6/1/02:

    I am kind of "watching" and am also living inside this strange beer commercial. Sometimes I am watching the dream like a camera, with edits and all, and sometimes I seem to be in the actual event. The commercial takes place at night time around what appears to be a massive outdoor Labor Day celebration. There is a long strip of dirt road with traffic backed up for miles going both directions. People are hanging out of their cars drinking beers and laughing and partying and running around. There is this really high dirt mound covered in green grass that separates the two directions of traffic on the road. On one side of the two-lane road is a massive, hill-y field with lots of people camped out and picnic-ing and celebrating Labor Day. This cute little 8 year-old girl with curly long blond hair is walking calmly through the chaotic night time crowd and humming a distinct tune while she does. She keeps inadvertently missing cars falling on top of her or getting hit by coolers full of ice - in a comical way. She walks through this cut in the median mound and crosses both lanes of stopped traffic. When she walks through the median you only see the top of her hair and hear her humming - this is supposed to be funny. It turns out she is going to buy her father (who is camping in the field) a can of a particular brand of beer. Soon it cuts to the little girl driving this snazzy, new black car. The driver's side appears to be on the right side for some reason. The little girl has purchased the beer and is driving this car back to where her dad is. I have no idea how the little girl is able to reach the gas pedals but she's sitting in the car like an adult. She's whizzing past and through the traffic jam with no problem and everyone is stopping to look at her and cheering. Implying that if you drink or associate with this brand of beer life's problem's will magically be erased and everyone will love your maverick spirit. She is holding the cold can of beer outside the window, label facing out, as she drives around all the parked cars and is yelling stuff like "Drink so-and-so kind of beer y'all!" and "So-and-so beer is great!" Music is playing along with her.
    Then a scenario shift: I have arrived at some fantastic party at some amazing, huge mansion. It is night time. The host of the party is this old, eccentric woman who I think used to be a famous stage actress. She was, or is, some jet-setting social butterfly and knows everyone important in the world, some of who are at this "amazing" party. She dresses very interestingly and wears her (dyed) brown hair back in a bun and is do old she now walks with a walker and talks very loudly. I have arrived at the party with some short haired girl I don't know who I think is a lesbian but I'm not sure. The thing that is weird is that I have a white plastic garbage bag with me, which is full, and I want to throw it away in the woman's kitchen garbage can for some reason. When we arrive, the woman greets us at the door and the servants take our coats. The woman, on her walker, walks us to the kitchen so I can throw my bag away. She directs me to where the kitchen is (which has orange/tan colored tile floors and dark cherry wood cabinets and beige formica counters and lots of breakfast nook windows and hanging plants). The woman says "My maid takes care of the trash but help yourself! I'm going to go join the rest of the party, you two help yourselves to the trash can!" and she walks out of the room on her walker. The girl I'm with says she's going to go to the party too and asks me if I can take car of it myself. I say yes and she leaves.
    I am in the kitchen alone. I look at the woman's kitchen trash can - a hard plastic one with one of those flip tops. Except there seems to be something weird - there is a cat's litter box attached to part of the bottom of the trash can. It is filled with finely ground coffee grounds. I open the top of the can and see it is half full of garbage. I open my bag and look inside - it is full of garbage and what appears to be a half-alive cricket that has been trapped in the bag, maybe squashed between two items, for maybe days. The cricket has that off-color, semi-transparent look of on insect that has lived it's whole life in darkness. I can't tell if it's dead. I am having a really, really hard time shifting the stuff in the woman's trash can so it will accommodate my trash bag. This seems like a complicated process for some reason. I keep trying to organize the stuff in my bag in some kind of "order" - this seems important. But it never works out the way I want. For some reason, I realize I am going to have to disturb the woman's kitty litter box full of coffee grounds if I want to pick up her trash can and move stuff around, which I seem to need to do.
    I carefully dump the contents of my trash bag out of it - at one point I think the half-dead cricket is between two cardboard cereal boxes in my bag so I kind of lean against them really hard with my arm, trying to squash the cricket between them. I feel like it's dying and I should just kill it and put it out of it's misery. I almost threw it away in the woman's trash can but I thought I saw it twitch a little and I thought that would be a horrid way for it to die - trapped in a trash can for days or even weeks unable to move - on a hill in some remote garbage dump where ants would probably come out and eat it's eyes while it was still alive-ish. So I squash the cricket but am unsure if I heard it crunch.
    I pick up the litter box and very carefully and neatly dump the coffee onto this little rectangle pile on the floor (onto and underneath which I have laid out my white trash bag, flat, after carefully emptying out all the contents, so the coffee grounds don't touch the dirty floor) and notice that the bottom has some kind of filter underneath it. beneath this little filter is a chamber with bits of broken whole coffee beans and half ground coffee in it - like the ground coffee had been sifted (but the larger chunks are underneath for some reason). I do this and then transfer them back to the litter box after I "organize" stuff in her trash can so it will hold the stuff in my bag. Whew! This is confusing and complex. I hope the woman or anybody else for that matter doesn't walk in and see me sitting on the floor playing with the garbage. How embarrassing. What am I doing this for anyway? I don't think I'll ever get it accomplished.
    Soon, I see the sick cricket kind of hop out of my trash bag. It's alive! I see it is ok - it was just kind of paralyzed from being so immobile for so long. I go over to it and push it along on the floor. It hops towards the kitchen door. I say to it "Go on little cricket! Go join the party!"

6/2/02:

    I have gone back to my high school in Plano, Texas. It is the first day of classes, which I am attending for some reason. I recognize some people being in classes that were in my graduating class. What are they doing here? Every time I see a teacher I liked way back then who is still working there, or who's class I'm in, it's a big reunion and they are like "How is NYC? Uh-huh. What in the Hell are you doing back here going to high school?" but they are all friendly and glad to see me. This girl I used to know but who's name I forgot is holding a camera in one of the courtyards and I say "Hi!" to her but instead of her saying "Wow Mark what are you doing here?" (which I was wondering the same thing about her) she just looks at me and says "Hey Mark are you new?" like she knows me but isn't at all surprised I am back here going to school. It's her Yearbook Club assignment to take photos of all new students on their first day. The classrooms look more complex than I remember - like some look like college labs or massive arena-style seating rooms. I see old high school acquaintances like Jeff, William, Megan and Lance and old teachers like Ms. Maddox. I see none of my real friends I had in high school though. I feel happy to be there but also kind of creeped out. It's really sunny outside and everything has that early morning, first day of school vibe.
    I go into one of my classrooms and Girlina is there (a NYC friend). The classroom is this giant replica of ancient Rome. Girlina is doing some performance for everyone where she is dancing on top of this long white marble table. Her hair is pulled up in this stylish bun with pearls all in it. Someone is video taping it using a really old, 80's-looking clunky video camera. I start dancing with her on the table. I kind of "see" the video as the guy is taping it and I see that my hair looks hideous in the video. It has been dyed this really fake looking reddish brown, and is all poofed out and long on the sides and back. It is cut blunt at the shoulders. It looks like it's been teased and then smoothed over - almost like a bouffant hairdo. The top has a big floofy wave or flip. It's disgusting and I am mortified that I have been walking around like this.
    As Girlina and I are leaving the classroom to go to our next class, we are walking through the school's gymnasium and are laughing about my hair. I tell her I am going to have my Gregory cut it for me.
    It turns out Gregory is going to school with me here too. We have our next class together. I go into the class and sit in the second row. Gregory sits next to me. We sit right next to each other even though the class is only half full and people are really spread out. I tell Gregory that I brought no paper or even a pen or anything and don't know what to take notes with. He says it's cool and not to worry about it. The teacher, who looks like a young high school girl. Her desk is way up high art the front of the class - we all have to strain our necks to see her. She passes out some paper. Gregory takes a paper and rips part of it and rolls it up and then puts it into his mouth and chews it up and fills it with spit. Then he takes it out - it's now like wet clay, and he forms it into this long kind of snake looking thing. He says "I'm going to write on this. Now I just need a pen"" He looks at the woman next to us and asks to borrow a pen.

6/3/02:

No dreams.

6/4/02:

    All I can remember is some scenario by some beautiful reef/beach area. There was a high, rocky cliff, a sandy beach and water. It was sunny and beautiful outside. There is a boat in the water with an older man and an older woman in it. In the water - near the boat is a teenage girl. She is floating right below the surface of the inky black water. She is floating there in a fetal position and she is holding this large glowing red heart that is attached to a chain in her hand. You can see the glowing heart clearly from above the water and you can pretty much make her out. The man jumps from the boat into the water - to help or save her or something. As he does, I see inside the boat, watching from over the side is the woman - who is looking into the water and trying to motion to the man with her hands which way the man should swim to reach her. Sometimes it is the man in the boat doing the directing, even though it is still the man in the water - like there are two men.

6/5/02:

    There is some gigantic nightclub that I have been hired by to go go dance at. I think it is in New Orleans. It is daytime and the club is open and packed. The club has many, many levels and a zillion giant rooms and some rooms open up onto balconies and connect to other buildings and there are courtyards everywhere - the place is huge. The manager greets me at the entrance and tells me that I will be dancing on and off for a three hour period in one of the rooms upstairs. He seems really busy and preoccupied and just gives me the information really fast and sends me up there on my own. I go up to the room and it has a large rectangular bar in the center of the room and a dance floor and lights, etc. There is a door to a changing room in a hallway adjacent to the room. I go in the changing room and it's this really nice men's locker room, like you would see at a country club. It has blue industrial carpeting on the floors and gray industrial carpeting on the walls and giant showers and sinks with all kinds of free soaps and stuff and rows of lockers with benches. The whole place is lit with fluorescent lights and is air conditioned. I change into some baggy jeans and work boots, I have underwear on underneath... and I go out and dance in the center of the rectangular bar... above everyone. People are kind of watching me and the bartender keeps asking me if I want some water - it's all very typical.
    Soon I just kind of get off the bar and start wandering around the club. It's packed everywhere I go. I can't believe how big it is and there are so many rooms. Whenever I reach a window or balcony - I see that it is daytime, which is weird. It's cloudy and warm outside. I keep thinking "I should be on my bar, dancing... I hope the manager doesn't catch me!" and I'm walking around with this subtle guilt feeling. I keep trying to convince myself that the manager just hired me to look good and be in the club - so me just walking around is OK! At one point I am in the locker room and I am packing all my stuff into my bag. Where am I going? I find another exit to the locker room that leads out into this giant indoor mall. The mall has beige industrial carpet and chrome bars on the rails and staircases that lead to many levels. There is a skylight on the whole ceiling of the mall. Every store is closed and I see through the skylight that it is dark outside. No one is around... I see some janitorial people are vacuuming the carpet. I just kind of walk around the empty place.
    Then I go back to the entrance of the locker room (from the mall). It's this weird curved entrance that kind of has swirled walls that lead to the door. I didn't notice this when I walked out of it into the mall. I see there are two entrances, one for men and one for women. There are velvet ropes in front of each door but nobody there. I see this kind of 40-something skinny woman with scraggly long hair standing near the men's entrance. She is wearing an 80's style aerobics outfit in different shades of pastel - even a "twisted rope" headband. She sees me coming and perks up and looks at me entering the door. She says "Hi Mark Allen!" and I'm surprised by her and in the awkward way I just kind of casually look at her as I zoom past her and I say nothing. I go into the locker room. As I walk into the locker room I hear the woman outside the door say to someone else "Oh my God Mark Allen is such a space cadet" and the person she is talking to says something to the effect that it's OK because I'm "...so adorable." This makes me feel really good in a weirdly embarrassing and stupid way. In the locker room I look at my watch and see I have 2 hours left on my shift. I can't believe I'm just goofing off and wandering around empty malls and stuff, but I feel like the manager is so preoccupied and busy that he might not notice. I just hang out in the locker room and goof off for a while. Then I go back out and dance on the bar. The bartender looks at me and says "Where have you been?" I tell him that the manager just hired me to be her and that's really the whole point... me just being in the club.
    Soon I get off the bar again and walk around. I see it is daytime again outside the windows. I am wondering around feeling guilty again for not dancing when I'm supposed to. I'm not even having fun walking around. What the hell am I doing? I stopped dancing at clubs like seven years ago - what the hell is up[ with this? When I am in one of the crowded courtyards I run into my old friend Bill Henning. He is with some guy I used to know from ACT UP who's name I forget. We haven't seen each other in years and it's all "Hey! Oh hi how are you it's been so long..." etc. Bill's nose looks kind of odd - like maybe he had some plastic surgery or something. I feel embarrassed telling them I am dancing here - like why am I still doing that? I leave them and go upstairs. I see this room that looks like a mini movie theater. All the seats face forward except instead of a movie screen, there is this oddly shaped rectangular window that look right out onto the side of the building next to the club. There is a balcony on the building next door. People are sitting in the seats watching out the window. I see one of the people is the woman in the aerobics outfit from before. I walk to the front of the room and see that the window is open. I crawl up to the window and I lean out and see that if I just reach really hard I can reach the balcony on the building across the street. I see the balcony's rail has maroon colored fabric with gold ribbon wrapped around it in a candy-cane looking way. There is a guy sitting in the balcony with bushy black hair and a black business suit - he is smoking a cigarette. He is watching me kind of balance over the high street and seems kind of bored by it. We are looking at each other right in the eye.
    All the people in the audience on my side, behind me, are standing up and screaming "Watch out!" and "What the hell are you doing!?" and "You're gonna fall and kill yourself!" and "Get down off of there!" I tell them that it's OK because I am a dancer hired to work here and this is part of my act. I start kind of wriggling around while I'm stretched out over the street in this silly way to make it look like I'm dancing and this is part of my act, even though it isn't. As I look down over the high street while out there I see that I'm not in New Orleans anymore but am in the upper east side of Manhattan. It is still cloudy and warm... daytime. I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and call Gregory. He answers and I tell him "Oh you aren't gonna believe where I am right now! Remember that gallery I worked in on the upper east side? Well I'm near that and I'm dangling high over like East 86th street or something... by the park... high over this balcony!" and he's just like "Huh?" As I look down I see part of the club (which now seems to be in Manhattan) has a glass-roofed restaurant and I see people sitting at these round tables.
    I hang up the phone and get down and go back inside and wander back to where I'm supposed to be dancing. I pass the manager and he looks at me kind of suspiciously and I just walk past him and wave and go "Hey." I go upstairs and sit down in the corner of the room and look at my watch. I have 45 more minutes left on my shift. The idea of dancing on that bar for 45 more minutes seems like grueling hell.

6/6/02:

WARNING: the following dream includes a THREE TIME false wake up - right out of a horror movie. also this is the dream I had yesterday afternoon, when I fell asleep on the couch and took a nap - something I rarely do:
   I dreamed I was on the couch (which I actually was - asleep) and I was on the phone talking to Gregory. As Gregory and I are talking on the phone, I can kind of see out of my peripheral vision out the window behind me, that there is activity going on on the roofs of the building next to me. People up there doing stuff. It's a cloudy warm day (like it really was when I went to sleep). As we are talking, Gregory is saying something to me in this mock sexy female voice but I can't really hear him because I start to get distracted by what's going on outside. I ask him to repeat himself and he is laughing and says "Ok... ok..." and then he goes into his sexy female voice and says "...and then me and this really hot Brazilian man were having sex and we did it all... night... long... and everything we did... I wrote down here in this little red book I have... it's my sex diary... it has every detail written down... would you like me to read it to you? Hmmmmmm?" and I start laughing and I say in this mock weird voice "Yes... um... let me hear it. Why don't I get comfortable here on this couch and you read it to me veeeery slowly and I'll just sit here and uh ...listen." and it was supposed to be a joke like "...listen" was in substitute of "masturbate" and we are both laughing.
    Suddenly I turn around and see the side of this enormous parade float helium balloon right outside the edge of my window - like I can reach right outside and touch it. I see the pattern of the American flag on it. I hear a crane in the empty lot next to mine and workmen and they are trying to get the giant balloon into place. The balloon is of some figure and has the American flag all over it. I see on the roofs of the other buildings other balloons of parade figure things being held down by ropes. and other decorations on the buildings. I am like "Oh my God! Greg! What's going on?" and I run into the other room and look out onto the street and I still have the phone in my hand and I see the building in front of mine - as well as other buildings - have been completely covered - Christo-style - with these massive curved things that cover the entire side of the building and block all windows and doors. The giant walls (which look like they are made of some super cardboard and curve down and then out as they go down) have a weird American flag pattern on them. I see other giant sculptures of weird figure dotting the landscape in the distance. Some giant parade is about to happen on my street. All these work people are getting stuff ready. It all happened so fast I didn't even notice. I start screaming into the phone "Oh my GOD!!! OH MY GOD! GREGORY! OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!" like my street is being bombed or something... really weird reaction.
    Then suddenly... I am on the couch again and am not on the phone... I just woke up from the nap... or so I thought. I suddenly hear someone come into my front door, lock it behind them, and go to the kitchen and start doing something. I totally freak out! My adrenaline is raging through my body and I have no idea who it is - it's in the middle of the day - I think it might be Domenic but he only has keys to one lock and maybe it's the super but I don't know and I start to kind of sit up and I realize that I can't move really - like I'm kind of paralyzed! And I try to say something like "Hey!" but I can't hardly speak - like my vocal cords are frozen or something. I hear the person in the kitchen by the sink doing something and I think I can see their shadow and maybe even see the shadow of a dog with them. I'm not sure though - am I still dreaming? I am freaking out and trying to go "Hey! Hey!" but can't and then - BOOM! - I wake up again! Oh... it was all a dream. But wait... oh no! I hear the door lock rattling... someone is locking it behind them! Someone IS IN THE KITCHEN FOR REAL AND MY DREAM WAS TRYING TO TELL ME! AGGGHHH!!! I hear the sound of a soda can being opened and hear the dog... but wait do I? Am I still dreaming? wait I don't know... I still find I can't move or speak... I think I see their shadow! I can't move! Aggghhh!
    And boom... this time I really wake up... everything looks just like in the dream. I literally BOLT out of the couch - throw my glasses on my face and race into the kitchen. No one is there. I check the door. It is locked. Nothing. It really scared me.

6/7/02:

    There was something about a 50's style drive in diner - where the waitresses are on roller skates and come outside and put your tray of food on this little thing that hooks to your car door. I think I was at one, and it was night time and I was in Plano, Texas... and I think my tray had cereal with milk and bananas on it. I wasn't driving the dar but I couldn't see who was. That's all I remember.

6/8/02:

    All I remember is that I was living in some futuristic version of New York City. All the doors in all the buildings that you walked through were made of this dark, maroon, transparent Plexiglas with these sensors that made them open automatically when you approached them. THAT'S how I know it was the future! I am going to meet some guy I had sex with once at his apartment. It has been like two years since I have seen him. I take a subway there but the subways look nothing like the NYC subway - they look newer. On the subway I am talking to him on a cell phone. I get to his apartment and the foyer is different than I remember. I go in his apartment (which has all automatic doors) and his sister is in the apartment. She says hello and that my friend will be there soon - he's on his way home. I think this is strange that his sister is there for some reason. I see his sister getting ready to leave. I see some gay magazine like Out or something on the bedside table. In the cover is a nude guy laying on his stomach - the model looks very much like my friend. I start thinking about how this young girl, whom I assume is straight, gets used to images of gay sex everywhere because she has a gay brother. I start to think about how all gay advertising has lots of sex in it, and when people learn it is gay advertising, they are more tolerable of it being filled with sexual imagery. I go into the bathroom (through the auto door!) and am brushing my hair or something. I hear her leave and him come in. That's all I remember.

6/9/02:

    I am living in some city that is a weird hybrid of New York and Paris. I have an apartment that I share with some roommate... I think. There is some weird thing I have going on with some big company in the city, like a utility company or something... some kind of feud. I seem to go to the headquarters of this company and cause trouble or leave weird notes with the doorman or something like that. The company seems to just tolerate me like I'm some weird nut. I don't know how I know this.
    Then one afternoon I am in my apartment and am entertaining two guests. One seems to be my old roommate Ray. I am showing them these magazines I have. I am showing them one where some art collective bought out the first ten pages of ads in the magazine... and then put weird things and fake ads in their place. Ray seems bored and says that today is his day off and that he wants to go home and be alone.

6/10/02:

No dreams.

6/11/02:

    I'm living in some weird city that seems to be a hybrid of Venice, Italy and an mall. I am walking around the streets with Barbra Walters. We seem to be hanging out for some reason. I think we're on a date. We are walking along all the skinny little sidewalks next to the water of the canals and buildings. It looks just like Venice but everything looks kind of clean and smoothed over - like a mall. Barbara is taking me to one of her favorite restaurants... she says I'll love it. She is wearing an all-white business suit and sensible heels and full make up and her hair is in the style it always is. She seems to be leading and I'm just following behind her - through the winding streets of Venice. We finally arrive at the restaurant - it has wide windows all along the front that have candles in them on the inside. We go inside and she seems to know the host. The place is all in beige and off-white and there are really big tables everywhere and giant white pillows everywhere. Candles light everything - lots of light that looks like candle light but I don't see many candles. We go back to a back room that is less crowded. The room we are in has only one other occupied table. There is a gigantic fireplace with white bricks and a fire burning in it. A window looks out onto the street - a high window like you are in a basement. Barbara and I sit next to each other at the table. Our backs are against a giant white pillow. Barbara keeps snuggling with me and I feel weird about it. Why am I on a date with her? She keeps telling me that she can work "wonders" for my career.
    Suddenly some time seems to have passed and we are slowly leaving the restaurant. We are still at our table but we are planning to leave. This is hard because suddenly there are people everywhere. Really famous, important people is the impression I get. Everyone keeps coming up to our table and saying "Ohhhhh Barbra! Hi! How aaaarrrreee yoooou?!" and then they always look at me and go "And whooooooo is your date!?". At one point I meet the man who owns the restaurant. I seem to know him - in my dream only, not in real life - from somewhere else. As I shake his hand I'm like "I know you from...." and he barely acknowledges me and just brushes me off in a really NY scenester snotty way. He has this weird blond toupee on top of his real brown hair and has dark circles under his eyes that look like they were drawn on by a make up pencil.
    As Barbara and I make our way out of the crowded restaurant... we reach the door - which has now changed into the entrance to a brightly flourescent-lit department store, like a Sears or something. The crowd from the restaurant is spilling into the store. I see the owner again and he is grabbing Barbara and talking to her and ignoring me even though I know I know him from somewhere. We break away from the crowd. We are walking together into Sears and Barbara is saying what a lovely time she had and "...oh what a lovely party it was!" and "...I'm beginning to fall in love with you Mark" and she is putting her head on my shoulder as we walk hand in hand through the brightly lit hardware isle.
    Scenario shift: I am at some wacky house I live at with a bunch of people. There are many rooms and passages in the building - rooms everywhere - all occupied by artsy looking people. It seems to be late at night. I am on the phone with Gregory. I am telling him about how the owner of this nice restaurant ignored me and we are laughing about it and gossiping about him - we both seem to know him. As I am on the phone with him - I can kind of "see" this horror movie about a woman who is being stalked in this very Venice/mall city by this giant hideous hairy spider with a giant human eye on it's belly. As I am talking to Gregory I am "aware" of this movie - like I'm kind of "seeing" it while I'm on the phone and talking. In the kind of movie I see the woman get to the edge of the city and board onto a giant 747 airplane. She is the only one on the plane and the whole plane is empty and she doesn't even see and pilots or stewardesses. She just sits in her seat in the brightly lit plane (it is at night) and reads a magazine. She thinks she is safe and is being taken to somewhere safe and has gotten away from the spider monster. The plane starts to take off. The woman looks up and suddenly all the white walls of the interior of the plane crack and fall apart - the plane was actually a fake shell that the spider monster lives in! Like a venus fly trap! And the monster can fly and is taking her off the ground and is now devouring her! She is screaming. The end (of the movie).
    As I am talking to Gregory on the phone and "seeing" this movie... I am aware that Gregory is not aware of the movie. I also wonder if the movie was an actual even happening in the city that I was somehow able to see - since it looked like the location of the movie was this city and it seemed to be the same time of night.
    Then I am in some theater-looking section of the building. I am with Gregory and it seems like we are going to enter some kind of talent competition that the building is hosting. There are lots of people in the theater room talking about what they are going to do for the talent competition. At one point... Gregory and I are talking about what song we are going to sing with some band - which is what we seem to be doing in the show - and some girl that is one of the other contestants is standing near us and hears us talking and suddenly Gregory and I stop talking and look at her. She laughs and we all realize that we shouldn't be sharing with each other the details of what our acts will be. Gregory and I move to another part of the room and I start talking to him in a really quiet voice.
    Then Gregory and I seem to be attending a church service in the building's chapel. Everyone is getting in their seats (wooden pews with red velvet on the seat) and Gregory and I are trying to position ourselves so we will be sitting closest to the cutest boys - of which there seem to be many at the service. At one point I trick Gregory into sitting in a seat that is not the isle seat - because I hate not sitting on the isle. We are laughing about it and are looking all googly-eyed at all the cute guys everywhere. It's funny.

6/12/02:

    All I remember is being on the set of some TV talk show with some well-dressed black woman who had these really big black pumps on. We seemed to both be answering questions about something.

6/13/02:

    This only seems to be the "end" of the dream, as I sense there was a lot of stuff leading up to this, but is all I remember:
    A young blond guy is living in this really big apartment in the industrial section of some city. The apartment is on the 4th floor of a big warehouse building. It has lots of hallways and rooms filled with massive collections of toys and magazines and stuff like that. The guy has had kind of an adventurous life - especially recently (the part of the dream I can't remember) and is in his apartment taking a shower. I think the recent adventures involved getting chased by gangsters or something weird like that. I have sort of a "camera" eye that can see what's going on in the apartment while he is in the bathroom taking a shower. The bathroom is at the far end of the apartment - through this long L-shaped hallway. He also has a dog which is resting in the room next to the bathroom while he takes a shower. It is night time
    While he is taking a shower... with my camera "eye" that is moving around the apartment, I see these two people breaking into one of the front entrance doors of his apartment. It is this young lesbian chick and her crazy young gay guy friend. They are criminals wanted by the law for a large string of murder, robbery and arson all over the country. I know all this somehow. They just picked this apartment at random. They are completely out of control. They start running around the front part of the apartment breaking things and laughing and stuff. Neither the guy in the shower or the dog hear them for some reason. The crazy guy pulls out a lighter and starts lighting things on fire. The lesbian girl thinks this is hilarious and joins in. Soon the apartment is in flames. The two criminals' laughs turn to screams as they are trapped in their own arson (they never run to the back of the apartment for some reason).
    At this point in the dream... roles and characters seem to be switching all over the place. I know the two criminals have perished in their own fire... but the guy now seems to be me... who is outside of the building and running around frantically trying to figure out how to get his dog - who is still trapped in the burning apartment (the fire department is on it's way but not there yet). Suddenly I find this one broken out... very large window to my apartment with smoke pouring out of it. There are cars parked under the window on the street. I see this couple - a guy and a girl, both very fat - making out in one of the parked cars. I yell to them "Help! My dog is in there and I'm afraid he'll burn up before the fire department gets here!" they stop kissing and are like "Huh?" Flames are pouring out of the window. I look up and see a girl in tattered clothes - the dog has changed into a girl now - but I still think of her as a dog. I freak out and somehow lift up this broken down car that was next to the making-out couple's car and place it onto the sidewalk under the window. I tell the girl/dog to jump. I am crying. The girl/dog seems confused and scared. I am screaming "Jump!" ...and somehow I guess she/it does because as the fire department arrives I am on the sidewalk hugging the dog... who is walking away from the building and dragging me along side of it as I am hugging it. Now I am me... hugging the dog... but I also seem to feel like the blond guy is hugging the dog and I am "watching" it like a movie but I feel like when I am seeing things from the blond guy's perspective (a close up of the dog's fur) that I am hugging the blond guy (who is represented by the dog). The line of perception seems to go me observing guy hugging dog, then me hugging dog who represents the guy (and dog is then out of the picture). Got all that? It keeps switching back and forth. I am overwhelmed with joy that the dog/guy is still alive, and the fire was averted. As I am hugging the dog I see these weird strings of slime on his fur.
    Just then I "hear" a narrator's voice come into the dream and say something like "It was the last time the boy and dog would ever embrace because, ironically, after saving the old dog from the fire... the dog suffered a heart attack shortly thereafter and died". I seem to "know" this somehow as I am hugging the dog/guy like it's the last time I will see it/him.

6/14/02:

    I live in some weird rural city. The area has beautiful, lush, green forest-y areas where the trees are covered with kudzu - where the sun shines through the trees in beams. But these tree areas are contrasted and separated by many wide, green, overflowing-with-grass valleys - it's beautiful. The houses look like modernized Mexican adobe huts, like those fiberglass shell casing buildings that house Taco Bueno fast food joints. The places where the houses are are grass-less and the ground looks like red clay dust. Inside all the houses the floors are made of this shiny reddish brown tile. I live in one of the houses. I have just come back from a trip to Europe and I have this stack of photographs of me in different places that I keep in the a room of the house. Then I'm on the phone. It's a kind of old-fashioned phone with a banana shaped thing you talk into with the pin holes and a plastic bouncy spiral cord attached to the push-button part that it is connected to. Like a phone from the 1970's and '80's. It seems that I keep calling this guy that I want to go on a date with. It's Jim from that TV show "The Mole". He lives in this town. I finally reach him and he agrees to go out with me - it is night time. He comes over and it's really awkward. I keep talking about myself and he just keeps looking at me. I pull out my pictures from my European trip and show them to him. In every picture I see that I have a different, wacky, punk hairstyle. I feel embarrassed for showing him the pictures for some reason. Then we get in this old car and we sit in the back seat and someone I can't see drives us to some club or restaurant. When we get to the location we don't get out, we just sit in the car in the parking lot and talk. Soon Jim says he has to leave and he gets out of the car and walks home. I'm just sitting in the car by myself (except the unseen driver) in the dirt parking lot feeling kind of stupid. The date was a dud. I realized I think I talked about myself too much and for some reason I feel embarrassed about all my different hairstyles in the photos of my trip. I realized I never even once asked Jim about the TV show he was on and he never got to talk about it. For some reason I get the "impression" that we have another date later in the dream, that I don't really "remember" even though it seems to happen later in the dream after I wake up. Anyway in this future-of-the-dream date - things go just as bad.
    I get out of the back seat of the car. There is a bright, solitary light shining on the spot where my car was. I see the shadow outline of the driver but don't bother to see who it is. I just walk into the building we were parked at to see what it's like. It's a night club. For some reason my friend Gregory is now with me but he disappears once we get into the club. Inside the club it's multilevel, with industrial carpeting and everything bathed in blue light - I see there is this island in the center that is a DJ booth and like control center for all the lights and everything. Sherry Vine is the DJ and the host. I go up to her and start talking to her. I look around the cluttered DJ both and realize that it is actually someone's bedroom. They sleep there when the club isn't open and sometimes Sherry sleeps there. Sometimes my friend Steve sleeps there, as well as Nashom, as does this guy I used to know a long time ago who's name I forget that committed suicide. I'm looking at all the weird stuff on the shelves... books and junk and stuff you would see in someone's bedroom.
    On the stage of the club a drag queen is doing a show. As I am looking at the show this weird kind of "tunnel" opens up in thin air that kind of connects me to the stage. Then it disappears. I look around the semi-crowded club to see if anyone else sees any tunnels. I can't tell. So I see my old friend Michael walk into the club. He walks up to the DJ booth to say "hi" to Sherry. I crouch down and grab this weird giant hat that looks like something from that Sid & Marty Krofft show "Lidsville", and these fake eye ball covers - these weird white plastic things that cover the fronts of your eyeballs and make them look goofy - and also a fake handlebar mustache, and also these big exaggerated fake eyelashes, and this weird felt mask that makes it look like I have a giant droopy dog nose and fat cheeks, and also this big purple cape. I put the hat and cape on really quickly (I am crouching down in the booth) and then take the eye covers and eyelashes and mask and mustache and, using my two hands, press them all against my face so they will stay in place - since I don't have any spirit gum. So my hands and the mask and all the stuff is covering my face and I stand up really slowly and carefully so the stuff doesn't fall off of me and I pop up out of the booth and look at Michael and go "H-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-o M-i-i-i-c-c-c-h-h-h-e-e-e-l-l-l.... o-o-o-o-o-h-h-h-h-h-h..." in this cartoon ghostly voice. He looks at me for a second and realizes it's me and then stops talking to Sherry and quickly goes and sits on some steps and watches the show.
    Then I am looking around the inside of Sherry's DJ booth (her panty hosed knees are next to me) and I see that Sherry has this weird kind of internet web site that she updates every day from inside the booth. It's strange - it looks like this series of little shelves inside the booth - and each one represents a page, or journal entry, that people can look at on the web. But it's not on a computer - it's just these little shelves. Each little shelf has the date of the entry and then one sentence only like "Auditioned for a movie today" or something like that on it. These letters are glowing and just floating in the air - like you can reach out and click on them with your finger. Also, behind each shelf, is a different little cardboard box that holds candy bars - with the candy bars label featured prominently on the box. I see that these candy boxes are a way for Sherry to get revenue for her weird shelf/web page thing. It's like advertising. It's really bizarre.
    Suddenly I look up at Sherry and see that her wig hair is blowing in the wind. I stand up and see that the DJ booth has turned into a car and is racing down the highway. It is daytime now and cloudy. I'm like "Oh my God! What happened? Where's the club? Where are we going?" and she tells me she's off to Europe to do some gigs there. I tell her I need to get back to the town and I don't want to go with her and then somehow I am instantly transferred back to outside of the night club. It is daytime and sunny and like Spring and all is really still and quiet around me. I see the red clay dirt road leads away from the club (the only building around) and through the green valleys and lush green tree/kudzu areas and eventually back to where my house is. No one is around but me. I start to walk down the road. Birds are singing and I head crickets too. It's beautiful. I see I am coming up on this tree area that has a clear path that cuts right through it - it is in the distance and I am coming up on it. I see the little tunnel made by the road and the overhanging trees and kudzu that form a kind of natural tunnel. The sun is beaming through the trees into the tunnel and it's absolutely beautiful. It looks like a painting. I see an old man with a cane walking through the tunnel. Its all so far away I can barely make it out. I also see a group of kids playing at the entrance of the tree tunnel as I slowly approach it.
 

6/15/02:

    I'm staying in some motel room with Mike Tyson and this young girl he is dating. We seem to be on some road trip. I think we are in the middle of America somewhere. I think I kind of joined Mike and his girlfriend on this trip as a drifter, like I just met up with them this night that we are in the motel. I get the impression that I might have taken an elaborate and huge subway system to travel all over the USA - like they have that now. A subway system that runs all over America.
    Sometimes I am just experiencing Mike and his girl as a third person, and sometimes I seem to be a "camera eye" with a voice-over like John Walsh from "America's Most Wanted". Like it's a reality crime show that re-enacts crimes and encourages the viewers to call in with clues. I think this is because something horrible is about to happen - like Mike is going to murder his girlfriend and maybe me. Something had happened where the girlfriend had accused Mike of "hitting people when he wasn't even in the ring" and using violence to solve his problems. This made Mike really, really mad and you can tell he is not thinking straight and is plotting something horrible. The girl is sleeping in her bed in the room, and I am in my bed in the room, and Mike is running around alone in the hall plotting something. There is a really sinister feeling in the air. The narrator is like "...and that night... would be this lovely 23 year old Wisconsin recent college graduate's LAST night alive!" and the music is like "Duuuunnnnhhhh-nuuuuhhhhnnn!" Mike then comes into the room - you know he is planning to kill her and maybe me. I'm just laying in my bed pretending to be asleep and watching what is going on - in fear for my life. I am thinking about how I am going to get out of this. I think at the right moment I am going to just jump up quickly and bolt right out the door and run to where there are people and call the cops. Mike's girlfriend sits up in bed and rubs her eyes and is like "Mike what are you doing honey?" and Mike just places a chair against the inside of the (closed) entrance door to the room and sits his huge body down in front of it. Oh no! He is laughing this really angry laugh and he is looking at the girl and is pouring something out of a cardboard juice box into a plastic cup. He is saying "We gonna get stoned... you like pot right? We gonna smoke a looooootta pot baby." and you can tell he is gonna make her get really stoned and then probably kill her. It's this horrible scenario and I don't know how I'm gonna get out of it.
    Suddenly - boom - scenario shift: I am alone in rental car and am driving along some wooded road at night somewhere in America. I hear the narrator's voice saying, as I am driving; "The third stranger that was with Mike Tyson and his now dead girlfriend never saw Mike after that night... but did report seeing Mike along side the road two months later talking to two strangers... the state he saw him in was Jamaica! If you have any information leading to the capture and arrest blah blah blah..." and as I am driving I see Mike sitting on the side of the road talking to two people. They are all wearing sports uniforms. I guess I am in Jamaica and it's a state in America now.

6/16/02:

    All I remember is some weird scenario where I am observing these well-dressed women from the 1950's - you know... Chanel-cut dresses, pantyhose, gloves, severe pumps, hats with flowers on them, vinyl handbags and fur wraps. Like women from 1950's America dressed up for the evening or shopping in a nice store or modeling in Vogue magazine. Anyway... there is some scenario where these women, about two at a time, are being instructed by some male voice to go to this couch area where some really fat guy sits and try to convince him to do something or other - what I don't know. It's almost like a game show, each woman has a specific amount of time. I see that some of the women are fat and older - like grandmothers.
    When one of the grandmother types gets up after her turn... I see her take her handkerchief and wipe the edge of the man - who I now see is not a fat man at all, but a giant copper coffee filter like you would put in an automatic coffee maker, except he/it is the size of a human. The woman was trying to wipe off some of the built-up coffee ground residue off the top edge of it as she walked away... somehow thinking that might help or something.

6/17/02:

No dreams.

6/18/02:

No dreams.

6/19/02:

    I dreamed about a fire department fighting some big building in what I think was Queens or Brooklyn. They were using these portable sucking machines to "suck up" all the smoke coming out of the doors and windows of the building - and be able to suck it out faster that it was being made by the fire - leaving the rooms of the building almost smoke-free. The invention was a new device that they were using for the first time. They were also using this amazing new invention that was a big pill (it looked like a soft, silver version of 'whippets') that the firemen swallowed and it did something weird to their lungs that allowed them to breath easily in a room full of deadly smoke. This was also a new invention being used for the first time. All observers at the fire were watching and remarking about what a success the new devices were.

6/20/02:

No dreams.

6/21/02:

Still no dreams.

6/22/02:

    I'm living in some weird town that almost looks like a modern European suburb. It is late at night and I seem to be going to some room that I am staying in, inside a building that looks like a college dorm. I am in one of the big ballrooms of the dorm, hanging out - laying on the floor with a friend. We are playing with this old stereo system tape deck that is on the bottom shelf of a bookcase at one end of the ballroom. The ballroom has beige/yellow carpet and wood walls and windows all along one side which you can see a courtyard (at night) out of. We are lying on our stomachs, propped up on our elbows, facing the tape deck, and we keep pushing a button and flipping the tape deck open and laughing. I realize now that this same similar scenario is something me and my brother used to do in real life when we were young, in this one house we lived in - and the tape deck and where it is near the floor are exactly where they were in the house, in our living room.
    It is now late and me and my friend go to our separate rooms in the dorm. I see that the dorm looks exactly like the one from my freshman year of college - even where my room is located. For some reason, I seem to have a roommate that is known to have psychotic episodes - like murderous ones. Everyone knows it and they are always asking me about it. It's like my roommate is supposed to be in prison but isn't for some reason - so he is just assigned to me in this dorm as a roommate. As I am walking to my room I am thinking "Oh no I hope my roommate doesn't have a psychotic episode with a butcher knife tonight and kill me!" My friend goes down the hall and wishes me luck with my killer roommate tonight.
    I walk into my room and see that a girl that I know (in the dream only) is in my room and is going to spend the night there for some reason. She is sleeping on my roommate's bed on the lower bunk and I am going to sleep on the upper bunk, my bed. My roommate is at his desk studying, with the light on. He has his back to us. I see there is a bookshelf in out room exactly identical to the one in the ballroom and our old house - in this room - it even has a cheap old tape deck on the lower shelf. As I go to bed I look at my roommate. I see that he has short bleached hair. I also see that he is the rapper Eminem. Who he is keeps changing forms. I see that sometimes he is my brother and sometimes he is Domenic with bleached hair and sometimes he is just some random blond guy. He keeps switching back and forth between all four - like a shape shifter. I get into my bed and go to sleep.
    Suddenly I wake up in the middle of the night - the lights are on - and I see that my roommate is standing up next to my bed looking up at me. He's just standing there and it's creepy. I say "What's up? What do you want?" and he acts like he needs something but I realize he was just standing there staring at me while I was sleeping for God knows what reason. It's creepy. He keeps switching back and forth between all four people. I lean over my bed and look down and see my friend, the girl, lying on her side in a fetal position and there is blood on her. I can't tell if she is asleep or hurt or dead or what. Then I see a large butcher knife in my roommate's hand. He has this sinister look on his face - also this weird look that is like kind of laughing. I try to grab the knife from him as I am on the bed. He keeps trying to stab my hand, which he does at certain points. He's very strong and I'm in an awkward position up on the bed with him able to kind of poke at me without me getting down. I keep laughing like it's a game - for some reason I feel like I have to laugh even though I'm getting stabbed because if I yell or freak out or show fear he will really attack me. It's very scary and I'm thinking "I could die right here". Apparently episodes like this go on almost every night in my room because I have this psychotic roommate - it's just my burden to bear. So weird.
    Soon some friends of mine bust down my door and carry my crazy roommate away and help the girl and tend to my wounds. As I am getting ready to sleep in another room one of my friends tells me that my roommate has been permanently kicked out of the school and I won't have to deal with him any more.
    Then it's the next morning and we are all walking to church - the college campus church for some reason. It's sunny and beautiful out. We are walking past this clearing-in-the-trees kind of area and there is this huge sculptural thing set on this concrete base in the middle of it. It looks about ten stories high. It is made of bright yellow piping and the pipes are arranged in this kind of grid pattern that make up this wall - like a big net made of metal that you can climb up like a jungle gym. It looks like someone took a gigantic sized yellow net, dunked it in water, stood it up like a wall - and then froze it in that position. Now it's a giant metal sculpture. The gaps between the grids are too far apart to actually climb. The whole thing is huge. As we are walking past it I realize that this sculpure is the actual church we are walking to, which is weird because we are walking past it and now away from it. I look back over my shoulder as we pass it and see that is no longer made of yellow pipes but now seems to me made entirely of this amber colored transparent glass. There is a plaque bellow it telling who the artist is and what the sculpture is about and that it's some kind of church. There is a blond woman looking at the plaque. I realize that the blond woman is one of my film history professors in college who's name I forget. Interesting because she was also a core member of this weird new-age-y church on campus that me and my friend Shane used to go to all the time. I look over and realize Shane is now with us.
    I now, for some reason, have to take a taxi to another building where I also live. Some time has passed and it now seems to be dusk. I'm in a different area and am with Shane and the girl from before. I call a taxi to come pick me up and it arrives and I get in it. Oh no! My taxi driver is my murderous roommate! He's back! As a taxi driver! What bad luck for me! As he drives along he is swerving all over the place and hitting pedestrians and other cars and laughing maniacally. For some reason I am just like "Whatever..." and just hope that he gets me to my destination.
    Some time has passed, I am now at my destination and the taxi and manic roommate are gone. I think something happened where the cops chased him and me in the taxi and eventually caught us and arrested the roommate and drove me to my destination but I only have a memory of this in the dream.
    My destination is my apartment building here in New York. Except it look like this giant. gray concrete building - really minimal looking, with those portable clamp work lights clamped everywhere and giant square open windows and some scaffolding - like it's under construction and unfinished. I go up to my apartment. It's the same apartment I have here in New York except the walls are all concrete. A bunch of people in the building are like "Hi Mark! Welcome back!" and stuff - like I've been away.
    I am in my room unpacking. It just hits me then that I was going to go see Sonic Youth play in the city somewhere tonight. I remember that I saw in the Village Voice that it listed my apartment address as the venue for the gig. For some reason it just hits me then that Sonic Youth are going to be playing in my apartment. I am like "Wow!" and I start to kind of get things ready for the band to show up. I realize that I can turn my cam on while they play and have a little caption that says "Sonic Youth are playing in my apartment" and act all casual and just not even tell anyone what's going on and let them slowly figure it out. I'm like "Everyone's going to be so impressed!". Some of my neighbors keep poking their heads in my door and saying "I'll be in here later for the gig!" I am deciding where I am going to let the band play and I decide to made them play in front of my collage wall in my bedroom - that will make a good cam image. I realize it's weird that none of the band or their managers or anything have contacted me at all and there was not even a sound check and they have never been here and what are they doing playing in my apartment anyway? I look at my watch and realize the show is scheduled for an hour from now. My buzzer rings and somehow I know it is Thurston Moore, and he is holding a bunch of patch cords and is ready to come upstairs and start setting up.

6/23/02:

    In this dream I am at first watching television. I am watching some drama TV show called "Miami". It's a prime time soap opera that looks like an Aaron Spelling production. In the dream I am watching this show on a TV set. On the TV show, there is one scene where this woman who I think may be a transsexual is walking down a sunny urban street. She has long curly black hair and is wearing a white ruffled Spanish-style sun dress with a colorful purse and matching jacket. She comes to this grotto covered in heavy ivy. She looks at the grotto, then looks around to see if anyone is watching her. She seems to want to do something. She slowly and nonchalantly places her large purse on the pavement, takes off her jacket... and places it on the ground. She looks around to see if anyone is watching and then she backs-up backwards into the thick ivy that surrounds the grotto and she disappears into it. The whole time she dissapears into the ivy her eyes are looking every which way.
    Suddenly I am not watching this on TV anymore (although sometimes I still am) but seem to be experiencing it first hand - observing it. But sometimes I think I am the transsexual woman/man too, I see things from the character's perspective.
    On the other side of the grotto tunnel thing is what looks like an American southwestern desert setting. There is also some grass on the ground though. There is a horse-drawn buggy with two white horses attached to it there... just waiting for the transsexual woman, apparently. The transsexual woman, it seems, has now changed - she/he is now a tall, gangly man with hard features who has on sloppy woman's clothes, bad make up and short, color-damaged hair. She/he acts really flamboyantly faggy. Come to think of it the character reminds me of, or is, Michael Greer's character Queenie from the film "Fortune and Men's Eyes". The character is sometimes me... and sometimes I seem to be observing him/her. He gets into the horse and buggy in this really clumsy, slapstick way and hits the reins on the horses and is like "Ya!" The horses take off and he is trying his best to hold on as they race him along this road/path that has been worn away in the grass. It's a bumpy ride. I somehow know that this buggy is going to take him to some really rich guy's huge estate/mansion. This character is basically stealing the buggy to be taken to a rich guy's house - this is like his driveway. I still get the impression I'm watching a 70's-era American TV show - the dream seems to have the qualities of one. From the front I can tell it's the Queenie character driving the buggy but from the back it looks like a stunt person in a wig. And sometimes I am the character - looking from his perspective. Just then a horse and buggy comes down the path from the other direction - heading towards the ivy grotto entrance. It is driven by a butler in an outrageous, old fashioned English style butler outfit. The butler says "What the Hell is going on here?!" in an English accent as he passes the Queenie character on the path. The Queenie character just keeps going because he can't stop the buggy.
    Then total scenario shift: I am in New York (although it looks nothing like New York) and I am in some giant building that has all these big staircases and bridge walkways and stuff. The place has maroon industrial carpet and beige stucco walls - the inside is very sculptural in a 70's modern architecture way. I am standing in this one hallway that leads to a bathroom. This woman walks past me towards the bathrooms and is like "Oh excuse me..." and as I watch her pass I realize it is my old college friend Michelle... who I have not seen in years. I watch her walk away and as she does she is facing me the whole time. I say "Aren't you Michelle?" and it takes her a few seconds and then she stops and says "Mark! Oh my God how are you? Someone told me that you were here! I just had no idea you would be standing in the hall!" We talk and she starts crying for some reason. She says that she lives in New York now and is a nurse.
    Then some time passes and a scenario shift: I have left Michelle and the building and I am walking along all these outdoor bridges outside the building. I have this plaid and tartan patterned purse with a wooden handle on it. Michelle had given it to me earlier. She says that there are some very important human organs and artificial human organs in it that I need for a very important operation that is going to be performed on me later tonight. She says I have to bring this purse with me to the operation - and not to loose it or it's contents. It's very important. I go to a bus stop and wait for a bus. Everything around me is made of glass and chrome - the sun is shining brightly on everything. My bus arrives and I get on it with the purse. The inside of the bus is huge... with all these isle seats full of people coming home from work. The sunshine is shining in through the windows of the bus. I sit down on one of the seats and wait for my stop. I place the purse at my feat on the floor. The bus seems to be traveling on some multi-lane highway. Suddenly I look down and notice something... the bus has no floor. Below everyone's feet is the fast moving highway that we are traveling on. Everyone just seems to be able to hover above it along with the bus as it speeds along the concrete of the highway. It's weird. It's like everyone is held in place by some force field floor thing. People can walk on it even though there is nothing there. You can feel the air rushing up into the bus through the fast moving road beneath our feet as we rush along. BUT... oh no! My purse with the valuable organs does NOT sit on the force field! Oh no! It has dropped onto the road and is behind us now! Aaaaggghhh! It's gonna get run over by another car! Oh no!
    I stand up and walk towards the back of the huge bus looking frantically for my purse with my organ transplants. I can see the purse way back on the back of the bus - on the road - we are quickly moving away from it and it's going to get run over by cars that are moving behind the bus. Something weird happens here: suddenly the entire inside of the bus now IS the highway we are on. It is that big. I see cars that are all moving along the road and I see rows of people sitting in their seat reading newspapers and looking out the window. Everything is staying in the same position as everything is moving along at the same speed. The cars seem to be touching the ground but the people seem to be hovering above it. And the cars are inside the bus. I am hovering above the road... walking to the back of the bus... passing cars with fast moving wheels and people standing or sitting in seats, immobile... the interior of the bus is huge - it takes up the entire highway space. I see my purse thing far at the back of the bus... I can see it's silhouette in the sunlight's reflection off of the moving pavement below it. It is hovering in place now, moving along with the bus. it is by someone's feet - hovering above the moving street. Whew! It's OK! But wait... now it's moving out from under the back of the bus and might fall on the road and get smashed! Aggghhh! I see there are other purses that are identical to mine back there too. These other purses are black with no plaid pattern. I am now on the road itself, inside the bus... kind of "running" along the fast moving pavement below me - I can kind of walk along the fast moving street below me - just one leg at a time - and hover above it and still maintain my position in the bus. Like anti-gravity or a weird treadmill that you can kind of float over. I am dodging cars (one of which is a black Volkswagen Beetle) and also moving around people in their seats. Everyone starts to notice that I am trying like crazy to get my purse from the back of the bus before it "falls out" of the bus and gets smashed by a car's wheels. People start cheering me on. Suddenly everyone looks to the back and sees my purse sitting (hovering over the moving road) by this man's feet. The man is reading a newspaper and doesn't hear everyone yelling at him. He looks up from his newspaper and hears everyone yelling "The purse! The purse! Get this guy's purse!" The man reaches down and grabs my purse and tosses it like a football to me. I catch it and everyone on the bus cheers "Yaaaayyyy!!!" Whew.
    Then a scenario shift. I am in a hospital being prepared by Michelle, my old friend the nurse, for my operation. It is night time. Also on another operation prep table is Gregory. Apparently he is donating some organs or something... simply as a friend... to me for my operation. They are about to put him under with the anesthesia. I am thinking "Gregory is a great friend to do this!" Michelle is there reassuring me that everything is going to be OK. I kind of see her as an angel at this point. Like she's saving me.

6/24/02:

No dreams.

6/25/02:

    The only thing I remember is being in a record store and looking at covers of records that don't exist. The only one I remember had the word "Trash" drawn on it with all these different colored pencil scratchings, against a black background - and an arrow pointing to a photo of a little kid coming out of a subway.

6/26/02:

    All I remember is being on the set of some TV show. It's a talk show and the host is sitting on a yellow couch and I am sitting on an adjacent couch. The lights are off on us and around us I see the studio audience and the camera and tech people. It appears I am being interviewed and we are on a commercial pause and the host is casually chatting me up until we start taping again. The conversation is very surface-level and I am thinking something like "When the lights are on and the cameras are rolling he is smiling really big and almost shouting his questions at me and has a very shrill fake laugh and now I am seeing the real him. He looks unhappy like he doesn't want this job." Then I kind of "see" him thinking about his wife and two kids going on some winter vacation at some fantastic Vail, Colorado mountain cabin... all covered in snow and stuff. I can tell that he is fantasizing about this vacation that he is planning or maybe already gone on as a means of getting through the day. I look down and see that my pants match the yellow couch and I have on white shoes. I see him looking forward - towards the audience and he looks unhappy. I am dreading when the "applause!" sign comes on because when the audience starts cheering and clapping as we come back from the commercial pause it is really, really loud. Plus I'm dreading the too-bright, hot lights that will blare down on us when we come back from the pause. Loud noises seem to bother me in this dream.

6/27/02:

No dreams.

6/28/02:

    There's something about me living in some town I don't recognize. I see that a lot of people I know from college live in the town... in their own homes. I seem to work in some local video rental store... that's my job. Whenever I'm in there I look at all the posters of movies that they have on the wall and think that they look very depressing... like their selection of films is really, really small and lame... and this is the only video store in the whole town and all the local people have to chooses from. For some reason this is depressing. I live in this big white house with my brother and mother. My mother is always in the big bedroom watching television - there are clothes and what look like boxes with what I think are wedding gowns in them strewn all over the bedroom. The bedroom is all in white, even the carpet - and my mother has on a baby blue track suit. The sliding glass doors to the bedroom look outside and it is a rocky ocean cliff - the house sits on a rocky ocean cliff area.
    At one point I am in my own room and I am on the computer. My room is full of junk and is very dim. There is only one desk lamp on right over my computer. I am online and looking at some information about a cafe in town that I want to visit. It is also time for me to go to work, I realize. I walk out of my room and see my brother's back as he is walking out the door, also leaving. It is daytime and sunny outside. I hear my mom in her bedroom and the TV is blaring. I can now kind of "see" an "overhead shot" of the house as I am leaving - like taken from a helicopter. I see the different wings of the house, the cliff, the water crashing against the rocks near the bedroom glass door entrance behind the house. I see me getting into what appears to be this very, very long, white Rolls Royce car - like the almost comical, old fashioned kind that have a very long front with a silver, ornate grill and gold horns outside the drivers seat. Like the kind an old English butler in a riding uniform and handlebar mustache would drive a diplomat in top hat and tails and his fat wife around in in an old movie.
    I get in the car and drive a way. Soon I am in town, not seeing everything from overhead... but "normal". I park my car and get out. I am walking around the town. I keep looking at my watch - which is this old gold watch with a black leather band that I used to wear all the time in college - and see that I have 40 minutes until I need to be at work. I wander around the town and I think I am hanging around this old theater with a giant overhanging marquee. I also go into the cafe I was looking at online and have some coffee and sit down and read magazines. I keep looking at my watch and it keeps saying I have 40 minutes until I need to be at work. For some reason I get the impression that I am in Europe at this moment - like it the time I had until I needed to be at work I took a flight to somewhere in Europe and am walking around some city. Weird. But I also am in the town from earlier in the dream - like I'm in both places simultaneously.
    Suddenly a scenario shift: it is night and I am at a party at someone's big house in the town. It's an old Victorian style house. A lot of my college friends are there. I see my friend Shane and some others. Some guy is walking up to me, someone I remember from college but forgot his name, and he is saying to me that it is so impressive that "...you and Shane both got a television contract!" I don't know what he is talking about.
    Then I am back to wondering around the town waiting to go to work. I decide to go home and hang out until it's time for me to be at work. It's night time now. I go back home and walk in the door. I say "It's me!" as I walk in to let my mom know I'm there. I sense all this weird anger coming from outside the closed door to her bedroom - like wondering if I'm skipping work or something. I need to explain to her that It's just not time for me to be there. I go into her bedroom and sit on the white floor carpet and watch TV. I see that she has gone outside and is looking at the pool. I see that there are all these Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies and stuff on the floor in the bedroom. I unwrap a Twinkie and eat the top of it - they kind of split in two and have two distinct halves in my dream. My mom walks in and looks concerned and mad. She says "You aren't not going to work because you don't feel like it are you?" I say "No mom... I still have 40 minutes until I need to be there" and show here my watch. She sits on the bed and I offer her the bottom half of my Twinkie, which she takes.

6/29/02:

    I'm in some weird town. I live in some weird little house. Inside the house it is always night time and kind of small and there is always a TV on with no sound, casting flickering blue light everywhere. I realize that my grandmother on my mother's side lives there. I also realize that my grandfather on my father's side lives there. Both of these people are no longer living in real life. I seem to have just moved into the house and at one point I am quietly trying to announce to both dead grandparents that I live there. I'm like "Gra-a-a-a-andpa? ...I just want you to know I'm here now". He's looking at me through the half-closed bedroom door and he's sitting there in the half darkness staring at me through the door. Yikes.
    Then I seem to be in the town at a later or earlier time. It's day time. I am with my old Dallas friend Charlotte. We are in a car and we are going to a Sam Raimi festival. It's a whole convention based on Sam Raimi and his films. I realize now that I am in either Chicago or maybe Boston. Charlotte has left me alone and I am driving somewhere to park the car in some desolate car garage and then walk to where the convention is and meet her. I think Charlotte kind of vaguely warned me about the city's "ghoul" or "phantom" that lives in the area and attacks people that are alone in their cars. I brush it off but am secretly apprehensive. The area I'm driving to to get to the parking garage is a desolate, industrial area - but seems new and clean. I find the garage - I have to enter this fenced/walled-in parking lot through an entrance, then drive to the back and enter the big building and park somewhere inside it. I park my car inside the dark garage - the only light is the light coming in from the entrance. I feel kind of creeped out. I get out of the car and lock it. I see now that it's a beat-up late 60's Plymouth. The pinstriped painted on the side are all ratty and torn. I stand by the car and look around. It's quiet and windy and no one is around. It's a long way to walk to the garage's entrance and then a very long way to the outside of the fenced/walled-in lot and back out onto the street. I just stand by my car and look around - listening to the rattling wind. It's weird. Out of my peripheral vision I think I see a dark figure run across the outside of the garage entrance. It scares me and I jump back - someone is around and it's scaring me. I feel really scared. Suddenly I turn around and see that there is the figure of a large, fat man with long stringy hair sitting in the driver's seat of my locked car! I only see the back of his dark figure - he's just sitting there motionless. How did he get in there? Aaggghhh!!! I freak and run out of the garage and towards the entrance of the fenced in area. Suddenly I am stopped by these two young looking skinhead guys and some punk looking black girl. One of the guys stops me and grabs my jacket and slams me to the old, gray asphalt ground. The girl pushes the big heavy gate shut and locks it - locking me inside. The guy is like "Stop... stop... you aren't going anywhere." in a really flat, cold, mean way. He pulls out a big knife and tells me to give him my wallet. He keeps jabbing the very sharp long knife at me and it's only because I keep jumping back (with his hand still on my jacket collar) and dodging the jabs that I don't get stabbed. I pull out my wallet and throw it to him - it's a tan-colored leather wallet with Indian designs stamped into it. Inside the wallet I have all the money I am using this month to pay my bills - it's a lot of cash, too much to just be carrying around. I'm really pissed off because now I have no idea how I'm gonna pay my bills and I'm already behind. The skinhead takes his one hand and takes the bills out of the wallet. He still is jabbing the knife at me in this really random way. He doesn't seem to care if he stabs me or even kills me. I seem totally helpless - like I can't fight back or get loose and climb the fence right behind me or anything. I think I literally break down and start crying. It's kind of funny.
    Suddenly I see these three little human dolls standing up behind the skinhead. The dolls are lined up and are all facing the garage building. The dolls have specific clothes on them - one of which looks like it is dressed as 60's-era Jackie Kennedy. I ask the skinhead what the dolls are. He totally stops attacking me and seems to forget the mugging altogether and becomes really friendly. He says "Oh those... well you know that famous movie from the 80's starring Winona Ryder? Well we are a preservationist society that wants to make sure the film is never forgotten. We are obsessed with the film and are actually creating a re-creation of the climactic scene from it right here in the parking lot. We want to charge people to see it and have now had contact from producers who want to use our re-creation area to film a sequel to the film starring Winona herself and some other actresses - something we are really excited about!" I get the impression that the film is a Heathers-style film from the 80's, but I only seem to exist in my dream. The film isn't a real one, only in my dream it is - and in my dream I seem to be totally familiar with the film. I never find out what the title is. The skinhead seems really into all this and walks me over to an area where I will have a view of the re-creation area. It's this giant area with a fake grand building entrance with Greek style columns and a grand staircase, little models of futuristic buildings in the background, this round glass multilevel gigantic wedding cake style structure with choreographed dancers dancing inside (that can be lowered into the roof of the building it is on top of via a hydraulic lift), dramatic lights, people in costume running around and everything. It's very impressive and looks like a pro movie set that must have cost a million dollars or more to construct. It is now dusk and the set looks amazing with the summer sunset behind it. Suddenly I see Winona Ryder herself - dressed in her Jackie O. outfit... running along these stairs that are part of the set with these two German new wave-looking girls. She is actually here and is re-enacting her role in the film for the set. I also get the impression that they are actually filming the sequel right now.

6/30/02:

    I live in some strange suburban town I don't recognize. Although part of the town seems to contain Collin Creek Mall - a mall in Plano, Texas I used to hang out in all the time as a kid. I live in some weird house with my mother. I seem to be attending some classes, like night college courses or something, while I live with her. When I'm home, I always seem to be in the bathroom of the house, and talking to my mother through the closed door - I actually never see her.
    One of the classes I'm taking is taught by Paul Dinello (the actor who plays Mr. Jellineck on Comedy Central's 'Strangers With Candy'). It is an english/writing class. One of our assignments for the class is to pick a piece of a play, a short section of dialogue or whatever from a scene in a play. We then have to recite the memorized dialogue from this scene right outside the school building on the top of this playground slide thing. It's one of those "twisting" spiral slides that you have to reach the top of by all these wooden bridges and levels - and the tower the slide wraps around looks like a castle tower. We have to stand on the top of the playground slide tower and re-enact the play scene for the rest of the class. Each person takes their own turn and goes out there and does it.
    For some reason I am very late with my assignment. I keep telling Paul that I am not finished picking out a play and all... so he keeps telling me to "do it tomorrow". So much time passes that everyone in the class is done reciting their play on top of the slide except for me. As the days and weeks go on, the semester is nearing a close. I finally tell Paul that I will come recite my play after class - at night - when the school building is empty and no one is around and only the janitors are there cleaning up. He says this is fine.
    That night I go to the school. I have with me a copy of "Beyond Therapy", a short play by Christopher Durang that is often used in acting classes. The cover of the script is faded army green cardboard (and looks just like the green folder with the 1888 Franklin St. address on it that Ed Norton carries around containing plans for Project Mayhem in the film 'Fight Club'). I show up at the school and it's all dark and empty. I enter through the front and go in the classroom and turn on the fluorescent lights. I get some stuff from the room, and also look through people's personal items in their desks for some reason. Then I go outside and try to find the playground with the spiral slide tower. As I walk out of the school, I notice something: the school is actually Collin Creek Mall in Plano, Texas! And I am walking out of the entrance that I always used to go in and out of when I lived there - as it was closest to where I entered from the closest road. I look back and see that it is still night time, but the mall is open and people are wandering in and out. I look around and see the pavement of all the white concrete sidewalks next to the parking lots is sparkling as the vast overhead lights shine down on them. Next to that is lush, springtime grass in little manicured landscaping and stucco wall arrangements. It looks beautiful. I lay down on the sparkly sidewalk and look at everything around me. It's like I am hugging or blessing the ground. I am thinking "I have to remember all of this!"
    I can't believe the weird school I'm in is Collin Creek Mall! How weird. How weirdly nice. I walk along the sidewalk until I reach a dark area. The area is dark and kind of spooky, I get a bad feeling about it. I see that the playground is there with the slide. I walk over to the slide and walk upwards on the spiral slide to get to the top to recite my dialogue. No one seems to be around and it's very creepy. It's windy now too. I think that it is so odd that Mr. Jellineck is allowing me to do this by myself in the middle of the night alone - I mean - why not just not do it and tell him I did? Who would know? I walk up the slide and suddenly see this woman on this weird landing part of the slide - like a little balcony or something. I can hardly make her out in the dark but she seems to be wearing a pink 50's-style waitress uniform, is middle aged, and is holding an un-lit cigarette. She just looks at me and says "Can I help you kid?" I tell her I need to get to the top of the slide to recite my play scene. She says that it's no problem for her - but that I'm going to have to deal with this crotchety old drunk guy that lives about 2 feet above her on another level of the slide - he might not let me up because he's a drunk grouch. Apparently these two people live on this kiddie slide at night when it's not being used. I tell her "Okay" and go up two feet... I remember being able to see the old man's legs out of the corner of my eye as the woman was telling me about him... now I can see her out of the corner of my other eye as I am talking to the old man. The man is bald and is wearing a school janitor's uniform. He looks middle aged like the woman. It starts to rain and is now even more windy. I am trying to talk to the man so I can get by him. He is very difficult and weird, He seems nuts. I keep telling him I need to get by him so I can reach the top of the slide. I can see where I need to be right behind him - this little podium at the top with some kind of sign hanging off of it on a chain that is blowing in the rainy wind. The whole scenario is very weird and dysfunctional and wrong. I mean... who are these two weirdoes and why do they control this stupid kiddie slide at night? Finally it becomes so frustrating that I decide to just leave and tell Mr. Jellineck that I wasn't able to do it and I will do the assignment tomorrow during the day - during class.
    Suddenly it is the next day and I am getting ready to go to class in my bathroom. My mother is on the other side of the closed door talking to me. Suddenly I realize that my bathroom is actually the school's bathroom - and is inside Collin Creek Mall. I also realize that today is the last day of classes before the summer break and all the teachers are here but many people aren't - they just didn't show up in that casual way people act when it's the very last day of school. Boy I really waited until the last minute! I am pee-ing in the toilet, the sun is shining in the windows and I can see the faded green Project Mayhem/Beyond Therapy folder on top of the toilet back. I realize that I am just going to leave the bathroom when I'm done, take the folder with me outside and go to the top of the slide (I'm sure the man and woman are gone), climb to the top, read from the book, go back inside and go to Mr. Jellineck's room and tell him I did it, get a passing grade, and leave. For some reason it just strikes me that I have not looked at one page inside the Project Mayhem/Beyond Therapy folder and that I haven't memorized one line. I think this is OK since no one will see me and I can just read from random pages in the book or bullshit my way through it. I mean... who's gonna be watching?
    Just then there is a knock on the bathroom door. It's Mr. Jellineck. He says "Okay Mark... the whole class has showed up today to hear you read! They were not gonna come in today since it's the last day of class but I called each and every one of them individually at home and they had to leave their swimming pools and summer barbeque parties since I demanded they come in to hear you read. They are all really pissed at having to come in just to hear you recite your dialogue so it had better be good! We can't wait to hear it - you've had a long time to prepare! Meet us outside by the slide... we're going there now."
    Oh my God! I thought no one would be watching and I could fake it!!! What am I gonna do? On the last day of class! Yikes! Mr. Jellineck's gonna be really mad... he's given me like a zillion second chances and I'm about to blow it big time even after all that. How come I didn't memorize just one page of dialogue from the play? It would have been so easy. I only have seconds to think - no time to memorize any dialogue.
    Just then in the dream is when some weird realities start to mix: I start to realize that even though Mr. Jellineck is an english teacher, that his true passion is acting since the real him - Paul Dinello - acts as a teacher in "Strangers With Candy". And that this is a way to get his english students to do some acting - something he really believes in. I decide that I'm just gonna bail out on everybody. I think to myself "Okay, I am dreaming and this is just a dream. I can wake up and leave the reality of the dream and I won't be in trouble anymore because I will be in the real reality and this whole scenario will cease to exist!" Then it occurs to me that... when I go to sleep the following night, I may return to this dream and Mr. Jellineck will be there waiting... really pissed. I decide to go for it anyway and I instantly wake up.