Mark Allen's Dream Journal - April, 2004
*note: Date of dream entry refers to day before,the date of the night I went to sleep and the dream I had into the next day's date.

4/1/04

    I am in some outdoor setting in another state, possibly the midwest somewhere, the south. It is spring. The land is kind of hilly with lots of wooded areas, and little suburban collections of buildings and stuff. I am with some people I don't know. We are all gathered in a parking lot at the edge of a wooded area (although it may be a public park) and several pickup trucks are parked around us. For some reason, I am asking some of the people in our group if they can give me a ride to the hospital. When I look off into the distance, over the trees I can see the hospital I want to go to. It looks like a giant parking garage. For some reason there is some confusion and no one can give me a ride to the hospital.
    Then a scenario shift: I am with the same group, but now we are in some very large restaurant/bar. The place has a rustic, mountain cabin feel... but huge. Everything is made of bare wood or logs and there is a lot of taxidermy everywhere. There is a large stone fireplace in the center that stretches all the way up to the ceiling, which is an A-frame roof. There are many more people in the place and everyone seems to be running around doing stuff. All the members in my group, and the other groups, are wearing baseball caps and jeans and denim jackets and cowboy boots... everything has a vaguely country music, or mountain music feel to it. It soon becomes apparent that there is going to be a performance this evening in this restaurant, a line-up of a lot of bands. Me and the group I am with are one band, and there are about five other groups that represent other bands. All the bands seemes to be situated into different sections of the restaurant, just waiting for sound check or whatever. There are a lot of sound and tech guys running around the place setting up amps and equipment, using white tape to tape cords to the floor, etc. Me and the members of my group are all in one area of the restaurant that is kind of an elevated seating area. Our area almost looks like an indoor front portch of a cabin.
    We are all just hanging around, looking from the kind of elevated perch (which has a wood banister) out onto the rest of the club. We don't have food or anything, completely bare... just a table and some chairs. We aren't even talking with each other... we are just all fixated on everything going on in the restaurant. At one point, I spy a coffee maker on one of the other elevated perches where another band is standing and waiting. I see that it has coffee brewing. This other band's perch seems a little more elaborate than ours... it has a working kitchen inside of it. We all start talking about the coffee and how we could all use a cup. I volunteer to walk over to the other band's perch and ask if we can have some of their coffee.
    I walk over there and talk to one of the guys in the band. He is a tall skinny guy with a denim jacket and a gimmie cap. He seems to be in charge. He has a gray beard and wrinkly eyes. His area has the kitchen, and instruments lying around and stuff, and his band seems is really busy doing stuff amongst themselves and rehearsing and stuff... in contrast to our band who were just standing there looking out into the air. I ask him about the coffee and he seems pretty unfriendly and disinterested in speaking with me. He tells me that the coffee they are making is only for him and his band, then he walks off. I look over at their coffee maker and see the bubbling water and the little orange, lit "on" light button.
    Then for some reason I go and talk to the main manager of the club or gig or whatever and ask him if there's any way me and my band can get some coffee. He is fat, with long hair and has a very long gray bead with rubber bands holding parts of it together. He is carrying patch cords in his hands and is wearing a blue flannel shirt. He tells me that the coffee maker that other band has is the only one in the house, and that he bought it specifically for them. He then shrugs his shoulders and walks off.
    I walk back up to my band's perch and explain the situation to them. We all start looking at the main band guy at the other band's perch, and the coffee maker and talking about the coffee situation and him. At one point we see him go down and talk to the manager (they seem really chummy) and this really gets us gossiping about the whole discriminatory coffee thing about the club.
    Then a scenario shift again: I am back at the wooded park area, but this time it is just me and a few of the guys. There is only one pickup truck. It is dusk now. I look over the tree tops in the distance and see the hospital again. Now it seems to have strong red lights in all the interior levels of the parking garage-like levels that glow and eerie red.
 

4/2/04

    I am with a bunch of people I do not know, male and female. We are all dressed in white lab coats. We are inside this giant, inflatable tent thing made of semi-translucent rubber. It is in the shape of a giant condom or some elongated balloon. There is light outside of us, it looks like fluorescent light, but since the material is made of is not totally clear, we can't really see where we are. The tent thing has air in it, and is really pretty huge... but it wobbles around sometimes and we have to hold it up with our hands. There seems to be some kind of test or experiment going on, as there are a few places in the tent that have cheesy-looking scientific equipment... like a control board with blinking lights or some test tubes full of colored liquid or something.
    At one point... a bunch of us are way at one end of the tent, and another equal-sized group is way at the other end. We seem to be having some sort of contest. We are taunting and laughing at each other from end to end. Shouting names and stuff. Suddenly, the very middle of the tent kind of violently rips open and it startles us and we all freeze and stare. Then the rip gets bigger and it looks like the tent is going to pull apart... with each group in one of the halves. As the tent rips open... we all see where we are. We are inside one of the middle layers of that weird gigantic glass wall/walkway thing that is on one of the walls of Grand Central Station... and the thing that has caused the tent to rip was a giant airplane crashing through that glass wall walkway thing and into New York City. It just happened to hit the very middle of our tent, which just happened to be in that odd location.
    Then a total scenario shift: I am kind of observing an older married couple. They kind of seem like Archie and Ethyl from "All in the Family." The man is sitting in his easy chair... and the woman has what looks like a round take-away aluminum tin full of mashed potatoes. At some point it seems like the take-away tin is huge, like the size of a plastic kiddie swimming pool. She is taking the edges of the tin and unfolding the rim and making the tin's edge taller by stretching it out (you know how you can do that). As she is doing this she is saying to someone "Your edges are bubbling over so I'm gonna do this!" Then it looks like she has an equal-sized tin that is full of hot, bubbling spaghetti meat sauce. She is kind of holding the giant tin as best as she can (it's huge) and it's kind of buckling. She is pouring the hot meat sauce over the potatoes. The man says to her "Why you gotta do that for!?" kind of angrily and she whines/yells back to him (as she's still struggling with the giant tin of meat sauce) "Somebody's gotta help the kid!"
    Then another scenario shift: I am in my apartment in the daytime. I think Domenic is in the shower. I walk into the bathroom with one of those little plastic packets of orange hot sauce you get from chinese restaurants. I open the little packet and walk into the bathroom and open the lid of the toilet and pout the hot sauce along the rim of the inside of the toilet. It's really gross.
 

4/3/04

    I am in a NYC that looks very little like NYC. It looks almost like maybe New Orleans, or some european city. For some reason, I am in an office, meeting with a realtor about an a new apartment. The realtor is female and very business-like. The top of the desk we are both sitting at is made of glass. She keeps telling me about different apartments in different areas of town. They are all way out of my price range, but for some reason it seems normal for her to be telling me about these places. She finally tells me about one place in midtown that she thinks I'll like. She gives me the key (with a plastic key chain with the name of her realty company on it) and tells me the address. It's somewhere in the mid-20's but I don't write it down, thinking I can remember the numbers.
    When I leave her office, it is day time.... the area around it looks like a lush, suburban area... with wide concrete roads with grassy knolls and little parks with swaying weeping willow trees and vast, modern apartment complexes and those dark green humming metal electrical boxes on the corners next to the stoplight poles. It's very un-New York. I start wandering around, kind of casually thinking I should be going to look at this apartment.
    I come to this one area of town that looks like a tourist-y area of New Orleans. I keep walking through it, and I then find this one street that looks like an industrial area in Berlin, Germany. Everything is minimal and made of gray concrete and some of the buildings have windows with wooden shutters painted solid primary colors. It all looks like the back alley areas of vast industrial buildings. Lots of passageways and walls separating each alley-like area and building front and back, everything made of the same shade of concrete. Very minimal, no signage or anything anywhere. Not a speck of trash or graffiti or anything... extremely clean. Also, for some reason, I get the impression that there is a horse stable nearby. Also, I know there is a car maintenance garage somewhere near. There is one building in particular that kind of catches my attention, but I just pass by it.
    I leave that area and start to panic a little because I can't remember the address of the apartment she wanted me to look at. For some reason, I think I can just wander around and I will somehow "see" the apartment I'm supposed to look at... among the millions of apartments in NYC. I wander away from that area and start to wander all over New York.
    Eventually, I find a pay phone and call the realtor, wanting to ask for the address again. I get her machine. Into the machine... I say something like; "Hi... it's Mark again. Um, I forgot to write down the address of the apartment I was supposed to see. Can you call me at home and leave on my machine the address again? I know it was something like 24 east 23rd street, apartment 14, or twenty something apartment blah blah... but I didn't write it down and I don't know where to go. Sorry and thanks!" and I hang up and start wandering around again.
    It is getting to be dusk. I go back to that area that looks like tourist New Orleans, and find that industrial Berlin-like area within it (behind it?) and start looking around. The area is very desolate and peaceful. I walk by that one building that caught my attention again. I keep walking past it again and again, and think that it looks too nice to be a building that I would ever live in. For some reason though, I go back to it. I look and see that the door is actually open. I take the key out of my pocket and try the key in the two door locks. It operates them both! This must be the building and the apartment... imagine the luck! Inside, the apartment... which is on the ground level... is all made of bare, poured concrete. It looks like one of those houses you see in architectural picture books about remarkably extreme modern homes. It actually doesn't seem like an apartment at all, but a more of a house. The ceilings in every room are very high. The walls are at odd angles. It's incredibly minimal. There is some furniture and rugs here and there, but it's mostly barren. There are large windows, always high up near the ceiling, in most of the rooms. The near-dusk light is coming through the windows and causing a very soft amber-ish light everywhere. It's so soft and quiet and peaceful in here. I am still standing near the entrance... just looking at everything, when I notice a handwritten note on an antique dresser that is next to the door. It is from the realtor, to me. It says; "Mark... keep in mind the wonderful, peaceful memory of Mrs. Kleenex while looking around. Call me if you have any questions! Signed, The Realtor (whatever her name is)."
    For some reason I now know that this vast, modern apartment used to belong to the widow of Mr. Kleenex (is there such a person?), who was the inventor of Kleenex tissues. She had inherited the vast Kleenex empire after her husband died... and has now passed away herself. I start walking around and exploring. Everything is so soft and quiet... it's very relaxing. Every room is some vast, ultra modern/minimal poured concrete room with barely any furniture, and odd window locations. Some rooms have poured concrete stairways (with no handrails) leading to other levels. There seem to be no opening doors on any of the entryways from one room to the next... everything's just open. I find one strange room that is very long, and at the end is and area that looks like an open window or small door. It opens right to the outside, and has been wide open all this time. Outside I see that it leads to some kind of industrial car maintenance parking area. I hear workmen out there working. I think this is odd, that it is just open like that. I keep walking around inside and wonder why in the world the realtor is showing me this apartment. It's way, way out of my range. I decide to just look around and enjoy it anyway. The more I look around the more I love it. I imagine Jim and I living here. I run from room to room.
    For some reason I decide to take off all my clothes and walk around the place nude. I do this. My bare feet feel kind of cool on the concrete floors. I just keep running from room to room, nude... knowing I'll probably never return here. Soon, I start to notice a few other people walking around the place. I see one black guy with a huge afro, and three other guys that look like native American Indians. They don't seem to pay much attention to me, as if I'm supposed to be here. Likewise, I act the same towards them. We don't speak. At one point, I pass one of the Indian guys, who is holding a small child in his arms. I run up to a vast, wide stairway that leads up to another level which I know contains a bathroom. As I leap onto the stairs, I hear the Indian guy say to the child in his arms; "See him? That's Mark. He's going to be living here soon. Can you say 'Uncle Mark?'" I just run past them and think this is odd. Am I going to be living here? How? I also feel like me running around nude is really inappropriate if there are small kids here. Suddenly, I feel like I need to at least find my boxer shorts and a t-shirt and put it on.
    I get up to the bathroom, a vast, gray concrete room with a high ceiling. I decide that as soon as I am done pee-ing, I will run back downstairs and find some clothes to put on. In the giant bathroom, there is a bare toilet in one corner with no stall. There are also some other toilets here and there... it's very strange. But in particular, there are these strange things that look like bedpans (you know the oval shape with the flap-able toilet seat) lined on the floor along the walls in some areas of the bathroom. But instead of being made of plastic, they are made of woven basket-making material, and are burnt orange in color. It looks like they are meticulously hand made. They also have Indian designs hand painted on them with black ink. Some of them have the remnants of trails of liquid running from under them, towards a floor drain in the center of the room. I think this is very strange, and also feel the slight urge to pee in one... but I don't... I walk over to the toilet in the corner and decide I am going to use it. Just then, I hear the Indian guy with the kid in his arms walk into the bathroom behind me.
 

4/4/04

Tomorrow...
 

4/5/04

    I am in a place that looks like a giant recording studio. There are a lot of people there I do not know. Everything is made of dark wood... and there are rooms with vast sound equipment in them, and other rooms that are sealed-off sound booths with large plexiglass windows. It's generally very dark, and all lighting is small halogen spots placed here and there, like little desk reading lamps. This creates a lot of dark areas with very light spots. The area is not being used for recording though. There is some kind of strange game show or contest going on in here. And it has to do with weight loss.
    The way the game works is that one person, the contestant, will go into one of the sound-proof rooms with the glass windows. Everyone else will then gather in front of the window and watch the contestant. The contestant has to move around in the room as much as possible, and burn off as many calories as he can (there is some kind of meter that measures this). Everyone cheers the contestant on... and I guess that whoever burns the most calories during their session, and hence will lose the most weight, wins. Also, the thing the contestant has to do to burn calories will also be a game activity that they will try to win.
    However, even though everyone is very jovial about the proceedings... I sense a sinister force watching over the "game." It's like this recording studio-looking area is actually some kind of deep underground complex. It's like we live in some bizarre futuristic society where this is our reality... some post-apocalyptic hell... and some massive god-like computer is watching over us and making sure we loose weight and has devised this "game" because it knows our feeble human brains will fall for it. Maybe the loser will actually be put to death or something and be fed to us like Soylent Green.
    Suddenly it's my turn and I go into the booth and everyone is outside the glass hooting and hollering. I go inside the booth, which has fake wood panelling walls and dark orange industrial carpet. There are two tables with pizzas on them and two hair dryers on each table. When the door is shut I look out the window and only see people cheering, I can't hear them at all because the booth is sound-proof. Then... I see one of the crowd grab a microphone that feeds into the booth, and he switches it on and says to me "Okay Mark... see the two large pizzas sitting on the tables on your right and your left? And see the hair dryers?" I nod yes, and notice that I can hear everyone in the background cheering when he talks into the mic... it's a weird contrast between total silence and crackling, feed-back microphone talking. He then explains to me the object of my game and tells me it will start in ten seconds. He turns the mic off and I see everyone start counting down my clock and then they look in my direction and I see their mouths say the word "Go!"
    The object of my game is this: There are two extra large pepperoni pizzas on tables on my right and left. They are very hot and dripping with cheese and have tons of pepperoni on them. They also both have a thick layer of that orange liquid grease floating in pockets of the white cheese. Next to each pizza is a red plastic hair dryer that is plugged into the wall. The pizzas are actually attached to their respective tables somehow with nails or glue or something, so they cannot come off. The tables that the pizzas are on are on some kind of small hydraulic lift, and the lift will cause the tables to very slowly tilt towards a 45 degree angle... and then eventually completely vertical. Below each table is a small weight scale with a little pan on it. What is going to happen is that the tables are very slowly going to start to tilt, and the pizzas will stay in place. The orange liquid grease will drip and flow off the hot pizzas, down the table and into the pans on top of the weight scales. My objective is to somehow make the grease congeal so it solidifies into a gooey solid and it does not flow off the pizzas at all. There is not enough time to pass for the grease to congeal naturally, so I have to speed up the process somehow, presumably using the hair dryers.
    So I can see, but not hear, through the glass everyone jumping up and down cheering me on (as they jump I notice everyone in the crowd is a little chunky). It's actually very quiet in the room. I see that the tables have very slowly started to tilt via the very quiet hydraulic lift. It's weird how quiet it is inside the booth compared to the screaming outside, which I can just sense.
    So, quickly I grab one hair dryer in each hand. There is enough room for me to hold each hair dryer, one on my right and left, and be in the middle and reach each pizza on each tilting table on my right and left (with the hot air). I switch on the hair dryers and they have a really loud sound. I start to move and swish the hair dryers over and around the slowly tilting pizzas, blowing hot air onto the pockets of liquid grease. As I hold the hair dryers and move them wildly around the pizzas, I kind of jump and dance and jiggle in place... to make as much motion as possible so as to burn off as many calories as possible. The crowd outside the glass is going wild. The loud sound from the hairdryers inside the room now gives them a kind of soundtrack. I keep moving the hairdryers over the pizza and jumping in place like some sort of weird dance. This causes the crowd to go nuts. At one point I attempt to spin around in place and then hold the dryers over the pizzas again... but realize I can't do this because of the cords plugged into the walls.
    My strategy is not working though. The pizzas are tilting more and more... and the grease is just running right off the pizzas and onto the fake wood-patterned formica surface of the tables and starting to make little slow dripping rivers towards the edge (where it will drip off into the pans). I kind of panic. The tables are tilting more and more and now whole pockets of grease are flowing off the pizzas and dripping down the tables. I move around wildly and really break a sweat trying to concentrate as much hot air from the dryers onto as much of the grease as possible. Soon the tables start to tilt even more and whole sections of cheese with pepperoni slices start to dislodge from the greasy pizza and ooze down the table. I am really breaking a sweat and panicking as nothing seems to be working. I move the dryers wildly over the disintegrating, oozing, tilting pizzas as more and more grease and cheese and pepperoni slices dislodge and slop down the tables and plop into the pans on the weight scales... but there is still lots left on the pizzas that I can save! The crowd outside the silent glass is going insane! But I am losing! The tables are almost to a totally vertical angle now. I am still gyrating wildly with my hair dryers trying everything I can think of. It seems hopeless. The room smells like hot, delicious pizza cheese and old burnt hair.
    I look over in the corner and see a small refrigerator that I didn't notice before. That's when it hits me... what I'm doing wrong. Why in he world would I be using hot air from hair dryers to try and get grease to congeal? Grease congeals in room temperature air, or preferably... refrigerated air.
    It turns out that the whole object of the game was for me to outsmart the rules and machinations that were presented before me (when I realized they were illogical) and break out and do my own thing with the other resources that were in the room that were not necessarily drawn to my attention. I somehow know that the refrigerator was placed there for me to figure this out. I am still holding up the hair dryers and moving them over the pizzas (but am staring over at the fridge) as I contemplate all this. I don't know why I didn't notice it before.
    But, the refrigerator is small... I would have to fold even just one of the pizzas (if I could detach it from the table) to get it inside the fridge. I realize that the only way I could get cool air from the fridge onto the pizzas is to literally pick up the heavy refrigerator, carry it over to the pizzas, open it's door and somehow wave it around the pizzas so the cold air lands on them. But this is ridiculous and wouldn't work, plus the cord probably wouldn't reach anyway. And I don't even know if I could lift it. I wish I had thought of that before. I look outside and the crowd is now in a frenzy of excitement as the clock nears the end. Whole sections of cheese and grease from the pizzas are sliding right off the almost vertical tilted tables... like Niagara Falls, and sloshing and plopping onto the floor... splatting orange grease everywhere. I look down at the hair dryers in my hands, which are unenthusiastic but still moving and on. I look at the hair dryers to see if they have a "cool air" switch. They don't . The clock is almost over anyway so I decide to keep moving around and faking that I'm enthused and hope that somehow everything will work out. I'm really sweating a lot from moving so much. God, I hope I don't get turned into Soylent Green.
 

4/6/04

No dreams.
 

4/7/04

    I am "watching" something that seems like a science fiction movie in my dream. Some parts of the "movie" I actually witness (or seem to be a part of) and some parts I just kind of "know" are occurring or have occurred. I know the setting of my dream/movie is an island that is some kind of lush, futuristic, technological paradise that is run by some kind of central super computer. The island looks like a cross between the TV show "Fantasy Island" and the futuristic cities of "Logan's Run" and "Futureworld." There are no humans on the island (it's all run by robots) and there are only a handful of real human beings allowed on the island at a time. It's like a resort. All these people do all day is go from feature to feature, building to building on the island and live out fantastic mechanical fantasies or unbelievably vivid virtual realities... or something like that. It's some kind of technologically driven, virtual reality Garden of Eden for the super rich of the future or something.
    Somehow I know that very recently, a conflict has developed. Some kind of natural disaster has happened that destroyed the island's communication with the outside world. Whatever it is, the few people on the island (at this time) have just realized this, and now know that they have no way of contacting the outside world... and the computers and robots can't communicate anyone either... and that it will be a very, very long time before anyone even knows they are in distress. They are all kind of huddled together trying to figure out how to tough it out and last until they are rescued. Apparently the pleasure machines of the island aren't enough to sustain them for that period of time. Food and fresh water are now a concern. It's a typical disaster movie scenario; each person in the small group represents a different personality type that normally wouldn't interact... now they all have to band together to survive. There are some pretty smart and resourceful people in the group... but it looks like there are also some pretty temperamental, ignorant and hostile people in the group... and there is a chance that it could quickly turn into a kind of "Lord of the Flies" situation.
    Then I know some time has passed on the island and the situation with the group has developed somehow.
    At one point I am "seeing" some woman who is tall and blond with short, spiky hair. She has on some kind of 1980's-looking new wave-y silver mini dress on, big triangle white earrings, and what looks like matching ballet slippers. She is inside one of the rooms in one of the buildings on the island. The room has all these old fashioned, blinking-buttoned machines and giant computers with reels of spinning tape on them. In the middle of the room is what looks like an operating table with a kind of headset/headphone thing attached at one end. The woman is crying and in distress and walking all over the room in a hurry, turning machines on and stuff. Apparently, the situation outside on the island has quickly taken a turn for the worse. Several of the group have taken over and are slowly hunting down and killing the weaker ones (whom they will then eat). The woman realizes that it's a viscous, horrible hell out there... and she has decided to not take any chances for survival until a rescue team arrives. The room she is in is a pleasure virtual reality room that a person can come to and have their brain pumped with a false reality that is their ultimate happiness or fantasy. She has decided to lock the door, lay on the table, hook herself up to the virtual reality machine... and send it into overdrive until it kills her. She is crying and she lays on the table and starts the machine and hooks the headset up to her cranium. I can see her from overhead. I see that, on the table, on the left and right side of her neck, are these two aluminum nodes that can be pressed inwards to touch both sides of the person's neck. If the person's neck is hooked to these nodes... once the machine is running and the person is off in another dreamy reality... the nodes will send a powerful electric current through the person's body... causing their heart to explode and them to die. Somehow I know that the machine was designed with these, in case they were ever needed for some reason. I also somehow know that the scientists who invented this machine don't know if the person will actually feel this happening, feel any pain, or know that they are dying ...they actually have no idea what happens inside their consciousness when it occurs. This is because those killing nodes on the machine have never been used before, and also it is impossible to tell what a person is "seeing" or "feeling" in a dream consciousness state. I also remember "thinking" in the dream that it is odd that these nodes would be there in the first place, designed to be so close to the person's neck, as there seems to be too much of a chance that someone might move and accidentally touch them while the machine was in operation... and get electrocuted.
    I know that the woman that is hooking herself up to this machine knows all this, and is taking her chances anyway. She doesn't want to be hunted and eaten alive by the savages that have taken over the island. I know that, as she is crying and hooking up all the wires, she is picturing her body being found by the rescuers, months from now when they eventually do come to the island, and she sees them looking at her lifeless body on the table and saying really dramatically "Damn! She chose to kill herself with an overload of pleasure... rather than be torn limb from limb by savages. How bizarre!"
    I see the machine go on, and the nodes are hooked up already, and I see the machine killing her and it is very dramatic... she is convulsing, with flashing strobe lights and everything. Lots of flashy "editing" I am "seeing" in the dream at this point. I see the woman screaming so I guess she can feel it.
 

4/8/04

    I am in my apartment. It is very late at night. I hear this very loud pounding on the front door. I get up out of bed. Someone or something is really pounding loudly and trying to get in. I go over and peak out the peephole and see two dark figures moving around outside in the hall. I can't make out who or what they are. They keep running away from my door, huddling over in the corner, then running back up to my door to pound on it. I keep walking back and forth from the door to my living room, wondering if they are just some nuts or drunk kids who will go away if they don't get a response... or if I should start yelling at them or call the cops or something.
    Soon the pounding gets really powerful. It sounds like they are actually using a battering ram or something. It like the whole apartment is shaking. I go look out the peephole and I see someone with black hair cut into a 1920's flapper bob style, and they have plastic berets in their hair. That's all I can make out. There are two figures, I can see that much. I yell at them to stop and they scurry away really fast, then a few seconds later they come back and start pounding even harder. The pounding is so loud I think they are going to break the door down. I yell at them that I've called the cops. Then I run and wake up Domenic and am like "Oh my God these two freaks... I dunno who they are... are breaking the door down! What should we do?!" and he just wakes up and sits up in bed all half asleep like "Wha? Whazzat? Huh..." and then he goes back to sleep.
    I run back into the living room and see that the door has been broken down. It's laying on top of a pile of debris that is in the doorway for some reason. The two figures who broke the door down are walking over the door on top of the debris into my apartment. It turns out it's two really young gay guys dressed in really, really bad drag. I'm like "What the hell are you doing in here?" and they just walk in very confidently and cockily and kind of slowly look around, and have these wry smiles on their faces and they go "Oh... we just thought we'd, um... drop by and see you. We were, uh... in the neighborhood!" and they keep walking around and looking me up and down and looking very intently at everything in my apartment. They seem to be toying with me and seeing how far they can push me and what kind of reaction they can get. I can tell they have been up all night partying, and I can tell they are trouble, but probably lots of fun in a "I have a wild story to tell" kind of way. They remind me of male, gay versions of those two young girls who keep dropping by uninvited to visit David Hemmings in the film "Blow Up."
    Then a total scenario shift: I seem to be at some kind of house, maybe upstate NY. There are a bunch of people there and it is daytime. The house has lots of entryways and doors leading from the inside to the outside. From the outside, you can see that the house has one of those "raised basement" kind of things, where the basement is actually kind of half under the ground, and half sticking out of it... and the house sits on top of that. The outside of the part of the basement sticking out of the ground is made of old gray stones... that are weathered and have a layer of green moss on them. There are little windows looking into the basement from the outside, and these have trim on them painted dark maroon. The house part above that is covered in beige wood paneling. Around the house, there are lots of raised wood deck areas made of wood that has been stained dark maroon. The yard is hilly and filled with lush green grass, and lined with old trees in the parameter. It is daytime outside and overcast.
    Two of the people at the house are my mom and dad. Them, and me, and a bunch of other people I don't know seem to be running around the house, inside and out, trying to do something. It appears that there is some kind of maniacal killer trapped in the basement, or hiding down there, and we are all working to try and get him out... or deal with him somehow. While I am outside... every once in a while I can look in the basement windows and get a glimpse of the killer (there is a bare light bulb on down there). I just see his silhouette and he looks like a big fat man with long hair and a long beard and he is wearing some kind of sackcloth and carrying a big stick or something... maybe an ax.
    At one point... we are outside the house trying to construct this weird ladder that is made of a store-bought aluminum ladder, and this series of pieces of cork that have been nailed to the side of the house (then the aluminum ladder is placed against the house with this series of cork pieces holding it in place). My dad seems to be in charge of this operation and he keeps yelling at everyone "Ok! More cork over here! Get that ladder! Ok you hold this up!" But the ladder keeps falling off the wall and doesn't seem to be going as planned. Soon my dad just gives up and he looks at me and says "Ok Mark I'm putting you in charge of the cork aluminum ladder situation!" and I'm like "Ok."
    So I look around and see this younger guy with round wire-rimmed glasses, brown hair and a dark blue windbreaker on with a backpack on his back. I approach him and tell and ask him to go get me these bigger pieces of cork from inside the house because I think they may work. Then I follow him into the house and we both go down this long walkway that is made of bare drywall and has these windows that are just cut out. There is clear plastic sheeting over the window things... like it is an area under construction. It doesn't seem like we are in the house at all anymore. We get to the end of the long hallway and I see that I am at the front door of my apartment in NYC somehow.
    Then suddenly I am back in my apartment, and it is daytime. I am alone and sitting at the kitchen table. My front doorbell rings and I get up and open the door. It is the kid from earlier in the dream, the one at the house I asked to go get the big cork pieces, and who I walked down the hallway with. He says hello and walks in. He then sits at the kitchen table. He looks the same except now his glasses are not round wire frames, but are thick, black Clark Kent-style nerd glasses. For some reason, I now know that this is some guy I just met on some online dating service sex hookup thing and he is now here (but it's the same kid from the house too). I am standing next to him as he sits down. We start talking about different stuff and as we talk he starts rubbing my leg.
 

4/9/04

    I am at some kind of apartment complex that seems to be part of a large airport in some american city. The complex is made of white concrete, which shines really brightly in the bright, springtime sun. I get the impression that the apartment complex is a holding place for people that may have to wait more than eight hours for a flight that has been bumped, or maybe it's where employees of the airport stay and live (as well as stationed pilots and flight attendants).
    I am inside one of the apartments and I am there with a teenage boy, and a small child, and some other people I do not know. I think all these people live in this apartment... they may be a family. There is an Asian man there also, he may be some sort of butler or cook or something for the people that live in this apartment. The apartment has white drywall, weirdly-patterned light blue, plush carpet, and this giant white stone fireplace against one wall. There are lots of pieces of 1970's modern furniture (chrome and glass) and lamps (chrome spheres on long poles, these weird lights made of those long strands of hollow, hair-like plastic pieces that glow on the ends) and pictures on the walls (black velvet with butterfly designs made of colorful macramé) everywhere.
    I soon realize that the teenage boy and small child are brothers. At one point, I am with the two of them in the bedroom of the house, which I know is their parent's. The walls of the bedroom are painted dark pink, and there is white chiffon on all the windows. It's daytime outside. There is this styrofoam wig stand on the dresser and we all have these long strands of what look like either raw bacon or fruit roll-ups, and we are placing the strips on the wig stand and laughing about it. Sometimes we take the strands and eat them. At one point... some college-age kids that live in the apartment next door poke their heads into the door of the room to see what we are doing, then they leave us and go into their own apartment. I am still playing with the two brothers and the wig stand, and I can hear the college kids through the wall of the bedroom... in their own apartment next door. They are making a lot of noise, and I think they may be having sex, but I don't bring it to the two brothers' attention.
    Soon the two brothers are gone and I am alone in the bedroom, sitting at the dresser twirling a container of lipstick that I found there, turning it in and out of it's fake gold cylindrical case over and over. I can hear the college kids having sex in the next room.
    Then some time has passed and I am in another room of the apartment. The two brothers are there. The older one is standing at a drafting table and drawing, and the younger one is standing against a wall drinking something that I think may be a can of Budweiser beer. I can hear the younger one crying and I walk over to him to comfort him. Suddenly, I look down at him and see that his body has somehow transformed into this little white cartoon character-looking thing. It's real, not animated... like a stop-motion animated creature or a computer animated one. It is about one foot high and white, and looks kind of like a cross between Casper the ghost and the Michelin Man. It's shape is amorphous and smooth, and it's bean-shaped head is the exact same size as it's round body... which makes it look like it might topple over. It has these little white nubs for arms that it is able to hold a can of beer in somehow. It's eyes are very small and pin-like, and it has bright blue corneas. It is crying constantly and seems to radiate total sadness and pity. It keeps crying continuously... the clear tears running down it's white body, and sipping it's beer. I get down on the carpet, on my stomach (the only way I can get eye-to-eye with it), and face it and ask it what's wrong. It keeps looking over at the older brother and crying and saying "I don't want my older brother to get any older. Why does he have to get older? He's gonna get so much older that he is going to leave me!" It is saying this and crying constantly and sipping it's beer. It's eyes look scared and sad. It's surreally pathetic. I start talking to the creature and telling it that it's growing older too, and that as the older brother gets older, he will get older too, and that the two bothers will remain the same difference in age no matter what. The creature is sniffling and saying "Are you sure?" It seems really scared.
    I look over at the older brother from where I am on the floor, to point to him and say "See?"  But, when I look over at him, all I see are the backs of his feet and legs... which are totally gigantic. He is still standing at the drafting table, with his back to us... but has now grown monstrous in size. He's a giant. I am thinking "Egads!" as I realize that the older brother is actually growing in size and age... getting older and bigger every day... while the younger brother is doing the opposite... getting smaller and younger every day (and is now this little embryo-like creature). I am weirdly freaked out by this.
    I look back over at the little creature who still has crying eyes and is looking to me for hope. I start feeding this creature every cliché in the book about how it's going to be okay, and how everything will work out, he'll see. Even though it appears that he's just going to keep shrinking until he is nothing (and the older brother will keep growing until he... explodes?) Anything to quell it's fears... I am totally lying to it. The creature keeps sniffling and sipping it's beer. I don't know if it believes me.
    Then a scenario shift. I am still in the same apartment... but it seems to be a different time. The two brothers are there... but they are back to their correct sizes and ages and are human and normal. The parents of the family are there... and for some reason they are making me call the Asian man who is their butler (?) and ask him if he wants to go on a road trip with me. I pick up the phone and dial his number. I know the Asian man lives in another apartment of the same complex, with hs wife. I hear the Asian man's wife pick up the phone and say "Hello?" in Mandarin or Cantonese or maybe even Japanese or something... some Asian language. I can now "see" her in her apartment as she is talking on the phone to me... their apartment is exactly identical to the apartment I am in.
    For some reason... I cannot think of the Asian man's name at all. So when I ask her, in english, if the Asian man can come to the phone... I keep saying every different Asian male name that I can think of over and over... hoping that I can guess it right. But I keep guessing really dumb, obvious ones... like from goofy comedy characters from old movies and stuff. I keep going "Uh... is Mr. Kyoto there? Uh... I mean, is Mr. Wong there? Hello? Uhhh... is Mr. Vietnam there? Hello? Uh... can Mr. Chopsticks come to the phone?"  It's kind of embarrassing, and I can still see the woman in her apartment (she looks a lot like Imelda Marcos) and she has this weird, sullen, awkward look on her face as she listens to me on the phone. She is saying nothing, and I don't even know if she can understand me. I can "see" the Asian man in another part of their apartment taking off his coat and jacket and putting it in their closet.
    Then total scenario shift: I am now outside on the grounds of the actual airport. It is daytime, and I am on the tar mat of where the airplanes actually take off. For some reason I seem to be traveling around on this strange, futuristic little hover seat car thing. It is made of this giant sphere... which you sit on, and the sphere hovers about one foot off the ground somehow. It has these two poles sticking out of the sphere which jutt out and kind of point towards the ground in front of the sphere. These poles are always changing in length and they determine how fast or what direction the sphere travels. Then there is this back you can lean against... and this desk thing that juts out in front of you... kind of like those kid's school desks that are all one piece... desk and chair and everything. I am just sitting on this thing, hovering on the tar mat for some reason. There is a giant 747 towering behind me and to me left. It is just sitting on the tar mat, waiting to take off I guess. There are lots of passengers in it, just sitting in their seats, and some of them are looking out the round plane windows, down at me.
    I have this strange, computer-looking device that is part of the desk part of my hovercraft, attached to it. I am looking at it's screen and I see that someone has sent me an email. I click on the button to answer my email and I see that someone has sent me an email that has a link on it. They tell me in the email that the link leads to these really bizarre photographs of whale penises that I have to see. I click on the link and it takes me to this webpage with all these really strange photos of whale penises. I am clicking on each link in the page, looking at more and more whale penises. Soon some of the pictures on the page are actual porn pictures, with humans... and soon all these pop-up windows start appearing all over the screen, and they have garish porn picture on them.
    Suddenly I turn around and look back and up at the windows of the 747 that are way up above me. I see that all the passengers inside the plane are gathered around the windows on the side of the plane nearest to me, and are looking and pointing and gasping at the porn images on my computer screen on the desk part of my hovercraft. They seem really upset and I can see them arguing and angry and some of them pulling their children away in disgust. I quickly turn around and try to click off the screen. That doesn't work, so I try and click off each individual porn pop-up window but more and more just keep popping up.
    I can sense a lot of hostility coming from the plane, so I fold up the computer screen and desk (they have a slot to fold up into on the hovercraft sphere) and decide I'd better high-tail it outta there as quick as I can. I adjust the two poles on the sphere and I take off really fast across the tar mat... towards the part of the airport that has buildings.
    I somehow know that back on the plane, now all the people are arguing about pornography in public places and obscenity laws and stuff. I can "see" that there is this one woman who is middle-aged, fat, with dark straight hair cut into a bob with bangs, no make-up, wearing a dark blue business suit and wearing a matching shriner's hat (not red but dark blue) on her head. She looks vaguely lesbian-like. She is the "leader" of the anti-porn and obscenity law arguments that are happening on the plane. They all vote and decide that she should do something about me looking at computer porn on a tar mat next to where there is a plane waiting to take off with children on it who might look out the window and see it. So... she gets off the plane and gets on her own hovercraft (identical to mine) and gets on it. She starts it up. I can "see" her sitting in her own hovercraft... with her little shriner's hat on, a look of determination on her face... speeding away from the airplane as everyone in the plane cheers her on. She is in hot pursuit after me!
    I am now whizzing really fast past this little strip mall that is part of the airport. I am going as fast as I can, to try and make sure the woman does not catch up with me. At one point, I pass really fast past a Taco Bell. I see the teenage girl employees of the Taco Bell walking outside the restaurant with their male manager. They all have their uniforms on and it seems like they are being given a lecture/tour of the outside of the restaurant by the manager. They all look really bored. I think to myself "Mmmmm... Taco Bell sounds good right now! But I can't stop for tacos... and am on the run and I need to say moving!" So I whizz right past the strip mall and down into this tunnel that leads out of the airport. It looks like a typical car tunnel... gray concrete with overhead fluorescent lights. I go as fast as I can through it, I keep fiddling with the two poles on the hovercraft to adjust it's speed and direction.
    Suddenly I come out of the tunnel and I know somehow that I am in a remote section outside of Dallas, Texas. I am in this little, hilly meadow area that looks like a public park... but can't see any houses or cars or people around me at all. I see paved concrete walkways running through the park. It is daytime, spring, overcast and windy. The leaves are rustling in the trees around me and it's very serene and peaceful. I decide that I should take my hovercraft and go to Big Lake Park or one of the neighborhoods I grew up in... just to see it all again. I get really excited by this. Suddenly, I see some woman in a jogging suit jogging towards me on one of the pathways. This reminds me that I am still being chased by that anti-obscenity law woman on the hovercraft... and that I need to keep moving.
    I speed off and find myself back in that tunnel like before. I adjust one of the poles so the hovercraft will speed as fast as it can possibly go. I am going really, really fast... to the point that the edges of the tunnels start to look like a blurred photograph. It's me against that anti-porn woman, and I am not going to let her catch me. I keep going faster and faster...
 

4/10/04

No dreams.
 

4/11/04

    I am in some weird, altered version of New York City. It is nighttime and I am traveling around with some friends from high school: Sondra, Katy, Kim, Carolyn and Alyson. We seem to be in a livery cab that is taking us to some building downtown. The cab drops us off in the East Village (but it doesn't look like the East Village) in front of this building that looks like Disney's Haunted Mansion. We go inside the building and it has lots of giant, dark, old rooms and cavernous passageways. It looks really run-down. There appears to be some party going on there but it is sparsely attended. We start going to different rooms and eventually, each of my old friend finds a room that used to "belong" to them when they were in high school. Apparently they have not visited these rooms since high school. Each room is old and decrepit, with the furniture falling apart and holes in the walls and water dripping from the ceiling. Also, each room has a wall of photographs, like a giant bulletin board that was added to over the years (during high school). Each person's bulletin board shows the old friend in different "stages" during that period in high school.
    At one point, I see Sondra running into one of the rooms and freaking out about some of the photos. She hates how she looks in some of them, and is ripping those particular photos off the wall. She is also arranging this old Tiffany lamp on one of the tables in her room so it will look just right (weird because the lamp and table are covered in mold from the water damage). Apparently some guy is coming to meet her here that she likes, and she wants everything to look just right. Every time I look at her she has a different hairstyle and clothes from the 80's... like the photos on the walls are projecting their image onto her.
    Then I see Katy running in and out of her particular room. Her look has suddenly changed, and she has this 80's permed-out bob hairstyle (like the Gilda Radner character  Rosanne Rosanna Danna) with a big 80's bow in it, and has on this pink sweatshirt tube dress that goes all the way down to her ankles, white dress shoes and a long string of fake pearls around her neck. Everyone is joking with Katy about her look, as the photographs in her room seem to have just projected onto her. And she is laughing and tilting her head back and forth (so her permed bob sways back and forth) and laughing and saying "Hahaha! Do you like it!?"
    Then for some reason I leave the building, and everyone. I go outside and get in a cab and tell the driver to take me to Avenue B (between 6th and 7th streets). For some reason I know that my parents house is there, and that they are away on vacation and the house is empty. I get out at the location and look up at the house. It looks identical to the other one I was just at (like Disney's Haunted Mansion) but is indeed my parents house. I go inside, deactivate the security alarm, and go from room to room turning lights on and "waking up" the house. The kitchen is huge and modern, gray granite floor, lots of plants hanging from the ceiling and fluorescent lights and hanging copper pots. I remember being inside one huge, lavish, mirror-walled bathroom and deciding to take a whirlpool bath and watch cable television. When I look in the mirror, I am a woman with long, full brunette hair, and am wearing a brown corduroy blazer with leather patches on the elbows, and a big maroon turtleneck sweater under that... also beige stretch pants.
    Then suddenly I am me again and am at a totally different location and time. I'm at a decrepit, falling-apart, tenement building in Tribeca. It is daytime now and the hallways of the building on the top floor (where I am) have big sky lights that let in a lot of light. I am going to be staying in an apartment that is owned by a friend, on this floor. For some reason I know that my friend owns the apartment, but Madonna also owns it... and uses it sometimes when she is in the city. They split it. I go into the apartment and it is dirty, small, and falling apart. I am surprised Madonna lives here when she is in the city.
    I walk out of the apartment ,and through and down the hallway... toward this room that I see at the end of the hall that has a lot of natural light in it. I walk into the room and see that one giant wall of it, which is curved, is made of nothing but glass. Since we are so high up (about 20 stories?) we have a great view of springtime New York in the Tribeca area. I can see every detail of the city from here. The room is very decrepit, and there is a giant piece of green industrial carpet on the floor. There are some tenants of the building using the room as a dance studio. I see one girl on the floor, in ballet clothes and leg warmers, stretching and talking to a friend about the building. She is telling her friend about how Madonna is selling her apartment in the building.
 

4/12/04

    I am in the middle of this grassy median between two concrete roads in Plano, TX (in real life it happens to be this road that is infamous because two high school age kids died on it while drag racing, and their deaths spawned a few more teen suicides in the high school the following week... this all happened when I was in junior high). It's a typical warm, spring day in Texas... it is overcast and windy. There are some people, high school kids it looks like, there with me. They look like teenagers from the 1980's. I can look down the road and see my old junior high school in the distance. We are all just kind of hanging around. A lot of the kids have these long strips of something that look like maybe velvet-y bacon, or fruit roll-ups, or they may be animal guts (or human guts). They are swinging them around and playing with them... sometimes eating them.
    There is one guy in particular who has blond hair that is cut in kind of a mullet, with a spiky top... also a faint mustache. He has on a button-down black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, unbuttoned, and a black concert t-shirt under that. He has on black, faded jeans and black converse sneakers... or maybe black ankle boots. He is very slim and his clothes fit really tight. He looks vaguely nordic/aryan, like maybe he's from Europe. He keeps looking over at me. I get the impression that I have kind of traveled back in time to my junior high school years, and am just kind of blending in with all these kids... but this nordic-looking kid is also a time traveler, and is onto me.
    Soon... a total scenario shift. I am in NYC but it looks nothing like NYC. It is nighttime and warm and windy, and I have no idea where I am. I seem to be in some multi-story building that has lots of open girders and areas that just open right out onto the air... like the whole thing is under construction. There are parts that have the orange plastic webbing stuff they use to cordon off areas under construction. I am on one of the upper floors. Everything on this floor has been painted black. It looks like a construction area that has just had a layer of black paint slathered all over everything. There are other people there... and I see a counter where it looks like they are selling concessions. It turns out, this is a repertory movie theater, and I have come here to see a screening of Lucio Fulci's 1980 film "City of the Living Dead" (aka: 'The Gates of Hell,' note: in real life, right around the same junior high school time in Texas, I saw this film on late night cable with a friend and it really disturbed me and really bothered the both of us a lot... especially the part where the demonic priest makes the girl cry tears of blood and throw up all her internal organs inside the car).
    I am at this weird painted-black repertory theater on the upper floor of this under-construction high rise to see Fulci's film. The floor I am on is the lobby of the theater, the actual screening room is on the floor above. I walk up to the screening room and see that the seats are made up of rows of old metal theater seats that look like they have been salvaged from a junk yard and are kind of haphazardly attached to the concrete floor. There is a screen on one side of the room with a black, velvet curtain over it. The lights are on in the room, and the film is a long way from starting. There are all these guys hanging out in the seat talking about the film, about how gross and great it is. They are all dressed like heavy metal fans. Black concert t-shirts, black jeans, open flannel shirts, long hair, leather studded wristbands, etc. I am sitting in one of the seats. I look down and see that for some reason now I have a big black backpack with me.
    I find out, it turns out... that if you want to buy a ticket to actually see the film... you have to go into this special elevator and take it to another upper floor, where there is some application or something you have to fill out, to apply to see the film. So I go to the elevator... which is this very small elevator that is all painted black and has a closing metal gate. I close the gate and take it up to the appropriate floor. When I get up to the floor, the elevator door opens, and I see a room that looks like the interior of an old, colonial-American style structure (yet I'm still in the high rise) ...and, absolutely everything... the walls, floor, ceiling, handrails, doorknobs, etc., have been painted with a glossy black paint. I walk out into this room, and then notice the nordic/80's blond kid from earlier in the dream. He looks exactly the same and is wearing the same clothes as before. He is standing at the other end of the room and has opened a door and is halfway through it, but stopped and looking back at me. He seems to want me to follow him. I follow him through the door and when I do, I look down at his tight jeans and notice he has a really fat ass. We walk into another painted-black colonial American hallway. On the walls of the hall, behind these weird little cages, are these plasma TV screens with scenes from "City of the Living Dead" playing. There is a male voice-over sound loop booming through the hallway saying "...Fulci's 'City of the Living Dead,' one of the most gruesome and horrific visions of terror ever committed to celluloid..." and stuff like that, like an ad for the film. On the upper parts of the wall in the hallway, on one side, above the screens, is frosted glass... that you can see leads into offices or something. The nordic kid never says anything, he just keeps creepily looking at me and wanting me to follow him. The whole situation almost has the "editing" pace and "feel" of a Fulci film.
    Soon... we reach this hallway that isn't painted black. It's just normal drywall and brown carpet. There is a waiting couch and some framed landscape pictures on the wall. I see at the end of the hall is a normal nurse's office. There is a window in the office and I can see outside of it that it is dawn outside. Suddenly I can't see the nordic blond kid anywhere. I am standing in the hall near the couch, and I notice these two girls behind me talking. They are wearing these tweed jacket things and have on peg-cut pants and flat shoes leather purses and 1980's-style hair and make-up. The nurse (who has a nurse uniform on) says "Next!" down the hall and the two girls walk past me and into her office. I guess this is where you apply to get the tickets. I sit on the couch and wait and I overhear the two girls talk to the nurse about getting some kind of special permit or permission slip or something, and the nurse agreeing with them.
 

4/13/04

No dreams.
 

4/14/04

No dreams.
 

4/15/04

No dreams again.
 

4/16/04

    I am living in some big, strange house that sits on a very large plot of land in some midwest state. It is daytime, spring and slightly overcast and windy outside. The house is a very long structure... like a railroad apartment, but it's a house. The house is only as wide as each room, as it is laid out in a long line. And its as long as many rooms there are in the house, which seems to stretch for a very long way. It seems that many parts of the house were added to over the years... there are mismatched materials and foundations. The inside walls are old wallpaper or shoddy paint and wood floors (dusty) and the outside is stone or wood paneling depending on the section. The floors in the home are also a bit wobbly. The land is slightly hilly too... and rather than build a foundation to make sure the house is level, the house just seems to curve and loop up and down with the land. The other interesting thing is the rooms; they are very, very large inside. Each room... whether it is a kitchen or a bedroom... is really, really big and empty... with just a few pieces of old furniture and maybe a dusty throw rug.
    I seem to live here with several people, roommates. At some point I think that the people I live with may be my family... then they change and are just friends... but it's hard to tell who they are. I have a room in the house that I work out of... that is in the center of the long house. I know that I have a massage client coming at a certain time that day... and I am running around trying to get the room ready for him. I somehow am in communication with the client (a cell phone?) and I am telling him that I am living in this new house and have given him directions to it. I also tell him to knock as loudly as he can on the front door, as I am in the middle of the big, long house and may not hear him. So then I am getting the room ready and setting everything up, and as I do... lots of people seem to be arriving at the house... friends of my roommates and stuff. More and more people start to arrive and lots of activity starts happening in all the rooms and I am really worried because it is getting really loud in the house. I can't give a massage with so much racket!
    Then I am suddenly outside, out in the land of the house... with one of my female roommates who I do not know. We are walking in the direction from the front gate of the home (an old stone fence with a wire fence gate thing) and back towards the house itself. I suddenly realize that a big problem with my client arriving here is that the distance from the gate to the house is really, really far. How will I hear him at all? I'm kind of worried. My roommate is asking me how many massages I have that day. I tell her two... one regular client and one new one. For some reason now I know that I have two clients coming, and for some reason I have scheduled them for the same time. I go back into the crowded house and get worried as to how I'm going to handle everything.
    Then suddenly, some time seems to have passed. I am in my massage room, and am there with my new client. In the room next to us is the kitchen, and there seems to be a wedding going on in there... one of my roommates is getting married or something. It's a really loud wedding.
    So I am just sitting on a couch on the side of the massage room with my client and we are talking. The noise of the wedding in the kitchen next to us is really annoying. I am apologizing to him that we can't start the massage because (I look to the center of the room) and there are about five Mexican guys who have built (or are building) this wooden fort structure that kind of stretches over my massage table. They are hoisting buckets on rope with pulleys and nailing boards and stuff. It's really weird. I look at my client and say "Well I'm really sorry, I'm sure they'll be done soon and we can get started!" ...which is ridiculous because it looks like they are actually building a permanent structure. I am really frustrated and angry about the whole situation. So my client and I just talk, he doesn't seem to mind at all that we can't get started on the massage, and he keeps asking me questions about my web page and keeps asking my when my book is coming out. I am talking to him but am really distracted by all the activity in the house.
    Suddenly some guy bursts into the room with a white dishtowel over his head, his mouth and face covered in blood... and he runs through the massage room towards the bathroom, screaming about someone in the kitchen. A blond woman follows him. The bloody guy is yelling about someone who said or did something at the wedding and screaming about how he "...clocked him in the face!" for it. It turns out that the guy he punched was Simon Cowell of the TV show "American Idol," who had come to the house to attend the wedding for some reason. Apparently he said something that pissed this guy off and a fight broke out. Apparently Simon is in the kitchen, just as bloody. It's quite a scene. I look over at my client and say "Oh boy! It sure is chaotic in here! Well... just give it a few more minutes and I'm sure the Mexicans will be finished building the structure over my table, and then I can have them disassemble it and we can get started!" I look over at the Mexicans and now there is a little tower on the structure... like a castle... and one of the Mexicans is inside the tower, looking out a little window and smiling and waving down to the other Mexicans. My client doesn't seem to mind at all and just keeps talking to me. I ask my client to excuse me for a minute... and I walk out of the room, through the chaotic, post-fight wedding kitchen, through some more rooms, and out the front door and into the yard. I am going to the front gate to see if my other client has arrived. The huge yard is filled with people of all ages ...it's a chaotic scene. I see quite a few women in wedding dresses... the trains and vales of which are blowing in the wind. I walk all the long distance to the gate and look out to see if my client has arrived. I don't see him. I am wondering why so many people are at my house.
    At one point I look down at my feet and see I am standing in a little clump of white foam (shaving cream? snow?) that has little black dots in it (ants? poppy seeds?) and I step out of it. I look around at the closed front gate. There is a small crowd of people holing onto the wire part of the fence and looking out along with me. I see a bunch of little black girls (with their hair in those wild ponytails and colored bauble hair ties you saw a lot on black children in the 1970's) holding orange popsicles and handing them to people on the outside of the gate. Some people are giving the girls money in exchange for the popsicles. Outside the gate there are all kinds of cars arriving and people lining up at the gate and crowding around, trying to get into me and my roommate's yard and house. I see more women in wedding dresses. How in the world can I run my massage business amongst such nutty chaos?
 

4/17/04

    I am in some modern, suburban bar/restaurant. There are large windows in the front of the place, and it is bright daytime outside, so this causes it to look dark on the inside of the restaurant every time you look in the direction of the windows.
    I am sitting at the bar (a cartoon-y, oval-shaped, beige colored bar with an orange formica top) with a person who, out of the corner of my eye, looks like they are wearing a Halloween wig made out of long white strands of sparkly plastic, a comical black witch hat, and some kind of giant plastic nose that looks like a long, raw yam. This person seems to be my friend.
    At one point I am talking to the bartender (who I can't see very well because of the extreme interplay of light and dark in the restaurant) and then I look over at the person I'm with and realize that it is not a person at all... but a human form made entirely out of vegetables. They look exactly like one of those "vegetable portraits" by the Italian Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo.  It has the witch hat and plastic wig on, but it's body and head is made of all kinds of raw vegetables and fruits. Then... as I am looking at it, it moves and grabs it's drink off the bar and takes a sip... so it is alive! This vegetable person in a silly witch costume is alive and is my friend.
    Then some time has passed, and I seem to now be sitting in a round booth in the restaurant, away from the bar. I am in the booth with some old, skinny man wearing a fedora hat and carrying a cane. There is someone else with us wearing a Hawaiian shirt, but I don't know who it is. I get the impression the two guys I am with are aged "hipsters." Old beatnik hippies or something like that. They keep ordering drinks and talking about wild times in the 1960's or whatever... and how lame underground culture is now. At one point... the old man with the cane asks me about my weird vegetable friend (who is still sitting at the bar alone, facing perpendicular to us). He asks me to call my vegetable friend over to our booth so he can meet him.
    So I call out across the restaurant to my vegetable friend and he suddenly turns his vegetable head and looks over at us. He seems excited to be asked over, like now he feels like he's "part of the group." He gets off his stool... and as he does, his vegetable body transforms somehow into a raw, plucked chicken. He plops off the stool and now is a raw chicken... about one foot high... "standing" up on it's hind legs, walking towards us with it's raw wings outstretched like a baby when it walks. Also... it has a very simple "smiley face" drawn on it's entire front with black felt marker... so it has this big, grinning, face. It's very weird. It seems to limp as it walks towards us... and the drawn-on smiley face makes it look hopeful like a child... and as it comes closer and closer I can feel it's pity and neediness radiating all around us. None of us at the table say anything... but I feel the old beatniks I am with feel nothing but contempt for it.
 

4/18/04

No dreams.
 

4/19/04

No dreams.
 

4/20/04

    All I remember is some bald guy standing in some kind of room. There is a streak of sunlight coming in through a window somewhere. There is one of those spackling spatulas with the wooden handle levitating in the air around the man's head. It is smearing what looks like coffee-colored cake frosting on parts of his head. I think he may have been wearing a tuxedo. Also I remember a part of the dream where I was picking up a dust bunny from the floor. Also there was a part where I thought I heard someone ringing my doorbell.
 

4/21/04

    I seem to be traveling around europe with a married couple. The wife is actress Jada Pinkett, and the husband is this guy I knew a long time ago named Andre. Andre seems to be a kind of professional cyclist, like a Lance Armstrong-type... who goes around the world competing in cycling tournaments. I seem to be romantically involved with Andre... and just kind of traveling with the two of them. Sometimes Jada and I go watch Andre riding his bike in a race. Andre always wears white bicycle shorts and a white helmet and dark sunglasses.
    After one particular race in Venice, Italy... I am standing on one of those bridges in the city with Andre and Jada... and I grab Andre's ass through his shorts and Jada is just standing there and I wonder if she even knows Andre and I are involved. Otherwise, what the hell am I doing here anyway.
    At another point we are in a big empty house and Andre is upstairs in one of the bathrooms taking a shower and Jada and I are in a big empty room watching television. I am thinking about this weird three-way marriage I seem to be in, and also wondering if Jada knows about Andre and I... she must... how does she deal with it? Jada is just sitting on a couch behind me and the TV and she is loving looking down at this white leather jacket she had bought earlier in the day, which is in her lap... the box and wrapping paper that it came in are empty next to her on the sofa.
 

4/22/04

    I am in some restaurant (pretty sure it's chinese) that has white drywall, dark green industrial carpeting and round tables with big white tablecloths over each one. There is also a long glass vase with a single rose in the center of each table. I get the sense that the restaurant is part of a strip mall. I can sense that it's daytime outside. There are sumo wrestlers that act as the waiters. They are in typical sumo wrestling garb, little loincloths... and their hair up in a bun. I am sitting at my table with someone but I don't know who it is. The sumo waiters are moving around our table... arranging the silverware and stuff. Suddenly one of them put this glass tube on my plate. Inside the tube are amputated limbs and torsos and heads of a miniaturized sumo wrestler. It is the size of a doll... and it is chopped up into neat little pieces and placed inside this tube to be eaten. It still seems to be alive, and I can see it moving inside the tube. As the sumo waiter places it on my plate he says something like "You'd doo-bber better comrade!" or something like that.
    Then suddenly a total scenario shift: I am near Big Lake Park in Plano, Texas. I am near my old house. It is daytime, overcast and warm. I seem to be touring the area with some people but I don't know who they are. I notice that some of the houses in the neighborhood that I remember have been removed and replaced with these little log cabins. The log cabin just sits in the center of the lot where the house used to be. All the log cabins that have replaced the certain houses are identical. I wonder why those houses have been replaced with these log cabins. I soon see that my own old house has been replaced with one. Soon, from the group I am with, I learn that the term for these log cabin replacements. They are called "bombardments."
 

4/23/04

    I'm standing in the middle of some beautiful valley/field that has rolling, grassy hills. There is a gentle breeze blowing all the springtime blades of green grass all around to where it almost looks like ocean waves. There is a woman there with me and I don't know who she is. She has straight golden, blond, hair ...cut blunt at the shoulder. She has an electric guitar with a dusty pink-colored guitar strap. She has on brown pants with pleats on them and some kind of dark brown tight long-sleeved top and I think a denim vest over that and black, scuffed dress shoes. She is looking down at her guitar as she is playing it, so her hair hangs in her face. She is making all kinds of crazy noise with the guitar, ala Jimi Hendrix/Merzbow. The electrified noise seems to just play in the air all around us ...there is no amp and I don't see the guitar plugged into anything. The sound is very unreal and super-loud. Everything in the dream regarding sound seems unnatural to what a human ear would hear... like the sound is being artificially manipulated or edited somehow.
    The weird thing is that, also, the light all around us changes according to what noises she is making with her guitar. At times... there is a severe, golden yellow light coming from the horizon (like a rising or setting sun) and at other times the sunlight seems to be directly from overhead. The light is daylight... but seems to be artificial... like bright, glaring stage lights. It has the rich, saturated color of a combination of lots of filtered colored lights. The light moves quickly all around the landscape, in an unreal way... like God has a light fixture and is moving it really quickly all around us with his arm like we are little miniatures. As the girl makes more and more crazy sounds with her guitar... the light keeps changing. I keep getting that effect in my eyes like camera lens light glare... that causes those weird hexagon shapes to appear right in the air in front of you... as the light whizzes all around us at all the different horizon points. As this happens, I start to "remember" something I read somewhere about how the human eye's cornea is made up of thousands of perfectly connected hexagons, and hence the hexagon shape you see in camera glare is just the light refracting into your eye and then back out into the air.
    As I think this, I kind of "see" these "cutaways" in my dream, of close-ups of nature all around us in the field. They look like typical film cut-aways but are happening in my field of vision. They are of things like birds feeding their young in a nest in the green grass, chipmunks coming out of holes in the grass, close-ups under the grass of bright red ladybugs, dandelions and sunflowers and stuff swating... really cliché stock-footage type stuff. I think these cut-aways are somehow supposed to show how all of the "nature" around us is dancing along to the insane guitar music/noise being played by the girl... almost like it's a musical. I start to think about how other shapes in all the animals and plants I just saw  have hexagonal shapes in them too. I start to think about how everything in nature is made out of the same shapes repeated in infinite patterns. Then I think to myself; "Wait... if the hexagon shape I see when the light shines in my eye is a refraction of the hexagons inside your cornea... why does it happen with camera lenses? Aren't they just straight cut glass? Does the human eye actually refract hexagon shapes... or is that just something I'm remembering from film and photographs? Am I seeing with my eyes or watching a film of a recorded event?"
    The light is still moving all around us... like the sun is zipping all over the sky. The woman is still playing her guitar. It's really vivid and loud and crazy.  I am kind of swaying to the music and all of nature is kind of swaying and dancing to it (seen through the film-like cut-aways). I start to see more and more of those glare refracted hexagon shapes as the sunlight shines into my eye. At one point I think I start to see the girl's face inside the center of one of these shapes, but I'm not sure (I still haven't seen her face because of her hair). At one point I hear her voice though... it comes booming into my ears over the noise and chaos, even though she is speaking softly (almost like I am wearing headphones). She is still playing her guitar violently as I head her voice (so it could be a recording of her speaking?) and the sunlight thing is whizzing everywhere and the chipmunks and sunflowers are swaying to the noise. Her voice says in my ears; "These are the purple spots."
 

4/24/04

No dreams.
 

4/25/04

No dreams
 

4/26/04

    I am in what looks like the open basement/parking garage of a big building. The walls are open... just big white concrete columns, and look onto the outside... which is very green and has lots of trees and also big piles of dirt. Some of the big piles of dirt fall into the inside of the garage area. There is no artificial light inside the basement area... so it's just the light from outside beaming in.  Above me I know is a massive building, with lots of levels and floors and things. But I am just staying down, under the building, in the shade, all alone.
    I also have a dog with me. It seems to be a bulldog puppy or a little Pekinese or something. It just keeps following me around. I think at one time me and the dog wandered into some of the lower levels of the building and looked around. It looked like it had massive metal hallways and complex elevators and people running around in business suits. But we didn't really like it so we came back down here for some reason. I'm just kind of wandering around looking out into the outside and stuff, playing in the piles of dirt.
    At one point the dog rolls onto it's back and I start to scratch it's belly. I can see the pleasure in it's face at it winces it's eyes and clicks it's teeth as I rub it's belly. For some reason I had thought that this dog was overly aggressive or something, but I'm seeing now that the dog is quite docile. When I'm done rubbing it's belly it hops up and darts away and out into the outside really fast. I feel like it's gone forever.
    Then a scenario shift: Jim and I are walking around what looks like my college town of Denton, Texas... but I also think we are actually in NYC... even though it looks like Denton. It's daytime, sunny and mildly warm. I know Jim has just arrived back from some trip because he has lots of bags with him. We are wandering around looking at stuff. The air is thick with the scent of spring ...gorgeous. There are wide, bright streets with mixes of old and new buildings. Giant yards with ranch-style houses in the middle of them, and next to that old victorian homes hiding behind walls of trees... and next to that an old 1960's car-wash and then a brand new 7-11 across the street from that. There are girls in tank tops and flip flops walking around smoking cigarettes and guys with mullets and black rock concert shirts driving pick-up trucks and art students wearing trendy clothes wandering around. You hear the sound of children playing in the background and cicadas chirping whenever you pass a patch of overgrown green on a cracked sidewalk. The gentle breeze is blowing the leaves on the trees. It's beautiful everywhere... like paradise. At one point we see this funny drive-through wedding chapel like they have in Las Vegas, and we laugh that we should get married. Then later, I have left Jim at my house and am going to go somewhere to see some kind of performance art show/festival. I leave my house and walk along a long, wide avenue that has lots of stores with big floor-to-ceiling glass windows that I can see lots of reflections in as I walk along.
    I finally come to the place where the performance art festival is taking place. It's still daytime. It's a big old four-story Victorian house in the middle of a lush yard of weeping willow trees. The house is almost all white. At one point I am inside the house and me and a bunch of people are in this one room on the second floor that has a white reception counter like at a hotel. We are all standing facing the counter like it's the stage. The sunlight is coming in through the curtained windows and reflecting off the white drywall all around us. Soon the performer walks in and stands behind the counter. We all get kind of quiet. The performer looks like a girl I knew in New York named Cary. She tells us that she needs for us to get our tickets out and hold them up so she can see, she wants to make sure we all paid for this performance and didn't just wander in. We all fumble for our tickets. I have a hard time getting my ticket out of my red zipper wallet, it's taking me a long time. When I finally get my ticket out, I look around and see that everyone around me has already gotten theirs out and is holding it over their heads... and they are all looking at me because it took me so long. I hold my ticket over my head and I turn around and look behind me, and I see that an identical version of Cary is standing in the audience behind me. When I turn around and look at her she smiles and mouths the words "Hi Mark" to me. I turn back around and look at the Cary behind the performance reception counter and I see that both the Cary clones are nodding and acknowledging each other. I then look on the surface of the counter and see a color performance festival brochure and I see a picture of Cary on the cover of it wearing a long blond wig.
    Then some time has passed and the performance is over and we are all just kind of mulling around. I soon realize that there are a lot of people in the audience from my high school. People I haven't seen in over a decade. They all one by one come up and talk to me. I talk to Monica, and this guy I used to knew of in grade school (!) named Mike Beno (he was in my Cub Scout troop... I literally had to pull out my old yearbook to remember his name, and I have no idea why in the world I would ever dream about him... let alone remember him). All these people seem really interested in seeing me and talking to me.
    Then more time has passed and I am walking home from the performance art festival house through the Denton which is actually NYC. It is still daytime, and I am taking the exact route I took to get here. At one point I pass Domenic on the street and he stops and says to me "Oh, Jim called me and told me that there was one more thing he wanted to see with his eyes, then he came over and got it."
    Then I get home to my Denton/NYC house... a typical small, old Denton house. Jim is waiting in the front yard for me, sitting in a lawn chair. It is nighttime now... and there are colored lights hanging from all the trees in our massive yard.
 

4/27/04

    I am sitting in front of a TV screen or a computer screen with a friend, but I don't know who it is. We are flipping through channels or websites on the screen and we come across a picture of my old club friend Franco. It appears to be an old, mid-90's "gay romance" independent film that he starred in (in my dream only) and as it comes onto the screen I stop it and tell my friend I am with "Oh this is this guy Franco I used to know... look at this old movie he was in he must have never told me about!"
    So we sit there and watch the movie. In the scene we are watching, Franco is sitting at an outdoor restaurant table with another guy and they are on a date or whatever. Behind them it looks like Venice, Italy... but you can tell it's phony... like it had been shot at the Venice-themed Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas, USA. Franco is on screen left and his date is on screen right. They are having a conversation about their lives and seeing each other... whatever the script calls for. The weird thing is, that there is this feature on the screen we are watching the film on, that allows you to divide the screen down the middle, and then "click and drag" the left half of the screen over to the right half, and also do the same thing with the right side. The film still plays while you do this. If you move both sides to the center the two images are superimposed on top of each other, or it looks like they are hugging. We keep playing with this feature as the film plays on.
    At another point we are just watching the film and I am thinking about Franco and how come he never told me about doing this movie. It is still the same scene in the Venice restaurant... and I am looking at Franco as he says his lines. At one time his character says to the other character; "Well, you know... I really love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. But the thing is... I have other opportunities in my life right now. I have decided that I have the chance to star in a gay independent film and I am going to take that opportunity!"
    Somehow I "know" that this was a mistake in his dialogue. He was actually supposed to say something completely different, nothing about starring in a film. I "know" that what happened is that Franco slipped up and rather than saying his line, he said what he was thinking as he said his line (that he was on a set starring in an independent film and was really excited about it). Somehow I "know"... the flub made it past everybody... and the take was used in the final film. Huh?
    I start to explain this to my friend I am watching it with... but then I decide not to. Suddenly the film is over and we see the credits roll on the screen and I learn that the title of the film is "Hopping to Seventeen."
 

4/28/04

    I'm walking around this giant room, warehoused-sized, that has all these giant containers in it, like giant, free-standing cabinets. They are about ten feet high and four and five feet wide. They are made of gray industrial strength plastic and have all kinds of fasteners and nylon belts on them. There is something vaguely military-esque about them. The floor of the room is gray painted concrete. The walls of the room are white aluminum with what look like garage door windows. The cabinets are arranged in a pattern on the floor... all evenly spaced out in rows. You can walk amongst them like perfectly placed trees in a garden... and they are close enough together that they sort of form a maze, even though they are in perfect rows. I come upon these two cabinets in particular that are not gray, but are very, very dark maroon... almost black. I "hear" a voice telling me that these two particular cabinets "...represent the month of December."
 

4/29/04

    I am at Collin Creek Mall in Plano, TX. The time is present, not the past. I am walking along the lower level of the wing near where Sears used to be. There is this one multileveled brick and chrome stairway near some plants that I always used to play on as a kid. It leads from the bottom to the top level. For some reason I keep traveling up and down this staircase, slowly. There are other people on it as well... but they are just using it to get upstairs or downstairs... not just traveling back and forth on it like me. At one point I get stuck behind this black or indian guy... and he gets upstairs and I see that he is freaked-out (just like I suddenly am) that the old Hasting's Records that used to be on the second level is now gone and has been replaced by a Bed, Bath & Beyond. Then at one point I seem to be behind this kooky old waitress I used to know when I worked at El Fenix Restaurant. Her name was Daisy and she was really funny and interesting, a real character... I haven't thought about her in years.. She is wearing a baby blue polyester pantsuit, and she looks like she's gotten even older. Her hair is kind of long and knotted, and it looks like she may have some big warts on her face. There seem to be some overweight mexican guys kind of helping her up the stairs. Because she is so old now... she's kind of lost some of her spunk. I keep trying to get around her going up the stairs, to actually see if it's her face and is indeed Daisy (I'm not totally sure), but I can't get around her and the mexican guys.
    Then some time has passed and I'm in another part of the mall. I am on the upper level. I am walking along, and as I do... all around me the mall starts to get darker and darker. Soon the stores disappear and the walls of the mall turn into natural black shale with ferns growing out in certain areas. There is a fine mist everywhere and maybe a small waterfall here and there. I seem to be in some exotic cliff/cave area in New Zealand or something. It's really peaceful and beautiful... but somehow I know I am still in the mall.
 

4/30/04

    I am in Athens, Greece. It is the summer or spring, and very sunny and extremely hot. I am wandering around wearing a big white t-shirt and jeans that are too big for me that are held up by a belt. My hair is cut really short. I seem to have on these weird brown/peach-colored women's pointy flat shoes that have little beads and tiny bows on them. They seem like antique shoes and seem too small for my feet but I seem to be able to wear them anyway. Also, sometimes my scalp itches.
    I get the feeling that somehow I have traveled back in time to the summer of 1988, when I spent three months backpacking all over europe. I seem to be back at that time, and am the same age I was then (even have the same haircut and body type for that age)... but I have all the knowledge of the years that has passed since then, and am aware that I am in the past.
    I am walking around a crowded tourist-y area near some ancient greek and roman ruins. I am looking up at crumbling buildings that look kind of like the Parthenon but are not, just similar. The sun's reflection on their bleached stone is really bright and hard to focus on. Whole sections of the old ruins have fallen away. There is scaffolding and construction around the crumbling buildings, presumably for maintenance and restoration. The weird thing is that I can see what looks like "new" architecture build into weird configurations that kind of subtly "replace" the giant gaps and holes where the ancient buildings have fallen or broken away. There are weird extensions of walls and whole parts that reach way into the ancient buildings in places where it has been eroded away... it is built in a way so that the old and the new fit together like giant puzzle pieces. The "new" stuff is built to where it never touches any part of the old ruins... sections of walls are built right up to within an inch of the old ruin walls and then stop. Newly built sections that reach into the old building do so without ever touching any part of the old building for support, and have to be able to stand up on their own. The way you can differentiate the new stuff from the old is that the "new" stuff that is being built is dark maroon or brown... almost the color of dried blood. This contrasts heavily with the old sun-bleached stone of the ancient greek ruins. Plus, all the surfaces of the new architecture are rounded and reflective-smooth like hardened drops of liquid... almost like they have been melted ever so slightly.
    It's a weird look... two buildings kind of "melting" into each other without ever touching. It reminds me of those M.C. Escher drawings of the two pyramid-shaped cities/worlds that exist on different planes upside down from each other... and are intertwined into a modified cylinder (augmented polyhedron?) but never touch.
    I somehow "know" that these secretly built new sections that are weirdly being added onto the ancient ruins, are being funded and directed by the Greek government... and are very secretive. They are planning on adding Tex-mex restaurants and hair salons and coffee shops to these ruins to try and make more money off of them because the ancient ruin archeology/tourist racket isn't really doing very well and the government is hurting for funds. No one is supposed to know about them because it would be considered so mind blowing-ly blasphemous to add onto these ancient ruins and turn them into commercial ventures. They are just doing them out in broad daylight like this in the hopes that the tourists will think it's normal and not think to question it. I somehow know it's just a matter of time before someone realizes what's going on and a huge scandal erupts.
    Then some time has passed but I am still in the same area and I am looking at this table of t-shirts that this man is selling next to a real wall of ancient hieroglyphics (even though I am in Greece, the hieroglyphics are Egyptian).  I'm surprised that tourists are being allowed so close to this wall and are being allowed to touch it.  The carved hieroglyphics on the wall next to him are repeated on the t-shirts he is selling. You can pick out an scarab or anubus or ankh design that you see on the real wall of hieroglyphics and he will probably have a t-shirt on his table with that individual symbol on it, in any size or color. Or you can have your name translated and spelled out in a cartouche. The man is very fat and has a big curly afro and a giant mustache. He has a cap on and a horizontally striped blue and white shirt on. He's sweating a lot and looks like a real huckster.
    I start to look closely at one of the shirts, and I see it is a typical Egyptian hieroglyphic design of a human figure in profile with it's arms outstretched in a bent-elbow pose. The figure appears to be crouched down slightly, with their waist bend and their posture still upright. The figure has what looks like a white flower or wad of crumpled white paper attached to it's ass. I look over at the wall, and I see this exact design on the ancient hieroglyphic wall. I ask the man what this design means because it's so interesting. He tells me that that design translates to "...when you sit down on a toilet to take a dump and after you wipe you sit up and a whole clump of toilet paper is trapped between your clenched butt cheeks." I'm surprised and I laugh and see that it's a joke, but I look over at the man who has a very serious look on his face. Somehow I "know" that this wall of hieroglyphics is obviously a fake, and the designs on the t-shirts aren't even real Egyptian designs... and that the man has made all this up to cash-in on American tourist's love of bawdy jokes and toilet humor. I see tourists are buying the shirts and talking philosophically about how offensive humor has been passed on through the ages and how it's so ingrained into our collective unconscious that even the most primitive ancient societies practiced it. I see the toilet paper ass-scrunching Egyptian design is a big seller. I somehow also "know" that this t-shirt seller also works for the same branch of the Greek government that is turning the ancient ruins into a strip mall.

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