal; it fit neatly into the palm of my hand where it didn't have the heft of a rock, nor quite the coolness of metal; I thought it might be aluminum, slightly shiny, but it seemed like a natural object, not a worked or forged or smelted object; its main characteristic was that it was in two pieces that fit together very snugly, not like a rock crystal with two pieces fractured at a perfectly flat plane, but joined at two mirroring, complicated, curved surfaces that were wet, as if the moisture furnished a kind of abrasive that molded the two faces so that they almost welded together with the exactness of their congruity of surfaces; I could rub the wetness, but it never seemed possible to rub it dry, as if the moisture were a natural part of the object; I could hold one piece by the sides of its top, and the piece beneath was so exactly molded to the piece above it that it wouldn't fall to earth of its own accord, but remain adherent to the top piece. I wanted to ask someone what it was, how it was made: if it was just natural, was it handled so often that it fitted more closely together, or was this its, somehow, "original" form; but I couldn't find anyone who would be likely to know anything about it. Murmurs of what might have been instructions, or lessons, by people in the rooms who were not tourists, but not really "hosts," either, were followed too quickly by gestures that seemed to indicate we were dismissed, and were to leave, though no purpose seems to have been attained by our gathering in this small cottage in the waxing or waning darkness outside. Oddly affecting dream.
MONDAY, 9/20/10: 9:08AM: An almost psychedelic dream remembered that started about 5:25 and ended well past 8AM. It began with a small group of us young men, maybe college students (or maybe even high-school students like Jonathan Franzen described himself as being in his book "The Discomfort Zone," which I had been reading just before going to bed), getting our tickets to an experimental opera and my hoping that the seats would at least have a decent view of the stage, which seemed unlikely since the auditorium appeared to consist of a number of dining rooms, enclosed in U-shaped walls, strung along a central corridor leading to what appeared to be a logical area for the stage. The seat number was something like "Area 10, Table 4, Seat 1," where Area 10 was the last at the end of the hall, nicely coinciding with the side of the stage, on which singers were perched on high stools---some of them were even at the sides of our table, so we were almost too close to get a perspective of the action of the opera. Food appeared on, or was taken to, the tables, and somehow, during the performance, we were crowded against a balcony wall as the action in our area became more compelling than the action on the stage: someone who, to my amazement, turned out to be a young Angela Lansbury, who had gotten quite drunk and tried to cozy up to me, had somehow gotten rid of all her clothes and prostrated her rather androgenous body below the low railing of the balcony, eager to be fondled and caressed. Without transition, I was looking out over a vast expanse of performing area, reminiscent of both Orlando's view from her hilltop in the Woolf book I'd finished before starting the Franzen book, and of a postered scene from the later DeMille "Ten Commandments" in which Charlton Heston commanded the elements from a hilltop overlooking thousands of Jews and Egyptians and assorted extras---wondering how on earth this could all have been assembled for this small-town production, how it could have been rehearsed, how all the people could have been directed to do whatever they were supposed to do, and how it could possibly start and end. After many enormously complicated elaborations of settings, my concentration was drawn (no pun intended) to a blackboard on which was written, in overlayered red, blue, and lastly, predominantly, yellow chalk, a formula for the universal gravitational principle. I stood astounded before the beauty of the smoothness of the initial capital Z, followed by an equals sign and a glorious integral sweep beginning a three- or four-term equation. Half-awake by now, I questioned what the aim of this spectacle had become, with crowds of observers turning into printed tables of elements, travelogue vistas, and posters advertising similar extravaganzas. My semi-conscious mind dragged in more extraneous data, as I napped and rewoke to continue with the idea of the dream, until I finally had to get out of bed to dress and sit on the toilet and transcribe this to 9:30AM.
THURSDAY, 9/23/10: 8:25AM: Fragment from about 3AM: I'm lying on top of Bill Hyde, who's lying on his stomach with his legs spread in an inviting Y-shape. I'm facing his feet, and run my hands under his body to reach for his cock. I'm feeling tentative and shy, but he seems to accept my fingertips along the shaft of his penis, and I begin to brush the edge of his hardening corona. Wake feeling quite sexy.
SATURDAY, 10/2/10: 7:55AM ("five to eight," not "ten to ten"): Seemingly a series of dreams about porn films: 1) A very early male porn star, someone like Joe Dallasandro, is featured in an elaborate black-and-white production in which heads cluster around his erect penis while he stands, majestic, in a kind of royal robe, and lovingly runs his fingertips up and down the sides of his erection, looking down on it fondly as everyone else gazes in rapt fascination. 2) A classic film, stated to be from 1903, is being shown to an appreciative audience, while a narrator, either on a sound track or in person, is noting that this director, a very famous name, could get by with feminine breasts featured in this woodland scene, rather like Griffith's gauzy women in "Intolerance," particularly a perfectly conical bare breast of a voluptuous woman lying down on the grass, but the form of the breast is SO perfect it could almost be a prosthetic form worn as a sort of brassiere; other breasts of women standing or reclining against trees are also of this plastic-like perfectly conical form. 3) A more modern film, in color, features a parade of male porn stars dressed in furs and feathers, sort of drag and sort of sheer provocation, rather like the films with which I amuse myself while jerking off, and these are all possibly an aftermath of my unsuccessful try yesterday, between 7:30-9AM, to jerk off. Finish typing at 8:05AM and may try it again!
DREAMS FROM DUBAI-AFRICA TRIP
WEDNESDAY, 10/6/10: 8:48PM: Odd fragment of buying something, being asked for an extra dollar to make up an odd sum, and handing over also a fifty, and then some confusion about what I did and didn't give the cashier, and I said I KNEW I had only a fifty and a twenty and a one, so I must have given her a fifty and a one, but she seemed very skeptical, even though no one seemed to be cheating or being cheated. Other fragments were forgotten memories of thoughts when I woke, not quite rested from a long time without sleep and a busy day.
THURSDAY, 10/7/10: 12:54AM: Just four hours later have a fragment about editing a diary-type page in which I'm updating lists of things I'd done that day, including an item about wanting to get grass, which, actually, WOULD be nice. First looked at watch qnd thought it was 2AM, but I've still got a little under five hours of sleep left, at which time I hope to be beyond jet lag. 1:01AM: Fucking have to wipe up pee on the floor again!
SATURDAY, 10/9/10: 12:25AM: I'm fixing a number of things for someone whose house I'm caring for, and everything seems to go wrong: A problem I'm trying to solve can't be solved no matter what I do; something that needs attaching to something else refuses to stick; I try to fix yet another thing and can only leave it on the sofa in a half-fixed condition; I look at a lamp fixture and see that the socket has broken free of its glass base, and some new attachment will have to be bought, and I can't do that right now, so THAT has to be left undone. Somewhere in here I think it would be nice if this weren't real, because then I wouldn't have to worry about my failing to solve any single one of the problems, and then, at the apex of frustration, I wake a realize it's all been a dream, and all the list of things I have to do before things are fixed up don't have any bearing on reality whatsoever. What a relief! [But then remind myself to start recharging my exhausted camera batteries before the SECOND set runs out!] Other vague fragments as I wake, pee, sleep, wake, during the seemingly very long night.
TUESDAY, 10/12/10: 6:14AM: I'd gotten a ticket to, not to a show, but a sort of question-and-answer session with Brad Pitt onstage at a theater on 42nd Street. He wanders back and forth across the stage, not so much as answering the audiences' questions as riffing on them, and at the end of the performance I somehow find myself on the street alone with him: he didn't invite me, I didn't ask, but we just ended up walking the streets together. Few people noticed who he was, and we didn't wander far in the Theater District, and I don't remember anything we said, nor did I feel any sexual component of our brief companionship. Then he became, slowly, surrounded by some of his fans, and I found myself at a greater and greater distance from him, until finally I lost him, and wandered up and down 6th Avenue trying to find him again, but didn't succeed. The dream seemed much more exciting when it occurred, and much less interesting transcribed here.
THURSDAY, 10/14/10: 3:14AM: I'm looking to go south in Manhattan toward 57th Street, and find myself in a bar with someone rather attractive, like the guy from Village Playwrights with the very erect posture and name something like Richard Waldrop. He leaves me at the table to talk with someone else, and I gather up a few paper plates to throw away before I leave the place. 2) Vague fragment of sorting through some kind of date tabs in the process of completing a journal of some type: adding missing dates, supplying wanted information, making sure sequences are kept in order. Another scrap of memory involved some exotic woman, any other detail lost.
FRIDAY, 10/15/10: 3:35AM: I've somehow invited Nora Ephron and her husband (isn't it Bob Woodward, of Woordward and Bernstein fame?) to my apartment, where they sit in my kitchen, which is more like 1221 Dietz than any other kitchen in my apartments, and look through a multi-sized pack of index cards about two inches thick, with a title of the nature of "Where Am I Now?" which I'd collected over the years with particular kinds of my writings, sort of like I did with "John," and hoped to get them published, but thought maybe they could offer good suggestions on editing that would make selling it to a publisher and marketing it later easier. He sits and reads it, saying not much of anything, but my main memory is of her, standing behind me as I sit in one of my kitchen chairs, leaning over and hugging me from the back, saying something to the effect that, "If you only took out all the self-referential autobiographic bits, there'd be something that could stand on its own," but my first impression is that the WHOLE THING is primarily a collection of self-referential autobiographic bits, and if I took those out there'd be nothing left. I feel a great sense of gratitude to her, and, at some level, a feeling of great relief---probably because I've decided that nothing I could ever do would make it publishable---flows over me, and I feel disappointed and privileged at the same time.
SATURDAY, 10/16/10: 1) I have some kind of card, with dates and activities, that I can a) add to, b) delete, and c) put in order, and I'm busily managing two days with about two art galleries and a few other simple doings. 2) I've brought Mom a gift of a bottle of Champagne and a small package to our house at 1221 Dietz, but when I take it to her room to put it on her bed, I see the bed in such a way that I suspect she's sleeping in it, and I don't quite know what to do next. 3) Before, there was a fragment where, on the back of a folded letter from some office, Rita had typed a section from, I think, "Cymbeline," for some reason, which began with something like First Shepherd and Second Shepherd and went on to various other characters saying what she thought to be important, but which I don't remember. 4) There's a small invited group to a theater to honor some old British actress, not that noted, but many more-noted actresses show up to do her tribute, the main one being Bea Lille. She makes a grand entrance in purple high heels, makes some of her incomparable jokes, and the starts showing off at the edge of a cliff, since the theater has suddenly switched to an outdoor meadow under the sun near a waterfall. She capers at the edge, surely tempting fate, and, as everyone gasps and shouts and runs to grab her, she actually goes over the edge, clinging to the turf with one hand while swinging wildly through the air, legs flailing, and someone ELSE, younger and stronger, goes over the edge to help her, and Lille loses her grip; the view is obscured now they they're both under the rushing water of the falls, and the last arresting image from the dream is the DETERMINED look on the face of the would-be rescuer as she tries to FLING Bea Lille back to the clifftop, and I think that this can't possibly succeed, since the weight of her, Bea, and the EFFORT OF THROWING Bea must SURELY pull her legs out of the grasp of the one, two, or even THREE people who are keeping HER from falling over the edge. I don't know the outcome of the event.
SUNDAY, 10/17/10: 3:54AM: The dream started with a possible new sex friend in my apartment at 101 Clark Street, but it never really got going: we caressed each other's cocks, but neither of us truly responded, and we knew it wouldn't really work. Then, in some connected way---maybe he recommended his own physician, who had his office a rather long subway ride away, roughly where BAM is, and we visited him together. He had on his desk a VERY thick file of computer printouts, one from about five years ago, another, a recent compendium of all the tests I'd taken in the past few months and all the new measurements of factors and levels with all my new medications, and was about to get into it, but my friend demanded his attention first---and what attention it was: he seemed to be dusted with talcum powder, particularly his hair, and he was first lying on the floor, and then with his head in the doctor's lap, and it seemed more a new-age healing session than any modern medical therapy. I was a bit confused about what was going on, but it was my first time there, so I wasn't sure what was about to happen (sexually, therapeutically, professionally, personally), but was willing to give it a chance. A strong feeling of reality suffused the whole dream. 2) 5:53AM: A group of us enter an Art Deco building in the Bronx, and it looks vaguely familiar. At the entrance to the apartment is a bed against a wall, with a kind of barricade of storage material that could make another, higher, bed on top of it, and under which small children could play in a kind of fort. I chat with our hosts for a bit and ask if Sheila Andron ever lived in this building, and it sort of rings a bell and three or four of us pile out of the ground-floor apartment to look at the tenants listed in the lobby. "She's not here any more," someone reports, but she DID used to live here." "I thought it looked familiar," reply, somewhat lamely, saying even that I thought their family name had been something more complicated, like---and I forget what I said, and I was amazed at the coincidence.
MONDAY, 10/18/10: 5:36AM: I'm at a very gay party, and after many incidents, which I've forgotten: no, one I remember: an unattractive chubby sits next to me and is disappointed when I don't respond to him. But the main attraction appears on the stage, back to the audience, which prepares for an extraordinary vision: I can see, from my seat in the front row, eyes about two feet above the level of the stage, on his rear, like two baboon protuberances, the side views of pretty little nipples; then he turns around slowly, a nice smooth torso appears with the breasts at the bottom; the head is turned sharply to the right, so only the right ear can be seen, along with an area of neck that seems slightly goiterous, and then his head swings around, and where the neck should be is his rather small, well-shaped penis. I wonder what it would look like erect, and after I wake, sort of fantasize that his head looks like a compacted mass of two testicles, so that the body is placed, anatomically correct, upside down on his two legs.
TUESDAY, 10/19/10: 3:01AM: Dream of Piri, looking as if she's about thirteen years old, sitting next to me on a sofa, reading, waiting for four friends to set out for a concert at Lincoln Center for which we have tickets, so we know we'll meet there. We get separated and try to search for the others. It's all very busy and confusing.
WEDNESDAY, 10/20/10: 1) Actually recorded 11:52PM 10/19/10: Famous dog leaping from balcony to balcony to impregnate another dog of the same species with a rare prize-winning offspring. 2) Brad Pitt is living a life in secrecy as a businessman named Monty Salt. 3) 5:09AM: MOST extraordinary nightmare: Ken and I are in Manhattan, going to some kind of possibly Beard-connected event in an elegant hotel, but which will, maybe explicitly, involve some new kind or drink or drug, so that we KNOW we're in for something unusual, but what ensues is one of the most OUTRAGEOUS nightmares ever: I sort of "Come to": at the end of it, and the waiter graciously offers me a bill slightly in excess of $70, for what he says are "six glasses of wine." I know I don't have the money, so I search for Ken for a loan, having a very hard time finding him, but when I do, he calmly assures me that, yes, he can loan me #70. But when I try to find my way back to some kind of cashier, I get totally lost again, but console myself by thinking they have some kind of suitcase of mine as security, so they know I'll have to return to pay my bill. But then Ken and I are out on the streets, and he suggests we take an obscure subway line I've never heard of or seen before, and we enter a huge circular tunnel with the oldest, hoariest, drunkest derelicts I've ever seen leaning against every wall, lurching toward us in a menacing way, and horrifying me. Ken's vanished into the distance. I count the stops, which seem to occur at VERY large intervals, and I figure I just have to get out at the next stop. Out into a totally foreign setting, like the northeastern tip of Manhattan Island, with bridges on the horizon bound for the Bronx or Queens, so I know I want to go in the opposite direction. See street signs with names like Avenue G, and 17th Avenue, and can't AT ALL figure where I might be. Walk and walk, making almost no progress, but the people I pass become stranger and stranger: as I pass under a bridge overpass, an extraordinarily tall acromegalic giant, with a misshapen green head with all kinds of angles and bumps on it, with monster eyes, stoops over to get himself under the 8-foot headroom of the underpass, and I'm aghast at such a monster, thinking this MUST be a nightmare, but of course it can't be, I'm just drunk, or the subject of anew drug, and have to get home in some kind of ordinary way because I'm not possibly going to have the comfort of waking up---and I wake up. I haven't succeeded in giving a tenth of the grotesque details of the street signs, the shop fronts, the people I pass, the vehicles on the misshapen streets, the clothes on the pedestrians, my own feelings of lostness and horror, but as usual I was extremely relieved when I found it WAS only a nightmare, so I type this by flashlight on the toilet of the Lake Mburo Tented Camp, until 5:27AM, which just about half an hour before Ken's 6:30 wake-up call.
FRIDAY, 10/22/10: 5:03AM: I'm walking the streets in some Spanish city, and suddenly it turns into a mirror maze with repeated identical doorways numbered "13" circling all around me. Someone explains something to me that I've since forgotten. Not having THAT many dreams on this trip, still not expanded out of file 8.
SATURDAY, 10/23/10: 4:23AM: An important person, resembling a character played by Alec Guinness, is in the back of a car, expecting to be taken to some kind of military meeting, but is driven to the set of a movie which is being filmed---at the end of which, everyone agrees, is the best film that has ever been made. As the climax of the film nears, involving solemn crowds of Biblical types nearing the walls of an ancient city, with dramatic music playing in the background, the focus narrows on the foreground, which turns into the turret of a tank, which begins to fire on the religious groups below, and in the dream there's no way of knowing whether this is a surprise twist ending to the film, or an actual beginning of a war by an enemy that knew so many people would be gathered in this vulnerable position at this time. The emphasis on the awe over the fact that what had already been filmed was the "greatest movie of all time" cannot be overemphasized.
END OF DUBAI DREAMS
SUNDAY, 10/24/10: 10:23PM: Wake and start typing dream at 10:34PM: I'm attending some very grand---and grandiose---celebration, that even in the dream seems to celebrate my return home after a triumphant trip. Dream concludes with VERY bright, VIVIDLY colored, mympths in a LARGE pattern of the same square-with-dot-in-middle motif, followed by another common motif which I now forget how to describe.
MONDAY, 10/25/10: 1) 3:26AM: Dream of Laird and me in Bali, visiting a woman who makes us lunch. I take away a drinking glass and he needs to borrow cash from me, which I got with an HSBC overdraft. 2) 7:35AM: INCREDIBLE dream of being on vacation from what seems to be an Army camp near there. I'm in the middle of town, just finished with a luxurious lunch, and am trying to get back to a particular Metro station that's near my camp, but from the first station I enter I take the train in the OPPOSITE direction. I have little money, so I go to try to explain my situation in some little manager's office, but my French is so bad they sort of laugh and give me a ticket from THIS station to my destination. BEFORE that, however, I'd made the acquaintance of a sexy young man who, when I followed him into his place of work, played the piano in an elegant bar, but started his job with a bit of magic, which reminds me of a yet-earlier episode in which I was walking through a playground where a group of girls were putting on a show by throwing balls at each other, bouncing them off nearby objects, sometimes off benches or the paths in the garden, an d comment that it was easier to get watchers to give them something for their act than to simply beg for the money they needed to live on. At one point I passed a couple of men who commented, "Look at the tits on that one," referring to a passing man, and "He has golden chest-hair coming through his shirt," and I thought of noting this down as a prominent cruising area. I exited the park, or one of the subway stations, by following a man who seemed to know his way through a small gate, past a garden so beautiful I thought it should be listed as a tourist spot, and through another hidden gate to a main street. I at last got to the station I wanted, but I didn't remember how to get to my camp from the station: this may have been the first time I used the Metro to get here. Another segment had me stopping at a station that had ONE name for the level above and ANOTHER name for the level below; a number of times I dashed down a set of stairs only to have the doors JUST close before I could get on, though at one train I waved my ticket frantically at the conductor, sitting looking out his window, and he actually stopped the train to let me on. Another time I was asked for 9 francs for something, and I blanched because I didn't think I had it, but I reached into my trousers' pocket and pulled out a lump of crumpled US bills, one of which was a 5-spot, so at least I had THAT much money with me. All the details were brightly colored, particularly the clothing of the pianist. I had an air of joy about me as people asked if I could speak French, and when I said "Un peu" they sometimes continued in French, but often reverted to English, as was often the case OUTSIDE of dreams. Dream-time started at something like 1:30PM, and though I didn't know of anything I had specifically to at a particular time, I wanted to get back to camp, if for any reason, to capture on my Neo some of these charming details about my day in Paris.
TUESDAY, 10/26/10, 1) 3:18AM: I'm standing at the side of an old British home when, without warning, an abandoned storage shed in the back yard, about 50 feet from the main house, topples forward and crumbles into rubble before my eyes. A few seconds later, without preliminary, a similar building, a bit farther away, also bends forward and essentially disappears into a gully between it and the house I'm standing near. People mill about in amazement, and a third building, this time a three-story Tudor mansion, pitches forward as if a giant had pushed it over with his finger. A man, possibly the owner of this property, comes out of the main house and approaches me hysterically, "Did you see that? It just fell over! Why would that have happened to those buildings; they'd stood there for over a hundred years!" I shook my head in confused amazement: the ground hadn't trembled, this didn't seem to be an area for earthquakes, and though the buildings were old and abandoned, they had hardly looked like they were ready to fall over. We raced to the street in front of the house, where I noticed a slight curve in the road that I took as an indication of an underlying fault in the earth which had, in fact, moved before in this area. Others looked on in silent amazement. 2) 6:45AM: I'm sitting in the living room of a female neighbor with another woman, discussing a book that's just been talked about on TV. I've started reading the book, and ask whether it's worth finishing. "It's like he had a good idea, spread it into a lot of details, and then spread the details throughout a book that's too long." She sort of agrees with me, and then picks up a baby which had been sleeping on the floor next to her and takes it into another room to put it to bed. Then the other woman thinks it's time to leave, and so do I, and we do. 3) 8:44AM: I'm staying with a married couple and another woman in a large suburban house, but the bedroom isn't quite set up for sleeping four people: there are two double beds, but only one is set up, and there's no obvious place for the second one. For some reason, I'd just previously made the announcement that I was gay, and I think the guy wasn't prepared for it, and was preoccupied with that instead of thinking where the bed would go. It had two twin-size mattresses that fit atop an X-shaped base, and we tried it in one place that denied anyone access to the bathroom, which prompted the wife to say "Good thinking," when I brought it up, and we moved it around to another position, while the husband seemed interested in the fact that the LOWER level, almost the basement, had room for a dining table that seated six, and then the other three were off in another room talking about something, and I was aware that I hadn't showered in a while, and I still had on my Churchill T-shirt with the stains on it, and didn't want to undress in front of them. A thoroughly uncomfortable episode for everyone.
WEDNESDAY, 10/27/10: 1) 12:02AM: I'm riding through Indian countryside with my current lover, who's quite young, and his brother and sister, and think to take his picture, then the picture of his brother and sister, then of all three at the same time, since they're family. But don't, in the dream. 2) 4:50AM: I tried to remember fragments, but with no success.
SUNDAY, 10/31/10: 4:32AM: Dream of organizing ALL BUT papers from trip, and clearing my dining-room table of all but papers, to be sorted later. Later, dream of sexy photos of huge cocks that arouse me slightly, so I put on the radiator in the living room at 6:18AM.
MONDAY, 11/1/10: 5:30AM: Dream of dirtying white bathroom towel by cleaning the dirty, white-tiled bathroom floor in preparation for it being painted, and moving into cleaning the floor of the next room, which has a wooden floor with one edge of heaps of white paint from former paint-jobs.
TUESDAY, 11/2/10: 7:10AM: I'm spending a few days in what appears to be a small German town, with distant friends, and, rather late in the evening, I try to think of what we'll do with this evening and early tomorrow before I'm due to leave around noon. I suggest a bus ride to a nearby town, where a couple who are only friends of friends have gone away for a few days and had suggested that I stay overnight at their cottage. But the mother of the friend I'm staying with, and thinking of going to this other town with, consults her wristwatch and observes that it's already 10:15PM, and that the town is---she searches for the word---"fundamental," which seems to mean that there's nothing really to do there, and what there is would be on the touristic side, rather than the "genuine old German" side that I'd rather fantasized it might be. I then look into a guidebook and see a local "Setuntour" which appears to be a sort of spa at the foot of a picturesque mountain, but they say there's nothing to really see there; I also suggest something called "Asia," but they say that's only a restaurant with Chinese food. So there seems to be really no point in leaving where we are currently settled, have something for a late dinner, and just go to bed and maybe wander the town square in the morning before leaving about noon. The tenor of the end of the dream echoes my indecision about what to do this morning in JOURNAL:11/2/10.
WEDNESDAY, 11/3/10: 8:20AM: Woke at 7:45AM with the memory of a dream: I'm staying in a YMCA room, as a much younger person. I had a tiny joint left (which I only after waking thought of as a roach), and I debated combining the few shreds of grass from it with the remains of an ordinary bidi, lighting it, and getting slightly high so that I could jerk off. But I'd discarded the grass into a tiny plastic container, like a rectangular cellophane bidi-pack wrapper, which had somehow gotten water into it. Now I decided to try to retrieve the shreds by decocting the water from the container, a process complicated by two, then three, live cockroaches that had been attracted to the water. I managed to get rid of them by blowing them out of the container into a sink in the communal bathroom of the Y, into which I'd gone, leaving my room-door unlocked, but knowing that it was so early in the morning that there weren't yet other guys wandering the halls. Then I thought to carefully drain off the rest of the water, keeping the few dregs, drying them out, and combining them with a dry bidi and trying to light the whole schmear; but before that I woke up.
SATURDAY, 11/6/10: 8:37AM: Another IBM-job dream: I've returned for my first day, and don't know anyone to ask about anything, nor anyone to have lunch in the cafeteria with. Look in my desk drawers to find nothing familiar, and try to find the machine room to get the results of the last test I ran MONTHS ago, and everything's been dismantled and I have no idea what to do next. In another phase, I'm outside the building, trying to get back to my new office, and the elevators are almost invisible in a shop-front facade, but I manage to get inside one and push the fifth, top, floor, but it doesn't move, while the one next to it moves up as if I'd pushed the button in that. Two other men get in with me, but when it doesn't move they get right back out again, mumbling to themselves.
SUNDAY, 11/7/10: 5:22AM: I'm setting up a photo of the last polls taken after one guided trip, and just BEFORE leaving on a photo-less HADJ!
MONDAY, 11/15/10: 1) 6:43AM: I'm attending some kind of seminar, and we're divided into small groups to pursue individual tasks, but I'm not clear about what our group is supposed to do: I thought one thing, other members of the group disagree with me. I'm confused and don't know how to resolve my problem. 2) 8:38AM: I'm vacationing in a small beach town, knowing that I want to see a certain movie at 10AM on television, but I've taken my shoes off for some reason and put them beside some small green bushes growing in front of a beach-front cottage, thinking I'll certainly remember where I put them when I want to put them on again. Go down a street whose location I'm not quite sure of, and when I turn to find my shoes, I can't remember which way to go. I keep looking at my watch as it slowly indicates times past 9AM, and I realize that I'm in danger of missing my movie. At one point I'm following a large fat black woman up a sandy path which grows steeper and steeper until the wooden steps in the path are replaced by metal rungs ascending with the steepness of a ladder, and I try to push past to get up the ladder first, but she's determined to go ahead of me. Later I find myself in a grassy canyon that I don't remember having seen before (though it now reminds me of canyons I've seen in recent dreams), and again I look at my watch to see that it's getting even later, and I have even less chance of finding my shoes and getting to my movie on time. At another point I'm lost in a large coffee shop where everyone's having breakfast, and I think to get out by going down a stairway which leads into an enormous apartment on the ground floor, where two girls who live there look at me with some little curiosity---I guess this must happen to them frequently---as I look for the way out, getting to a small landing which leads to another doorway still inside the apartment, which goes does to another landing, which frustratingly leads to yet another small flight of stairs down to the entrance door which, surprisingly, leads into a back yard rather than onto the main street as I'd supposed. Make my way back to the street, trying to identify the building with the restaurant on the second floor and the dwelling on the first floor which is so enormous, and later look back from a corner store front to see a brick municipal building of some kind with a restaurant on the second floor, so the huge apartment must be on the ground floor of that building. But I'm no closer to finding the cottage in front of which I put my shoes, and I wake with a familiar sense of frustration and impatience.
WEDNESDAY, 11/17/10: 5:12AM: Dream of flapping my sock (well, that word was SUPPOSED to be COCK!) at a floor-length foggy window at night.
TUESDAY, 11/23/10: 5:13AM: Two huge naked men are playing "Carry the Pig," in which one man carries the other in a head-to-head carry through the woods in back of a property very like 1221 Dietz. Somehow it's known that the taller of the two weighs 400 pounds, the smaller weighs 300 pounds, but the smaller is convinced to carry the larger, and he runs through the woods, squealing like a pig, until he's exhausted. Mercilessly, the larger goads the smaller into taking him again, upside down, on top of his head, to run through the woods, convincing him that "the others" are ready to play: the smaller has only to enter the woods, squealing like a pig, and his opponent will be so impressed that he'll cede the victory to the smaller in an instant. Sweating, trembling, almost on the point of death, the smaller gullibly hoists the larger atop his head and goes to the entrance in the hedge to the woods, squealing for all he's worth.
WEDNESDAY, 11/24/10: 4:14AM: Dream of touring the moon with a blind woman.
THURSDAY, 11/25/10: 3:11AM: 1) Card-playing group ad, giving order of play and ways of signing up; 2) Slick cock-tip makes me wake hard; 3) I'm buying postcards and stamps at a small jewelry shop on a trip I'm taking.
WEDNESDAY, 12/1/10: 6:33AM: I'm moving around a house like 1221 Dietz early one morning, and am surprised to see a naked, fairly young and attractive, body in the bathroom: Mom had clearly had a sex partner last night! Then, without transition, I'm in the company of a sexy young man who seems pleased to be with me, and his older friend lies on top of me and KISSES me with a pleasant intensity. I think this is quite wonderful, seeing as it hasn't happened (in both real life and in dreams) for a long time. Amazed that the older friend kissed me, but then figure that the younger man must have told him that I would be up for it. Other pleasant, sexy, easy-going details forgotten now, in typing. It was much richer, much more immediate, than described here.
THURSDAY, 12/2/10: 10:35AM: I'm a member of a committee that's responsible for some kind of report, but all I do is sit next to a member who's doing his work and filing away his completed papers, thinking that this will assist me in doing MY part of the work. Then someone reminds me, for the second time, of a meeting tomorrow noon at the Liskey Gallery, and I jot it down, for the second time, on a sheet of paper that I stuff into my shoulder bag, making sure to put it with the first sheet of paper so that I won't forget it, though I haven't yet copied down the address, on West 23rd Street, where the meeting will be held. As I prepare to leave, I'm aware that someone like Jan Fratura, or Cesira Volpe, or some other small Italian woman from my University of Akron years, has been eying me, as if to remind me that I'm supposed to have a date with her, or at least ask about what she's doing, but I can only give her the briefest nod of acknowledgment of her existence before leaving the room without even speaking to her. I wake and look at the clock, seeing with amazement that it's 10:34AM: I can't imagine I've been in bed since 1:44AM without getting up to pee---almost nine hours!
FRIDAY, 12/3/10: 6:10AM: A small group is preparing to fly to a nearby Caribbean island like Puerto Rico. While I'm packing, I unbundle a lot of black socks and find they'd been still damp when I folded them into themselves, so I make a point of laying them out to dry on the floor of the car we're taking to the airport, both on the right side of the front row and the left side of the second row, where I end up sitting. All of us have just one bag, and we're told to check to make sure we have our tickets and cash, but we don't need our passports unless we intend to go to some foreign country like Dominica or Saba. As we leave, I remember that I didn't bring my camera, but console myself with the thought that this is only a day trip, so I'm not going to be missing much if I don't take photos. I don't have a window seat, so I crane my head over the shoulders of those at the windows when we fly low over what may be green masses of algae in the water, or low-lying coral reefs, lighter green in the dark, bluish-green water, and then the pilot pushes his way down the narrow aisle to guide us into our landing, which is on a dirt road in a small village that a woman in front of me turns to tell me is "Malecon," though when I look in an atlas there's no such place listed. We taxi through a gateway into what looks like an open-air mall, with not so much souvenir stands and personal collections of souvenirs on crowded shelves (maybe like the room that Citizen Kane tears apart when his wife leaves him) that go on and on until we nose into the base of a hillside with picturesque houses straggling up a steep hillside that would be a great afternoon trek, and continue into what could be a small carport in the home in which we'll be having our headquarters for our few hours on the island. We pile out of the plane and claim our small bags from various storage places in the floor of the plane, where our belongings seem to have gotten all mixed together, but no one's worried very much about anything at all on this holiday excursion. I'm looking forward to a good time, even though I have no idea when we have to be back here for the flight back to Brooklyn.
SATURDAY, 12/4/10: 1) 6:22AM: I dream of my sister, NOT Rita, getting her hair SHAVED very short, then extended with someone ELSE'S hair for a new look. 2) 9:20AM: Note dream of watching TV on Channel 18 of women who become nuns, and cry when they stop outside St. Patrick's Cathedral.
SUNDAY, 12/5/10: 3:54AM: I have two secrets: one I say nervously, the second is maybe 2-3 lines of nonsense. People turn to listen to me.
MONDAY, 12/6/10: 9:20AM: I'm in a grungy bus station waiting for a bus to take me to an amusement park, but it's late, and I'm frustrated, and KNOW I've lost my luggage, coat, and wallet. Half awake and "continue to dream" of saying to Tris, "Take my glass," as I fall over in a cottage across from a woman. We're playing Scrabble, and I cover a tile and challenge her to tell me what it was. This is all very strange, and I botch writing the note so I can barely read it at 10AM.
TUESDAY, 12/7/10: 2:25AM: Cocoa-making nightmare---too much stuff added, overflow, solidification, rubbery bits which won't dissolve; I despair, waking.
THURSDAY, 12/9/10: 4:44AM: I'm visiting a backwoods house, given three quarts of melting ice cream, and I look for a fridge in the jammed kitchen, knowing I'm late for a bus, and maybe I'm not coming back here.
FRIDAY, 12/10/10: 6:45AM: Almost fever-dream of "heat" and oddity of going into a tiny room with many wall outlets and feeling that something might happen, or that I might DREAM something awful happening there, and then actually getting a CHILL under the blankets after I get up to pee.
SATURDAY, 12/11/10: 1) 8:13AM: Dream of VERY tall modeling mannequins arranging to be photographed, saying "Of course I wish we'd have been told in advance." 2) 9:04AM: Note of dream of "garden in Greenland."
SUNDAY, 12/12/10: 9:05AM: I'm at an IBM conference, which has a band playing at the side of the enormous hall, and I move my seat, leaving my long black overcoat under the chair, and then can't find it again. Eventually I find a "Lost and Found" booth and look through odd stuff that's been turned in, but can't find my coat. Then I go to a Jewish-seeming house, to play cards, and leave a magazine that I'm reading on the porch to get wet in the rain. I climb rocky stairs in clogs, stepping carefully because I'm afraid to fall. Then I turn toward a grassy garden which is full of THOUSANDS of white rats which are breeding ENDLESSLY, and also find children picking up aluminum-looking very thin fish which are alive out of water, nevertheless. LOTS of sarcastic house guests, which is why I described it as Jewish-seeming. Certainly a DIFFERENT dream!
MONDAY, 12/13/10: 8:47AM: AFTER seeming hours lying semi-awake "constructing" a play with a DECREASING number of characters, so that it ends up with ONE multi-role playing man and ONE woman, whose names change slightly: his name is Ize, which changes to a younger Izolo, a sexier Izal, and a "generic" Eyes when he takes over as narrator; I spend much time thinking of the interactions as brother, lover, friend to the woman, who remains nameless and more or less of the same characteristics against the changing personas of the man. But then, near waking time nearing eight hours after going to bed at 12:47AM, the "real" dream starts: I've just flown into what may be Puerto Rican, or even Cuban (from the Tuesday Evening Club slides announced for January from Cuba) countryside, and I'm visiting a small hill town before even checking into my hotel: I have no luggage, and not even a jacket until a friendly woman who seems to be from my hotel, the Dorian, as I hope I'm ALSO booked into, lends me one she's carrying. At the beginning of what I remember, I'm roaming from hut to hut, lying down on small beds with young men lying around, and some come to lie next to me, dressed in loose clothing, and one near my hand begins moving his body slightly next to my fingers, and I move them only an inch to contact his small erection, which I grasp as he pumps gently back and forth until he seems on the point of orgasm, and then he moves away. This goes on a few times, and many young men seem to "take advantage" of my presence by moving close to me on the bed, presenting me with their erections, some of which I grasp to their climax of a small quantity of slippery substance. But then it begins to get dark, and I hear a young person speaking English close to me and ask where the hotel is. "Down to the river?" I seem to have heard someone say, "And then turn to the right," the child indicates with an authority that I have no choice but to trust. So I start making my way down, beams from the sun setting off to my left, passing through an amphitheater filled with people looking up into the sky, and I recall, in the dream, that the Geminids are supposed to be tonight (but somehow "tomorrow" in the dream, since in reality it was the night after my dream) and maybe they're gathered here for a good view of them. I look up and see wisps of cloud, and reflections of flashes of light from the ground, but it's not dark enough yet, though I seem to remember I DO see a few stars scattered in the twilight sky. I look down to see a cliffside (maybe a remnant of "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls" from last night's TV), with kids clambering perilously down, but then notice a steep stone stairway next to it with older people carefully picking their way down, so I go to the side and find a set of railings leading down to a set of elaborately carved polished wooden stairs, with no one on them, leading sharply down. I go down a few flights, looking out to spectacular rock formations silhouetted against the sky, sorry that I've somehow lost my camera and have not yet replaced it, so that, as at the end of the Trinidad trip, I had to be satisfied with my memory of the views without having any photographic souvenirs to record my vistas. Earlier, Fred [bizarrely, now at 9:10AM, unusually early, Dr. Palgon's secretary calls to say he's on vacation and changes my appointment from 12/22 to 12/27] Lasker somehow appears, yellow eyed, wordlessly surprised that I haven't checked into the hotel before roaming around the countryside. As I descend toward the river, still not in evidence, I'm relieved that there's still enough light for me to check for obstacles in my path, but still worried, since I have no idea how far the hotel is, or even if in FACT I'm to be staying at the Dorian, that it will be too dark to see where I'm stepping before too long. Then, without any specific crisis, I'm lying awake, curiously checking the clock to see that it's remarkably late at 8:44AM.
TUESDAY, 12/14/10: 8:12AM: I'm in a small upstate New York town, on a street that had rows of trees on both sides until the owners of the houses decided to cut the trees down to eight- or nine-foot "stumps" on one side, and two- to three-foot stumps on the other, and one day decided to hire gangs of kids on the larger stumps, which they could "ride" back and forth, or gangs of burly young men on the shorter stumps, which they could "wrestle with" with grubby hands and tree-stained arms, seemingly having paid each individual $5 for each stump removed, until they were battered and battered and battered until they were finally torn like rotten teeth from the devil strips along the street. A forgotten part of the dream involved towns like this that sort of competed for depravity among its citizens, one facet of which might be terrorizing trees until they gave up their roots and suffered unto death.
SATURDAY, 12/18/10: 7:40AM: I'm visiting wealthy couples in one of their large homes. We're sitting at a dining room table, talking, and the woman to my right opens an envelope and asks me to take out two checks for her. I wish they were for me, and see a name like Sugarman on the checks, but can't remember which of the women is Sugarman, so when I get up from the table I try to look at the names on other envelopes on the table, but can't make them out. Then, to my chagrin, another, larger, section of the ensuing dream I FORGET!!
TUESDAY, 12/21/10: 11:23AM: Had MANY dreams the past few days, but have been too lazy to record them. Remnants from today's dream included decks of cards ordered by suits that had to be played, rather like Spider, in a particular order. Very many of the details are totally forgotten---sorry, Sharon!
WEDNESDAY, 12/22/10: 5:05AM: I'm with a small group gathered in what looks like a basement recital room beneath Carnegie Hall, where a program announces a piano recital by a person that I at first think is a man dressed in a Baroque-period costume of an elaborate jacket, with white stockings to the knee, but when the person sits and fingers the keys, it turns out to be a woman who comments that she's not going to play a traditional concert, but starts a few pieces, in some cases only miming passages over the keys, and then in what may be a difficult piece seems to strike some keys out of order and then produces a flurry of fingering which ends in her stopping, saying that "the evening isn't going right," and some of the audience begins to leave, but then she circles about in a room in which the seating arrangement appears to have been changed. In the periphery there are waves on a body of water, maybe a visual remnant of the water-to-the-horizon climax of "The Burmese Harp," the borrowed-from-Spartacus movie I watched the end of just before midnight. Then she sits at a tiny piano with keys that she begins to strike from BELOW the keyboard, making an odd sound, but then she stops and begins talking about the music, while members of the audience take seats from which they can watch her. Then she gets up impulsively and lurches toward me, saying with a mad astonishment, "Oh, but you've COME!" and mistakes me from an old acquaintance, rubbing my arms with surprise at my presence, then protests the possibility of my presence and tries to leave me with a fragment of her long gown. Without transition I'm with a group of the audience at the shore of a lake, the level of which seems to have risen because of an off-shore storm, and the light blue waves are beating against a bowl of rock well above any prior sandy shore, and watchers are commenting that it may be necessary to abandon this section of the beach, which now appears to be below the nearest striking waves, and we're gathered in a bowl that the waves would fill if the water rises another few inches. Then we're back in a MORE-changed concert hall where she appears to imply that a new section of the concert will start soon after 11PM, and there's another spate of playing on a keyboard which is barely a foot wide, almost a child's toy, but which is again played by flipping up the keys from below, in a gesture that, in the dream, somehow reminds me of milking a cow rather than tinkling on piano keys. Other fragments of playing occur before I wake, puzzled about the dream, and transcribe this to 5:22AM.
THURSDAY, 12/23/10: 5:37AM: I'm watching a television program that has been produced because of the death of Bob Seaver, with a legend in the lower left of the picture that gives different choices for time-lines about his work, his history, and the narrative of his family. I'm watching a segment on his travels for his work as some kind of scientist in the Pacific Islands, looking at maps of atolls like Fiji and Yap and Samoa, with red highlights where his studies of geological formations or native peoples were concentrated. The maps make these atolls look like dense constellations of jewels in the southern oceans, and close-ups show, in particular for islands around Yap, enormous cliffs of eroded red coral that beetle over their shorelines, in some cases creating deeply cut caves that house villages of what almost look like American Indian cliff-dwellings that nestle right against the bases of these overhanging cliff-walls in ways that make me want to visit them because they're so exotic and beautiful. In his house I find a box that contains four or five surf-rounded coral rocks that the related television segment describe as lenses which, when natural objects are viewed through them, reveal unusual properties of living organisms. I wonder if I might keep one or two of these, selecting one that looks rather like a peach pit and putting it in my mouth to wet it, making it almost translucent, and I raise it to my eye to find that I can dimly perceive light transmitted through it. I wake and transcribe dream to 5:43AM.
FRIDAY, 12/24/10: 8:47AM: I'm visiting some grim little British town, taking a subway to the end of the line at the base of the road on which my bed and breakfast is located. When I first try to get to the subway, the attendant is closing a low door leading to the platform, and I ask with irritation, "How am I supposed to get to the train?" He waves vaguely in the direction other passengers are going, and I get on and ride to the circle of greenery around which the, now, bus travels to get to its final destination. I wander into a dimly lit---actually, unlit in the early twilight---mall with dreary shops and cafes lining windowless hallways, debating where to eat, thinking there must be SOMEWHERE better than these unhappy places. But I can't find any place that even has lights on, so I think maybe I should walk to the other end of the street where there might be more upscale places available. I don't seem to feel at all happy about this phase of my vacation---maybe I'm feeling the effect of Paul's presence---even though he's out for most of the day, or we're lunching in elegant restaurants, he's still coughing while I'm still in bed, and his pervasive aroma, part perfume or body lotion, part simply body odor, seems to get more an more intense as his days here lengthen. Nine days is REALLY too many. Wake and pee.
MONDAY, 12/27/10: 9:33AM: I'm at a temporary job in a magazine's office, replacing someone working on this job who has to go to another site. I have to proofread a magazine article, indicating errors on a note I leave with the manuscript, along with a stack of about a dozen gay-male photographs that I assume are illustrating the article---though I've proofread the article, somehow I have no knowledge of its contents. He's supposed to return about 2AM to meet some other kind of deadline, but I don't have to stay until then. I return to the office after having left it for some reason, and I'm still the only one there. Possibly related to the vacant streets outside due to the snowstorm that doesn't, by this morning, appear to have left more than a few inches of snow, though it snowed VERY heavily throughout the entire day, starting at 10:30AM. I'd lived with Spider at the cold computer, but when I turned it on at 2AM to check for HH meals, I couldn't get my code to work again, so I tried restarting the computer, but it didn't come on: either the system failed because of low storage, or the screen is too cold to operate. I turn on the radiator in the bedroom for the first time this season---though, of course the room has been cold before without the screen bombing out. Stop at 9:39AM to get a call from Palgon canceling today's appointment due to snow.
THURSDAY, 12/30/10: 8:43AM: Just look up "anit" in dictionary, and no word starts with it. Dream revolved (ha!) around a Scrabble game in which ONE person played one half of the board horizontally looking in ONE direction, while the SECOND person played the OTHER half of the board horizontally from the OTHER direction, with the "joke" that the two words whose tile-tops met at the center-dividing line would NOT have to make legitimate two-letter words VERTICALLY. It was difficult to establish the rules for this game, but we eventually agreed. The setting MAY have been very like the EFA meeting room where the monthly Scrabble night is held. On the left margin, looking from one point of view, I dreamed I had put down a legitimate word, like "anitbite," that I joked was "also" THREE words: "a nit bite," or "an it bite." One of the horizontal words on the midline (the top line from one point of view), I seem to remember, had the word "asylum" as part of the layout, and I tried to figure out a word that abutted it on the top which WOULD spell out six legitimate two-letter words vertically, like "labeme," which would form "la," "as," "by," "el," "mu," and "em," but unfortunately "labeme" isn't a word.