Secret Rooms, Alternate Lives

Hello All,

I decided I have enough energy to transfer another dream post from my old blog. It's actually rather good timing because I just re-read one of the dreams from its original source in one of my diaries, so have it better memorized than when I recorded it in my old blog. Today has followed the pattern of the past number of days, feeling mysteriously uncomfortable, and aggravatingly unproductive. I simply can't settle down to the things I want to do, so at least I can do this.

I have re-occurring dreams of looking through my grandmother's house (she has been dead for almost five years now). Often, she has just died, and I'm at her house trying to save sentimental things from being thrown out, or taken by strangers. Other times, I'm just looking through the house to try and get to know more about her. My grandfather died when my Mom was 17, so I never met him. In my grandmother's-house dreams, my grandfather lives in a secret room.

In one dream, I was looking through each room to try and find a secret door. I finally found one, it was disguised by being in the corner of the room, rather than being a door flat against the wall. I opened the door and the room was shaped like an octagon, rather than having just four walls. The walls were green trimmed with gold baroque designs and little cupids. The furniture had green velvet upholstery, with gold-gilded wood. Every bit of counter space was covered with images of the saints, jewelry boxes, photos in fancy picture frames, and ornate bottles and vases, some with gaudy fake flowers in them.

In another grandmother's-house dream, I asked my grandmother if I could go to the bathroom. She excused me, I finished going to the bathroom, but accidentally loudly dropped the lid of the toilet. A secret door flung open behind the toilet, and my grandfather's angry silhouette appeared with red light glaring behind it. His anger was so powerful that it seemed like a bolt of lighting was pulsing through the whole image of him and the secret door. I quickly ran out and slammed the bathroom door shut.

One of the stranger grandmother's-house dreams I've had started as usual, with me looking through the trinkets and rooms in her house, trying to learn more about her. An older lady who was a tenant in the upstairs portion of the house invited me to look around her apartment. When I came downstairs my whole family was there as if it were Christmas or Thanksgiving. It seemed like no one noticed me, or I wasn't supposed to speak them.

I left the house to go to a bar, and that's when I realized I was some big fair-haired guy with a beard. I was dressed like a blue collar worker. I was drinking a beer with another guy at the bar, and we went out to the side walk in front because there was a big crowd on the street. We saw a large spaceship flying low over Middletown (NY). We acted as if it was a normal sight, but soon some smaller shuttles (or perhaps they were robots) began to approach the bar. Their lights came on and alarms went off. We, and the other people outside, ran into the bar to warn everyone that the aliens where about to enter the bar. And the strangest thing is, me and the other man ran into the bar and we had our own families. We took our wives and children, and snuck out of the bar to hide from the aliens. How strange to have a dream of being some blue collar straight guy.

Even though it was a bad dream, I remember it left me with a refreshed feeling, just the chance at being someone different for a little while. I have another dream I"m going to post soon, where I get to be a different person for a while (this time a single woman), and it too gave me a strange feeling for a few days. I think I had the aliens dream when my grandmother was still alive, but I'm not sure if she was alive during the other dreams or not. I've always felt estranged from both of my grandmother's because neither of them spoke English very well. I think with my Italian grandmother, it was actually more that she had a heavy accent, than she didn't speak English well. It still ended up being a language barrier when I was growing up. I guess the cultural barrier was a more significant obstacle in getting to know either of my grandmothers.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Transition

Hello All,

This is the way I'm going to wear my hair for any interview. You can't tell in the picture, but I've parted my hair from the side, so it looks like a pomaded man's hairstyle from the front. Hopefully, for an interview my hair will be dry though. I'm not going to wear earrings, and am going to wear glasses instead of contact lenses. It's really about as business-casual as I can get. I'm hoping with practice I'll learn to put my hair up more tidily. My hair would never lay so flat if it was short, I'm having fun learning to put my hair up. I wish I could do more complicated braid-work.

With this post, I'm trying to move my dream-posts from a blog I no longer write in, to this one. Here are two love dreams I remember. This first one I'm going to tell you is one I had five months ago, the second one I had about 14 years ago. The more recent dream, is one I had when I was feeling very sick, and felt nauseous every time I tried to get out of bed. It's frightening to be so sick, when you live alone.

I dreamt I had a boyfriend, who sat at the desk behind my bed, trying to open a bottle of aspirin for me (that's it). The boyfriend was a person I had a crush on as a teenager in real life. He was one of those people who seemed to have every reason to date me, but wouldn't because I was too young and too "weird." I liked him because he was very left-brained and together. The very opposite of me. It's unfortunate during that brief period of time, say from the ages of 12-22, when I still had crushes full of blind love and pure emotional thinking, I was beset by man after man who simply would never think of it. It always seemed to be because I was strange, and unlikely to lead a conventional life.

It would have been nice to have some one to struggle through life with, especially rooted from that time of "young love" and "high-school sweethearts." Well, I've never had much success with romance and have remained single for most of my life. There will always be those times when I'm sick or frightened, and wish I had someone physically present as some beacon of humankind. Nearly all my relationships are transmitted by satellite it seems. Here is a dream with a more wistful note, it's from when I was 17 0r 18.

In the dream, my best-friend at the time (Marcus Gill) and I went on vacation to Scandinavia. Marcus had some business to attend to, so he dropped me off at the apartment of a friend he knew. The apartment complex was new and had an inviting pool, shining brightly in the mid-day. The man's name was Julian. We liked each other very much. I was thrilled and wanted to make the most of my time with him.

Julian wanted to show me his job, but at the same time wanted to keep it as a surprise for me. I grew more curious, and a little worried, as we arrived at the coast. We got into a little row boat and began to paddle out into the wide sea. The coast had islets of pillar-like rocks, very jagged and threatening. The sky and sea began to well up and join each other in the same colors. A great storm was coming.

I then learned Julian was a hurricane researcher. It was his job to row his boat out into these enormous storms. He took measurements beneath the sea when the storm was at its worse. He tied his ankle to a wooden board he used as a marker, so you would know where he was underwater. I felt I should trust him and not seem worried, but I really was. He took a confident dive into the water, his body outstretched with no evident fear of the waves that seemed to be curling into tighter and tighter loops each minute.

The wooden board swung like a pendulum between the troughs and crests of the waves. As I was contemplating this, it quickly occurred to me he had no breathing aide to rely upon under the water, and no matter how good he was at what he did, he still had the same human limitations as anyone. I realized he had drowned under sea. I jumped in the water and dragged the wooden board tied to his ankle onto the boat, but the rope waved loosely in the sea, and wasn't attached to anything. I felt myself waking up, and wanted to remember his name. The only thing I had was a cigarette he left burning in the boat, so I burned the name "Jules" on the wooden board, and then woke up.

I simply don't have love dreams with the frequency I once did, but when I do, it's always a nice break from the tenaciously monotonous path my life seems to walk. Much of my interest in dreams stems from the "break" they provide. If anyone out there has love dreams they would like to share, or perhaps dreams of uncanny similarity, please say so. It's also interesting to hear the life circumstances occurring when the dream was dreamt.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Frenetic Acting

Hello all,

Here's a picture of me this morning, and a picture of Jackie Curtis dressed up all pretty. His picture kind of matches the mode of my dream this morning.

My dream started with a movie-feel, the motion was even sped-up like a movie might do as a special effect. I drove my car, following another car to an old shopping center. It was gray and overcast outside, and the shopping center sagged with some age and use, but tall trees surrounded everything. The trees looked more vibrantly green against the dull sky. The shopping center had an odd layout. When you drove up to it, it appeared to be a one story grocery store, but once you went around the side, you realized the shopping center was built into the side of a hill (so I guess you'd say it was"split-level"). The bottom floor had several smaller shops, and cars filled the parking lot.

That's where the car I followed stopped and parked. The people then walked out of the car and into a path in the woods behind the shopping center. I lost site of them, but evidently knew where to go because I walked up the path to a three story white house (maybe about 100 years old, very narrow and tall). The house was separated into apartments. I walked up a flight of stairs built on the side of the house, and went into an apartment on the second floor. The apartment was two stories, the bottom floor was about the size of an average apartment, but the second floor only had one bedroom, and a bathroom.

The house was full of interesting stuff. There were books, clothing, rolled-up posters, mugs, and all kinds of knick-nacks all over the counters, tables, shelves, and floor. Everything was much to my taste, lots of odd and eye-catching things. I didn't have much time to look around though because about 9 other people were already there. It looked like a completely out-of-hand party and I had to remind myself we were acting in a movie. The people I followed in were already in costume and acting with everyone else, so I felt the need to hurry.

All kinds of colored lights flashed through-out the house. The music reminded me of Henry Mancini, but fast paced with the occasional beeping car, or other urban sound blended into it. Everyone had to quickly change from costume to costume (we were in "fancy-dress," as if at a masquerade party). We also had to move from room to room, from chair to couch to floor very quickly. Even the guy filming the scene (he was a young gay man who owned the house) kept on changing into different costumes and masks.

At one point in the "party" two women and I ran around through the house, and had to end up in a couch in the main room. I plopped down on the couch first, but it was small for all of us. I ended up being crushed into the corner, and the two women started dancing while sitting down, flailing their arms and legs up and down. The woman next to me kept on accidentally hitting me in the head with her arm. As we were about to get out of the couch to film the next scene, she said to me, "Look he even has a doll that's a leper, see it's on the top shelf in the closet." I looked and three dolls sat on the top shelf, they all looked like normal 1940s era baby-dolls, but one was covered by leprous sores.

I remember having to change into suspenders, and an Amish person's outfit for the next scene. Everything happened so fast, and so chaotically that I still had to remind myself we were filming a movie. Soon we stopped filming, and people started to go home. I finally got an idea of what the owner of the house looked like ( for most of the day he wore different masks and accessories that obscured his face). He started to get out of his costume, but left a robber's mask and a cheap nylon cape on. He had been rather intimidating to this point because I was so impressed he was filming a movie, and had such a great collection of stuff. He had excellent taste in movies, music, books, and other odds and ends. I'm sure he would of had "Popiol i Diament" (in movie form, not the book), or "The Balcony" by Jean Genet.

To this point in the movie this guy had been telling everyone what to do, but as you got to get a better glimpse of him he seemed like a normal approachable person. He allowed me to look around the house and borrow some things. I picked up an article of clothing (something flowy, lavender, and sheer), an interesting looking mug, and a few books. I only remember two of the books. One of them was "The Book of Toth," and another one was a woman's fashion guide from the 1950's called "How to Dress from Head to Toe." The last other actor began to leave and I jumped on the floor covered with all the stuff I borrowed, and she sighed because earlier she told me she couldn't stand all the "weird stuff" laying around the place.

After she left it was just me and the guy left, and he wanted to take me to another location to film another part of his movie. I gathered my stuff together and waited in the foyer. That's when I realized the foyer floor was covered in marijuana. It was as if someone took a pound bag and just shook it out on the floor. The guy came to the foyer and we were about to leave, but two robbers burst in through the door. They weren't very threatening and it took me a second to realize they were serious about robbing the place (I felt they wanted to take the marijuana on the floor). One of them had a sturdy build and pretty blue eyes framed with thick eyelashes.

The guy who owned the house told me to go to the kitchen and get some bigger mugs. When I came back, one of the robbers was using another mug to gather the marijuana. The owner (and director) said to me very loud and in a way I could tell he was up to something, "Go outside and start the car because we're in a hurry to get to our next acting gig. You can leave the mugs with me. " I gave him the last mug I had, it was a big copper one, and the blue-eyed robber remarked to me, "Oh that's a good one, it's really strong." As I left to start the car, I realized the director/owner was going to fill the mugs with the marijuana and dash out of the house, and that's why he wanted me to go ahead and start the car. That's all I can remember from the dream, but it was nice to have a mostly fun dream for a change.

I've had other dreams this past week, but they were all kind of mediocre. One had something to do with a secret passage in a house, another one had someone pointing out the difference in the pelts of koalas raised in the north versus the south, and in another one I was still living with my parents. They just didn't shine very much to me, so I haven't recorded them.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Tornado Dream

Hello All,

Here's a picture of me in my new glasses (my old ones keep on breaking), and a picture of Angie in the sink. Last night I had a tornado dream, but I think the dream's focus was really on safe places to live.

As the dream begun, A friend showed me a new housing development supposed to be completely self-sufficient. It had its own power grid, it's own sewage system and water supply, etc. I remember the construction method. Every house begun as a wooden foundation, with what looked like a big port-a-potty towards the back, which connected to the neighborhood's sewage system. The builders made this construction for every lot, and began to build the houses on these foundations.

This new housing development was adjacent to a much older neighborhood, with a small private college in it. This neighborhood was very beautiful. The buildings were obviously very old, and the only new thing about them was their modern window panes. The buildings had decorative stonework (they seemed to be made of either gray slate, or some type of tan granite), and different plants growing up their sides. As dusk approached I could see people studying through the windows of the private college. This neighborhood really cast a contrast between it and the new self-sufficient neighborhood.

I returned home (in the dream I still lived with my parents) and went to my bedroom. It started to rain and I read for awhile, until I noticed the storm really picking up. I went to the window and the wind was blowing so hard everything outside looked like it was going to be shoved sideways off the earth. I looked up to the sky and I could see a hole opening up in the clouds with a dark wisp of clouds starting to spin out of it.

I tried to get under my bed, but I wouldn't fit, so I sat under the door-frame of my closet. I noticed the funnel-cloud was really getting pronounced, so I decided I needed to go somewhere safer. I got my parents, and we went to a walk-in closet under the stairs. We turned on the closet light and waited. The storm soon passed, but I was eager to see what had happened to the new housing development.

I went back to the housing development, and it was more or less fine. Some building materials were scattered about, and the wooden foundations were thoroughly soaked, but none of the finished houses were damaged. I wondered if the fact the neighborhood had it's own power system would make it a better place to live in case of a severe storm. The old stone neighborhood was also fine, and I wished the new neighborhood was made to look like the old neighborhood.

Well, that was my dream. Not as interesting or symbolic as my other recent dreams, but it still lets me know what's worrying me deep down inside.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

The Two Forms of God Dream

Hello All,

Here are pictures of Angie and I mid-day Thursday. My dream last night was an odd continuation of my last posted dream. It's funny how night-to-night my dreams seem to have their own secret plot-line. Unfortunately, I'm semi-conscious during my dreams, so don't have all the fine details of what this plot-line is.

My Dream last night, started in what was supposed to be my last apartment (when I had a roommate), but the apartment didn't look anything like my former apartment. I felt so tired in the dream, I kept on falling asleep in the first bedroom to the right, which was vacant. The second bedroom to the right was mine. I remember having monumental difficulty getting from the vacant room, waylaying on a couch in between, and finally to my room. I got to my room to sleep for a while, only to soon be awakened by my friend Marcus (a friend I haven't seen in about 12 years, who I used to go to dance clubs with when I was a teenager).

I got dressed in a red, strapless, latex dress, fashioned after Samurai armor. I even had those raised Japanese clogs on (red, of course). My hair was twisted up, much like the picture of me in this post. Again, as in the last dream, the building we arrived at was made of cinder blocks. As we entered the club, I was taken aback because it was like a sordid bath-house from San Fransisco in the 70's. I kept on trying to keep up with Marcus while trying not to interrupt people having "private moments" in dark corners of the club.

I finally almost reached Marcus, but that's when I noticed I was alone in an empty part of the club. It was a hallway all made of glazed cinder blocks (like in a public pool), and the hallway went around in a square (so you could run laps around if you wanted). In the hallway before me, a group of people helped one person off a horse. I heard the person getting off the horse say, there are two ways to see God.

In front of me I saw the recently dismounted person set down a flame on the ground, this was one form of God. I quickly ran around the hallway block to get to the other side of that same hall, and saw that in the other hand facing the other way from the flame, the horse rider was holding the hilt of a sword (with no blade) that emanated straight laser beams of different colors of light, this was the second form of God.

It's funny to have this dream, when last night I had the Satan dream. I guess people's subconsciousness has a plot-line of its own. The feeling in the dream was as if I had been led through a maze, simply to be shown the two forms of God. There was no malevolent aspect of the dream, unlike the dream I had last night.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

A Second Look

Hello All,

While I was visiting Cindy and family (the picture of the woman), I tried to tell her about one of my dreams last night that I couldn't remember well. I decided I retold the dream well enough that I should probably write it down here because it was a very unusual dream.

In this dream I was a fat kid of WASPish descent around the age of twelve (so, not the 30ish, wiry-built man of Mediterranean descent that I am), and it was in the 1950s. I was swimming in a lake, and had to walk down a dirt road to a crossroads where a man and woman picked me up in their car. They drove me home, which appeared to be a half-way home for troubled kids. It was a rectangular, WWII era, cinder-block home with an aluminum car-port. The sun soon set and we began to watch TV.

There was some deep-set evil in the house we were all apart of, the Satan kind of evil, not the facade-of-normalcy kind of evil. It had something to do with one of the house cats giving birth to a litter of some numerological significance. I'm not sure why, but this signified some success in evil in the household. I remember watching the cat give birth in the TV light.

I remember sneaking out of the house at night and sneaking in another house in the neighborhood to get a chance to play with one of the normal kids. We were talking and playing behind some heavy art-deco screen, made to look Asian (though more New York than Beijing). The wind began to groan and fuss outside, and it began to rain. The parents of the house woke up and I quickly snuck out of the house.

I left that house with a strange sense I was not only unwanted in the house because it was late and I was there without permission, but because of some kind of evil I carried with me from the other house. I really wish I could remember why the cat giving birth in front of the TV was considered such an epicenter of evil, and what numbers had to do with it. I think that's why I didn't retell the dream this morning.

I've spent my day water-coloring and exercising at home, talking and drawing at Cindy's, and now writing this. I had a good time looking at Cindy's garden. It turns out black plum tomatoes aren't really black, they're just darker than regular tomatoes, but they taste really good. Evidently they're from Russia,, just like my watercolors.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Saint Anthony Dream

Hello All,

My Italian Grandmother (the other one is Cuban) came from a small rural town in South Eastern Italy called Rio Nero in Vulture. Our family's patron saint is (was) St. Anthony. Even super-secular-me has two statues, and an old nightlight of Saint Anthony. The photographs in this post are of me this morning, and if you can peer back through all that stuff, it's a photo of a statue of St. Anthony that once belonged to my mother, and is the same statue that figures in my dream.

I had a dream about my grandmother back in the 70's when her hair still grew brown (if not a little reddish with age). She wore one of those big loose Mummus (sp?) so popular in the 70's. In the dream, a family member narrated as the scenes rolled through my mind like a movie. My grandmother took this little Saint Anthony statue to the church in Rio Nero in Vulture every year as a pilgrimage.

She placed the statue in one of those little fake potpourri terrariums (you know the kind with pussy-willows glued to a piece of mulch, and eyes dotted on them to look like little animals), and then walked through town to the beige stone-made church with the little glass-encased statue on a platform of hay tied around her neck, kind of like the platform a cigarette girl would wear around her neck to sell her wares.

Once she got to the church, I saw her join a large group of people in an outside courtyard within the church. People drummed frenetically, and a pipe was beeping in short bursts (more like a pipe from North Africa than Italy). The scene really looked more like Santeria, than rural Italian Catholicism. I remember feeling bad because the little potpourri terrarium she carried the statue in ended up being something I'd use as a house for my little miniature Hello Kitty dolls.

I have had about three other dreams in the past few days, but am trying to err on the side of tacitness to keep my blog readable. I might in the future decide to recant those dreams, but who knows. Well, I had better get on with my day. Thank you Michael (http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/) for mentioning my blog on your own.

Thank you for reading,

Marc