To Touch the Pacific Ocean

Hello All,

I thought it important to include a picture that proves I do Indeed get dressed some days, but sought to comfort you with my usual morning picture (the one with my hair down). In this post I'm continuing my transfer of dreams from my old blog. This dream is part of my beach dream phase. I actually had one other beach dream that I never recorded, so I suppose I'll try to record it here for the first time, but first here is the one I wrote down.

I'll have to malign my rather stuffy old roommate a bit to record this dream. In the dream, Ashley (the ex-roommate) and I had to go to a conference out in Utah. The conference ended nearly as soon as we got there, but filled with an adventurous spirit gained from making such a trek from my home-state of North Carolina, I told Ashley I wanted to go ahead and see the Pacific Ocean, since we had gone so far already. As typical, my ex-roommate reacted with irritation as she was excited to get back to her normal television-programmed routine in NC and snapped at me saying, "I've already done that!" I withheld myself from arguing (which trust me, isn't normal for me) and drove her back to our apartment in North Carolina, and drove myself all the way back out West. I arrived in San Fransisco.

I reached the city exhausted, and needed to stay in a hotel before I could continue on my trek to touch the Pacific Ocean. I remember watching a documentary in the hotel room. It was about a local eccentric. A scruffy long-haired man, who pedaled around on his bike, with a baby-doll dress on (the similarity to me is noted). This man was strikingly ugly to the point where he was cute, much the way people think pug-dogs are cute. He was noted in the neighborhood for his child-like personality. He had rode his bike into a dangerous neighborhood because a woman there had offered to plait his hair into dutch braids (corn-rows).

The police stopped him, knocked him off his bike, and beat him to death because of his appearance. At that point, I had finally fallen asleep in my crusty hotel room bed. My parents are full-time "RVers," and had happened to be in a camp-ground near San Francisco. In the morning, I called them to tell them I was nearby. My Mom approved of my trek to touch the Pacific Ocean, so they agreed to meet me at said beach, but when I got there (in a rent-a-car) the road ended on a high cliff. I could see the beach below, but had no idea how to get there.

My parents had the same problem as I and met me at the edge of the cliff. As we were looking out into the vast darkness of the new moon sky and black ocean, I decided to go to the rent-a-car and use my cell phone and a map to try to find where the path down to the beach was. My parents were satisfied with just standing on the cliff, looking into the outer-space like darkness, so when I found the path to the beach, I just called them and told them what I was doing. I remember the car sharply pointing down a sandy path. It slipped down the path's loose sand, and I used it as a sled to get down to the beach.

That's how that dream ended. I had another West coast beach dream I never wrote down because it seemed fragmented and silly to me. Now, referring to real life, I've dated very seldomly, so the men I've had in my life maintain their significance through the years. My first boyfriend was a guy named Terry. He was a year older than me. It was at the height of "grunge" and we both loved Courtney Love's "Hole." I was 17 and he was 18, and we both had eating disorders and angst-provoked drug habits. Naturally, it was love at first site.

In this dream we had trekked across the USA in order to fulfill my dream to touch the Pacific Ocean. Terry had some drug-buddies he met back in Baltimore who we could stay with in San Francisco. I remember their house was a four-roomed disaster, but was achingly close to the beach. Always being the prude in the group, I was nervous about staying in a house full of junkies (Terry's drug habits where rather serious, while mine still remained in the realm of youthful experimentation), but Terry isolated me from the rest of the group, so I felt relatively safe.

The first available morning, Terry and I went out to explore the sea-side, and finally touch the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to go straight to the beach and get our quest done with, but Terry wanted to show me a tide-pool where ostriches had colonized. We were just a dune away from the ocean, and I remember walking along it, looking at the ocean, but knowing I'd have to wait till I could go to it. We reached a copse of palm trees where the wide, shallow tide-pools began. As soon as we saw the ostriches (they were much larger than I had imagined), Terry reminded me they were very territorial, and would attack us if they thought we were a threat. He also said they would follow a potential threat for miles once startled. I was rather put-off by this and asked him if we couldn't just go to the beach.

Sure enough, as soon as I said this, the ostriches spotted us and immediately started to charge. We ran all the way back to the dilapidated junky-house, and never got to go to the beach. He tried to act like it wasn't a big deal because there was a big party at the house, blah. So there you have two more Pacific Ocean dreams.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Trapped

Hello All,

I dreamt unpleasantly last night. However, I take any dream as information, and also as my own little movie, so I can't disapprove too much of any dream. I decided to take a picture of Angie and I this morning. Each day, she wakes up around 3am and proceeds to play with her loudest toys (I live in a studio apartment, so it's basically one room), and to tread in every place she knows she's not supposed to go (kitchen sink, my desk). The past few days she's been better behaved, so I thought she deserved a close-up.

My dream began with me driving to bring an item to a doctor at their home, so it was a personal visit, and not an appointment. When I got there, the doctor wanted to take some sort of test sample from me anyway. The doctor anesthetized me without my knowledge or permission, and locked me in the bathroom. When I came too again, I felt very sick and the doctor had done something to my legs that made it hard to walk, and had operated on one of my teeth, so the tooth was almost all gone, and replaced by a clamp with a dull lead-like finish.

The doctor came to the bathroom to see if I had woken up yet. I was very angry and admonished him for not even giving me anything to read. He gave me a newspaper, but I left anyway. I lived with a number of people of different ages, including a girl about 8 or 9 years old. The girl had trouble understanding the seriousness of the rule that my cat is never allowed outside. Some big mess occurred, and everyone gathered to clean it up, but my cat (in the dream it wasn't Angie, but a long-furred, orange, tabby kitten) kept on trying to get in the mess. The girl suggested putting the cat outside, and I became very angry with her.

The next day, I drove out into the country to visit a friend. I'm always nervous about driving into the country, it doesn't feel safe. In Raleigh, once you leave the city it becomes even more conservative. The rural culture in North Carolina is dramatically different from the urban culture (and the urban culture isn't particularly progressive either). In some directions, it only takes a few miles of driving to find your self surrounded by the religion-fueled fear and hatred of the untamed tobacco lands. I arrived at my friend's house, carefully noting landmarks and streets, so I could get back home.

I stayed later than I wanted. I don't like driving at night, but I hate staying over the night even more. I made it home easily, relieved to be back in familiar territory. Unfortunately (and I can't remember the reason), I had to go back out into the country the next day, but this time I just couldn't find the way back home. I eventually had to stop and ask one of the natives directions, but he gave me some smart-assed reply and walked off patting himself on the back for being rude to the weird city-fag.

However, some local homosexuals overheard the incident, and told me where I was and how to get back home. They (perhaps a group of 5 or so) said I could stay at their place and make the drive tomorrow. Unfortunately, I really was far away, and felt it wiser to accept their offer. When I go to their house, it was very dirty and in much disrepair. I'm not the cleanest person on Earth, but their house was way past my threshold of decency. I figured it was just one night, and any motel would be just as unhygienic.

An older man in the house, yelling at a young couple, woke me up in the middle of the night. The two young men were standing out in the hall, as the older man raged on about how irresponsible and indecent they were. The problem seemed to center around their room, so I walked by the hall and looked in, and saw one cat on the bed that seemed to be dead and another laid on the floor as if mortally wounded, while a third cat poked at it. I was very upset and just went back to my room and decided to stay awake until the sun rose, when I could leave.

The morning came, and all the cats seemed fine, but the one man was still very angry with the couple. I was thoroughly upset by the experience, and just wanted to get out of the hinterlands. As I got in my car to leave, I noticed an ugly sweaty guy on a lawn mower staring in the window of a neighbor's house. He lustily stared at a very worn looking housewife as she exercised in front of the TV on her exercise ball. She had raccoon-like eyeliner on, and a big frizzy hairdo. She looked as if she was being held up by her rolls of fat. She was staring through the window back at this guy on the lawn mower. Bits of dirt and grass were glued to the sweat on his bald head. She clearly enjoyed his voyeurism. It made my already disturbing experience seem much worse.

The dream was actually more upsetting than amusing, but it seemed to be covered with an inappropriately comedic lacquer. I think that's what made the dream so unpleasant.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Looking Back

Hello All,

Ever since I had the dream I posted in "Frenetic Acting" I always think, "If I had done things right in my life, that's where I would have been now." I really love dreams for giving me a taste of having a vibrant and curious life. This is perhaps the earliest dream I remember. I had this dream when I was three or four.

My parents, my best friend Craig Gillan, and I were on a cruise ship. Every thing looked adult and fancy, and I remember the pressure to be on my best behavior. I had to go to the bathroom. I turned the faucet on to wash my hands. I tried to turn the faucet off, but it just wouldn't turn off. The sink basin began to overflow, and I kept trying to turn it off.

Soon fish started to come through the faucet, and the sink looked like a little aquarium, but then the sea began to fill the cruise ship. I couldn't turn the faucet off, the knob just screwed off. We all went to the deck, and some kid had to go overboard with an inflatable raft, then they just brought her back up onto the ship, and said, "See what you did to her."

That's when I noticed we were still docked. There really wasn't any danger at all, but the ship's captain was still acting like we were all going to drown at sea. As punishment they threw me and my Dad into the sea. I remember him trying to grab hold of me under the water. It looked like we were underneath the deep end of a pool. I started to breath the water, and we both began to turn into fish.

My dream world has always had such a tangible feel to me, my whole life. It's as if it's a place I can go to, if only I knew how to drive to it.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Decisions and Changes

Hello All,

Here is a picture of Angie this morning, and a picture of me standing in front of my desk. The highest picture in the photograph is a picture I drew of the Julian and the Hurricane dream. Last night I had one of those dreams that presents itself in an annoying patchwork, but I'll try to make sense of it here.

The dream began with me in school. A war raged in the continental USA, so it was mandatory for everyone to be trained in the military. I was the teacher's pet in this program and expected to participate in a street battle in a part of the city not secured from the invaders.

I had ethical problems, both with killing people, and with risking my own life, which my parents, the school, and I had spent so many resources and time into teaching and training as an educated member of society. However, my commander (or whatever he'd be called in the military) was so proud of me I had planned to go ahead with the battle and not disappoint him.

Some of my class mates began to also question my decision to go on with participating in active battle. I had considered revealing my status as a sexual minority to have myself kicked-out of the military, but that seemed a very cheap and dishonorable way to go. A friend of mine laid-out an easy plan to go AWOL, and I decided that would be a better way to skip-out of military service because I wouldn't be using my minority status as a wild card to get out of a sticky situation.

It seemed in the dream I had already graduated, and this battle was just a graduating step as far as the military school went, so I just left the campus, and that was that. I thought of the surprise that'd swarm around my military associates and teacher. Now finished with school, and having made my decision to not participate in battle, I returned to my hometown.

My hometown had changed significantly. All the old buildings were there, but so many new buildings had been built, that in some places I had to concentrate to see the old neighborhood underneath. I decided to stay at a small motel operation on the second floor of some offices, and only had about two rooms. The offices seemed to be a place my parents would take me when I was little (such as a dentist office), so they remembered me after spending some time scrutinizing my face. I stayed in one of the rooms and visited my parents. I noticed how the suburbs began to have an urban feel, like row-houses in Baltimore.

I went back to where ever I lived by myself for a short awhile, and then came back to my hometown to visit my parents again. I went to the small motel above the offices again. The people recognized me, and let me walk around unsupervised, but I still felt put off by how quickly the people became unfamiliar with me again. I decided not to stay there. I felt it would be better to just make it a day trip.

I left the motel, and walked down the street, as the turn to my old neighborhood was only a few blocks away. The once quiet (and miserably dull) streets had become full of busy people. I noticed people I knew and talked to, only as long ago as a few years, but they already seemed to have completely forgotten about me. I just kept walking. The police and firefighters had cordoned off a house, and evidently someone was still on fire from the house fire, and they were trying to put this person out. Even though I saw all sorts of people I knew around me, only a stranger started to talk to me about the incident.

I continued to walk down the street, but it soon began to seem more like downtown than it should. I had missed my turn, evidently some building had been built where the turn once had been. I wanted to take the next turn possible, but the wall of buildings remained unbroken. I entered the inner city gates (kind of like a European city has a walled in "old town"). Finally, I saw a turn on the left, the way I needed to go. When I took that street, it came up to a gated tunnel. When I opened the gate, wind rushed out of the tunnel, blowing me backwards. The tunnel was actually an entrance to the old city, and the rush of air was meant to encourage people entering the area to keep on walking.

I kept on looking for a way to turn around and get to my parents house, and the dream ended somewhere around there. Well, I need to get myself ready to go to Cindy's house.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

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

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

Dream in a Dream

Hello All,

Here are pictures of my cat Angie and I this morning. I'm surprised I even remember a dream this morning because Angie kept trying to play with everything on my desk, so I had to keep waking up to get her to stop. Angie wakes up at about 4am and starts playing, some mornings she can be really loud (like this morning) and keeps waking me up. Anyway, I had a dream.

My parents managed to get me into some sort of quick degree program that we all hoped would make it easier for me to find a job. It was a very busy and difficult program, but school type things don't really bother me, and by chance my best friend Craig Gillan, from when I was around 5-7years old was also enrolled there.

The end of the program approached and the instructors alerted us that we would be participating in a short group experiment before graduating. I thought nothing of it, and eagerly looked forward to returning home. Craig Gillan and I were assigned to stay in the same room. It looked like a hospital room, and that's when I became suspicious.

Craig and I sat down on one of the beds and began to read a letter together. The letter told us that our suitcases (which we had packed in anticipation of going home) would be kept from us, and we would be staying in the hospital room for some type of observation. We would have to spend 9 nights in the room. Though it was a small comfort that my childhood friend was with me, I quickly began to panic.

I somehow managed to get momentary access to one of my smaller bags from the nurse (I think I said my toothbrush was in it or something), and took my cell phone out of my bag and hid it in my bedding. The nurse came back to retrieve my bag. As soon as I could hear her footsteps fade out of earshot down the hall, I quickly called my parents. My Mom answered the phone and it seemed to take forever (though I'm sure it was only about 30 seconds) to explain to her what was happening and that I was trapped and needed help and couldn't stay on the phone much longer. My Mom said she didn't know what to do, but she and Dad would get in touch with the institution and see what they could do.

The next thing I remember, I was waking up in my own bedroom at home. I felt very disoriented and came downstairs to the kitchen. My Mom was acting angry with me, but I didn't know why. She then started asking me why I was acting so strange last night, and if I was drinking. I was completely mystified, and had no idea where she was coming from. It was then I realized the school and hospital room had all been part of a dream, and had I probably called my own house from my cell phone, and slept-talked to my Mom. I told her this, and she seemed relieved at the explanation, but didn't seem entirely convinced.

So, that was the dream I remembered. I have a vague phantom memory of another dream, seedy, and taking place at night behind some building, but I can't recall the plot at all to recount it. Today was my first day calling the unemployment people to update them on my job search. I was surprised that the entire phone call was automated, and I never had to speak to a real person. The only job opening they had for me was as a public school teacher. I don't necessarily want to be a public school teacher, but it would be a great way to get out of retail.

It's unfortunate, North Carolina is far too backward to allow a sexual minority like myself to teach in public school, not unless I completely hid any aspect of myself from everyone (including people outside of work). I've never been able to pass as "straight," which I guess is a mixed blessing. I've met a lot of school teachers who where homosexual, and all of them had to be very secretive about their lives.

I'm such a frevrent admirer of education that it would be impossible for me to allow my students to live in the dark about so many truths in life. Even if I could get hired (which, trust me, as an obvious sexual minority I couldn't in NC), I would probably get fired for telling my students both sides of every story, not just the government approved one. It's a shame that many people that would be wonderful educators will never have the chance because of the frightened and ignorant critical mass of the USA.

Thank you for Reading,

Marc

The "What-if" Dreams

Hello All,

Last night I had two dreams I can remember now. Both of them either had a beginning that didn't match the end, or an end that didn't match the beginning. Here is the first one:

I was in the car with someone else, and believe it or not we were both dressed like good old boys from Eastern NC (with the baseball caps ever so lightly rested upon our heads). We were unfamiliar with Raleigh and were looking for Hillsborough St. For those of you from other towns, that would be the main street by NCSU. We were driving some rusty looking Chevrolet, with fruit-shaped car-deodorant pendants hanging around the rear-view mirror, and papers and cups wedged on top the dashboard. We stopped at the Phillips 66 gas station for directions and began to take a left at the intersection.

The guy I was with quickly realized it was the wrong way. So, instead of turning around using a side street or a driveway, I just did a U-turn right there in the intersection and took the next possible direction, which of course, was wrong again. My ever-so impatient passenger implored me to make another U-turn in the intersection and go the only other way in the intersection we hadn't tried. After all this spinning around, I began to be worried a police officer would see us and pull us over for reckless driving. Sure enough, I did see a police officer in my rear-view mirror, but oddly enough he completely ignored us.

When we finally got to Hillsborough St. To our surprise everything was blocked by a mass of construction. There were lone concrete towers with metal pipes sticking out, high mounds of red clay, and half-demolished buildings everywhere, all covered in a constant beige wind of dust. It looked like what I would imagine the Valley of the Kings looks like. We had to leave the car and spent a good time climbing over the construction to reach the nearby neighborhoods we were looking for. Oddly enough, once we got to the house, the guy I was with disappeared, and all the construction was gone. It was just me standing at the Ridgewood Philips 66 watching two rednecks get pulled over by the cops for driving loop-de-loops all around the intersection.

My next dream was a little more detailed, so I hope it won't make this post overly long. The second dream began with me arriving in Raleigh, as if I had never moved here, and was coming straight from Connecticut. I walked into an apartment that evidently was my Dad's. I instantly noticed a small dog-eared and loose-leafed Bible in Spanish on a little night-table. I looked around the apartment, there were only his clothes shoved in the drawers and on the furniture. I thought it seemed as if he had never met my mother, and wonder if perhaps they weren't actually my parents, so I left the apartment to go further into Raleigh.

Now, in real life, Raleigh is not pedestrian-friendly at all. You pretty much have to have a car to live here. It's also one of the uglier cities around. Most buildings have a modular home/ strip-mall type look, and there's hardly a hint of any older architecture that might have once been here. Where Raleigh does seem quaint tends to be in areas that are now crack-ridden and dangerous, so imagine my surprise in the dream when I found myself walking into something not unlike grand-central station.

Huge steel beams held-up railway bridges at least 50 feet above my head, and crowds of people were busily making their way through the station. In every little half-hidden spot, I'd notice a homeless person, or runaway child contently sitting in their area as if they lived there forever. Once I got past the station, I came to a large indoor aquarium. It was a beautiful building with a mezzanine and a glass dome, so you could walk around and look at the sea-life as well as look out the windows to see the many large buildings of this imaginary Raleigh (really, it looked like a real city with people crowded on the streets under beautifully constructed buildings). It was then that I noticed a floor-level pool of water surrounded by tropical plants. I noticed dolphins jumping and squeaking all over it. There was a sign by the guard rail surrounding it, telling you to blow into some horn that would make a sound like a baby dolphin, and that they would approach you.

I looked all over the guardrail for the horn, but couldn't find it. The dolphins continued to jump and play right in front of me anyway, and just as I wished, one of them slowed down and made eye-contact with me. That's when my Dad approached me by the dolphin pool, as if we had planned to meet there.

Well, those are the dreams I can remember from last night. It's early in the day (I woke up about two hours ago), and I already feel tired. Today I'll just be working on my resume and on more pictures of the dream I described in my very first post on this blog. It's a shame how I always seem to draw really great detailed pictures on my crappiest sketching paper. I guess I just feel less inhibited when I'm not using my thick, more expensive "final draft" paper, so I attempt deeper detail and trickier perspective. Once I figure out how to use my hand me down camera (no, I'm not a good with technical electronic things), I'll take some pictures of my artwork, along with some pictures of my cat.

Thank you for reading,

Marc