GABA seems to give me intense dreams. I found the perfect house that was both in NY and Tokyo. It had a tatami room and a basic circular shape, with sections sunken or elevated and it was surrounded by a forest. It was a little funky but also beautifully remodeled with orangey kitchen cabinets and a beautiful desk with an oval edge looking out into the trees. There were delicate viney hanging plants everywhere. The owners had left the door so I spent a night there sneakily in the tatami room. It was perfect. The next day was the open house though and it was thronged including some of my friends, including Rob and Kim. Of course they thought it was perfect too, which distressed me; couldn't they see it was more perfect for //me//? I went up to the owner and told him I was totally guileless in bargaining but that I would do anything to get the amount of money necessary to buy the house. He had a slightly 80s look like a slighter Philip glass, curly hair and circles under his eyes, maybe wearing a black suit jacket, and he just nodded and said mysteriously that I'd been doing the right things...somewhere outside the house I met Gary's grandparents who shook their head over him and were so glad to meet me (in earth life they have long not existed and I never met them)...then yesterday morning I dreamed I had to pack really quickly to go to Cambodia for five days to give a presentation... Cambodia! What wishes and slippages I have been privy to!

boyfriend had an affair with husband's girlfriend

I called the husband to tell him, he said don't call me, I said I have to tell you this news

at first he said hedidn't mind, saying that people were supposed to have one-night stands

but then I said it seemed more serious

and he posted something bitter on some social network, I can't remember...

I suppose I am not free. silly subconscious!

it was... where was it... there was some bank, or hotel... where there were these tropical island tours. it was near me but I had never been there.

on the lawns of the tropical island were these golden tongues

sculptures of golden tongues

they meant something... memorialized something, I am not sure what... some sort of... sea leprechauns?

and a friend lived near there with a prairie for a huge backyard... his children were frolicking there with his girlfriend... it was "India"... and it looked as though there were a huge fire in the yard, all red and purple and vivacious colors

and there were tumbleweeds, but maybe the fire was an illusion

since everyone seemed happy and unconcerned

acrobat/green bra/lacerated tongue


Dream I am a little girl and I’m a gymnast/ acrobat. My father is my trainer or we have a father/daughter act. The father in the dream is not like my actual father, nor is the mother like my actual mother. I am being prepared for some kind of competition. Also I think my mother is a dentist. She is referring people to an oral surgeon. I think the oral surgeon is also my dream father. She brings him a beer, and he has a fit, because it’s the kind from a can and not from a bottle. So she refers a patient to another oral surgeon. For some reason I am talking to that surgeon. The patient has had a hard time eating food and enjoying it. I said, is it because he bit his tongue and he has lacerations? And the surgeon says, yes, exactly, how do you know? And I say, oh, because I have experienced that, and I show him my lacerated tongue. Showtime is approaching and I need a costume. I guess I am old enough to need a bra because I am trying on bras. One was emerald green satin with ribbons… but I need a whole ensemble… and there is a bit of an issue because I invert, so I need something that will not be too revealing when I do so… I suggest black lace shorts…. I must have figured out something because showtime comes… it’s in a playground…. I was so worried about the routine, we’d gone over it so many times… and I think I accomplish it but to be honest I had a very troubled sleep last night and I am not really sure, my jaw so clenched, and up between 3:30 and 4:30, drugs notwithstanding.

Flood

 

I visit some place deep in rural Japan and decide to live there… Alli Warren too is there… I move from my apartment here in Brookyn to  there because one day  I take a walk in that village and there is snow but there are also jonquils… and in a tree.. something I think is first a snake and then a tiger but ir turns out to be som kind of giant SKINK

but with markings like a tiger or spotted horse… it is all so unbelievably magical, the beauty of the nature around me, that I feel I have to live there

anyway… it seems that I and Alli have married farmers… we have married these simple and crude farmer guys of the countryside  I have sold my apartment and moved into this other apartment.  I have gone through my clothes and moved from Tokyo or New York or wherever I was.   many of the clothes I have to sell and get rid of because they no longer fit me, I’ve become so thin and anyway I don’t need them in the coutryside

and… I go back to my classrooms in Tokyo or New York or wherever I teach… I have these huge classes there… and I tell them I am moving to the countryside… I talk to Nancy about it she says yeah I almost moved there at one point….

I say it is so beautiful there… and I have come to the place in my life where I need a change

and I hitch a ride back to the country side with some people I don’t know… and it’s weird… I ask if we’re going north… but I can feel we are driving south… and they say yes… but it must have been another road, one I don’t recognize, because we go through a kind of neon Chinatown las vegas kind of place  and I say, oh this isn’t right… and somehow I get back to the village… where there is a little pub… something about a little pub… anyway I am in this new apartment… I guess with my farmer husband?  at parts of the ream I am single other times not… anyway… I notice that when I look out the window… which is oddly shaped… that I see these sort of snowy muddy dots… not the sky… and I hear a rushing sound… and it seems that there is a giant flood… pulling me along… rushing… and I notice… that I am not in my apartment any longer but in a boat…. and I am there with my husband… and I we have never had sex before but we have sex for the first time, I guess because I am so grateful to him for saving my life.... he must have carried me up from the apartment to the boat...

and also it seems we have two kids

and Alli in a parallel situation has two kids, or maybe three… and it turns out we are in this flood, this flood, see, and  when we are saved we are in someplace urban.  It is a combination of NY and SF… but the thing is that now we have these bumpkin husbands and all these children to support… there are these giant documents on brown cardboard paper bound with huge magenta staples… listing all of our duties as rural wives… and there are scenes of me with I guess my mother or grandmother in laws going over the rules… there are piles of vegetables in plastic colanders… traditional ways to prepare things… and they are teaching me

and there are manuals about how to behave… rules… like, even though in extreme poverty do not steal the soap from public restrooms (I remember thinking about the varieties of scented soaps available here in the urban US)… OK so but then I realize that I had fallen asleep in the apartment and not the boat, and my bumpkin husband had saved me… I weep and weep

For some reason I am also supposed to start graduate school  and I am preparing to do that…Maybe Alli too.  We are town.. now we are out of the countryside and about to go to school, what do we do with the husbands?  the children?  The feelings are riotously mixed.   I am so grateful at having been saved.  But I want to be free. There is a huge public hearing in a kind of basement space.  All the local citizens are brought in…I guess this is back in the countryside.. and the huge books with magenta staples are brought in…

and it was about at this time I became fully aware that this dilemma was not a real one but only one I was so overwhelmingly dreaming.

dream: "escape"

dream: "escape"

 

I was in "Paris" although it didn't look like Paris
I had to take a train
to get to the cineplex
which was one of the only things
to do there
so it really wasn't Paris
and it was actually a kind of
exploratorium
or museum of the moving image
and there was one "exhibit"
that would put you in the movie
in some marvelous computer-generated way
and I couldn't at first see what the results were
but I did it again and then I could
there were war films, and science fiction,
and fantasy
and art movies and porn, and walking
in golden gate park
or some park that looked like it
but the amazing thing about this
technology was that the resulting film moved
in several "strips" from right to left
and also vertically
SIMULTANEOUSLY
and sometimes it would replace all of
a person or object with me
and sometimes just a part
so sometimes I'd be
flying through the air
and sometimes it would be another woman's
breast in place of my breast

and at one point I was back here in NY and
Bradley showed the film
and now suddenly I remember Gary was there too
I guess we were still together? but in the film
I had had an "affair" that was not just computer-
generated but real? I don't know it was one of those
dreams that kept repeating elements
I think.

I think also there was another exhibit of a similarly
non linear and disorienting film
although I can't remember how it worked exactly
it was a little like those "choose your narrative" stories,
I guess video games are like that but I don't know
since I've never played a video game.

the exhibit/movie was in a circular room and there were white wires with buttons
and I would push buttons to make another scene happen in the movie
or was it in experience? I don't remember if I was in this movie or not
maybe I was? maybe this was the one with the "affair"? there maybe was talk
of this movie having been "directed by one of two famous directors: one
was Cassavettes but I can't remember the other one.

but it is interesting especially because I had just been talking
in real life yesterday to my Thai student Nham, who is a filmmaker,
and super-cool, about how movies maybe started out trying to represent
our perceptions and have ended up reorganizing them. I realize
this is not a very sophisticated observation

but a dream is kind of a movie, right? and that there was a movie inside
the dream, and then that the movie was later "shown" to an audience,
to me extremely intricate.

I was having a party, and lots of friends were there.  I remember specifically Edwin and Sharon being there.  I had told everyone that I would have lots to eat at the party and that there would be dancing.  Unfortunately there was no food in the cupboards and I tried to call out for some pizzas, but I realized I didn't know my own address and it wasn't in my cell phone.  Then I tried to put on some dance music, but Gary had taken most of the music and all I had left were a few assorted cassette tapes and a full set of Jerry Lewis DVDs. 

aaargh the dreams... was about to fly off to Japan with G. for some reason the airport was on the lower east side near delancey street... I stopped in a little store to buy some olive oil... why would I need to bring olive oil? and then remembered I hadn't brought my cell phone or charger...so back to some apartment... not ours... but we'd been staying there... almost no furniture... an apparition slipped in... female, I think... maybe a homeless person using the bathroom... although too much like an apparition to actually use a bathroom... and then she slipped out again... and then I realized... Gary was nowhere to be seen... the flight was leaving in a half an hour... I still didn't have my cellphone... I thought OK I'll rent one... but where was Gary?... I noticed the olive oil was dark, like unprocessed argan oil...

Dreamed that a friend of mine bought a house where the Obamas were temporarily living with their three children (they had a new baby boy). The house was painted a kind of oxidized copper color, and was near an ocean. The house was designed to have a partly open space inside like a kind of dock beneath which water from the ocean was flowing. The water was full of life: a strange creature I was calling a “skate” although it wasn’t a skate, but some kind of camouflage-y, leaf-resembling fish that stayed upright on the water like a little sail (it “skated”), and any number of jellyfish, octopi, and other creatures that looked like microscopic organisms blown up very large… and all of these were biolumimnescent. Trippy! I remember some of the details of the house’s interior: a kind of patchwork of linoleum and hexagonal bathroom-style tiles on the kitchen/ entranceway floor, a little corner shelf made of decorative Italian tiles, but very old, everything old, unmatched, in yellowed tones. Old hardware on the kitchen cabinets, lucite with little flowers, I think, and circular, like those I saw recently in a neighbor’s house, apparently the same ones Louis Armstrong had in his house in Queens Anyway I kept going back in the dream to look at the water space and all of the life forms that moved around in it.

Dream I go into a room where there are maybe five guys who look like figures from Aztec cartoon drawings. Some of them are maybe animals. Each one is bodypainted a different kind of metal: oxidize d copper, bronze, etc. Each one has some kind of magic jewelry that, when they put it on, acts as a torture device. Two of them argue about whether they have any volition or not about whether the jewelry will torture them. One says, I’ve been painting? eating? it all my life.

Just dreamed that the New York Times this morning, instead of having "New York Times" at the top of the front page, had "THROWS WHITE SPACE AWAY"

I dreamed this morning that I was growing all these extra toes. They were a little shorter than my other toes kind of budding up in between. Seven total on the right foot and eight on the left, I think.

Obama dream

Obama was in my dream. There were a lot of people staying in a big room somewhere, like a country house, woody, with high ceilings, but I think it was actually "my house." At one point, everyone was sort of sleeping (think of the scene in the Superdome after Katrina), and Gary and I were on the floor in something like a Japanese futon, and my ass was exposed. I didn't think this was unusual but Gary kind of let me know it was inappropriate. So in another "scene" I was hanging out with Obama and he said, "let's find a way you can make some money with that big old computer of yours so you don't have to work so much." He was very friendly and avuncular (which is weird considering he's only two years older than me) and really seemed like he wanted to help me out!

Project Dreamway

Dreamed last night I was a contestant on Project Runway. Problem: the instructions were confusing. Maybe there were no instructions. I think the first outfit I made was a very 80s tunic & leggings in black jersey; I decided I hated it and ripped it up, started making a scallopy layered dress out of the same fabric... but then I heard or remembered or realized or something that the judges didn't want to see black, that it wasn't "risky" enough. I was not on the usual set, it was in some half-abandoned institutional building in the country. There was some issue about shitting, I don't remember what it was. But I do remember that one of the other contestants made this amazing Marie-Antoinette style dress out of peacock feathers, and I was trying to do this totally amateur thing in black jersey. It was very anxious-making, this dream.

Ange Mlinko and Brenda Iijima in a dream last night. Ange had published an amazing book full of color photographs and aesthetic philosophy. I remember being inspired by how the book moved from and beyond poetry. It was a little bit like Gins and Arakawa's The Mechanism of Meaning, or some exquisite textbook or coffee table book.