Wednesday, December 31, 2014

I was hanging out with comedians, including Jay Leno. I shouted a joke at some point, something about the fact that they were comedians, the fact that Jay Leno was there. I don't know why I shouted it. I seemed to be removed from them somewhat, like in another part of the room. It was time for everyone to leave. I got into an elevator with two or three of them. Someone brushed the front of my pants and I said, "Did someone just touch my penis?" thinking this was very witty, and immediately the elevator stopped with a jolt. One of the others pressed a button and it started up again.

I needed to get back home to Storrs from Hartford. I got on a bus that was crowded with rowdy people. After it began on its way I asked the driver if she was going to Storrs. "No," she replied. "We're going to Bethlehem." We agreed to drop me off at the next gas station.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

I was at Eliane’s apartment around the time my dad was dying, and I was somehow responsible. Like I’d let some murderous person into the building by accident.

And I dreamt about cocaine. Big, big piles of coke. Someone offered it to me, a woman I think. The lines looked like little snowdrifts, too big to snort in one go. I felt daunted, but I also desired it. I felt myself getting high even before I leaned over with the bill in my nose.

Sunday, November 09, 2014

There was a flying object low in the sky, not really a plane, but something like a blimp with wings. It began to do slow loop-the-loops. Often in my dreams, the planes crash. Not this time.

I had been in Vegas for a few days and it occurred to me that I had not gambled at all—I had not once sat down at a table, nor wagered on a game, nothing. I felt vaguely proud, but also perplexed. What had I been doing there? It had been some kind of event I think, possibly work-related, but also involving friends.

Toward the end of my dreams I wondered about the motivations of Islamist terrorists.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Had a dream about Eli Manning doing some kind of charity on a beach.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Had a dream about hanging out with Keith Richards, wanting to ask him questions about Stones albums, not being sure if he would be OK with it. I felt the glow of his presence and managed to talk to him a bit but I’m not sure what else happened.

Sunday, September 21, 2014


Elaborate dreams about work. I was assigned to work on two brands one day, though in the work rules in the dream I was only supposed to work on one. The others on one of the brand teams—the copywriter, especially—got angry at me for not completing a job. It was a writing job, not editing, which also was—and is, in real life—not my responsibility. I held up a document containing my meagre efforts so far, and protested that I had this other brand to worry about. Still, I had the guilty sense that I’d dawdled between bouts of work. There was a client meeting. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place, but I recognized enough of the attendees to sit down anyway. I didn’t have a pen. At some point there was something for me to write down, and I noticed a pile of pens at the end of the table, to my left. I wrote it on a little scrap of paper.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

It was the conclusion of a strange and perplexing dream in which S. and I were junkies looking to score. I was trying to get somewhere across town so I took a shortcut through a building which turned out to be a church. There was something going on there—not a service exactly, more like a Sunday school class or a rehearsal of some kind. There were musicians present, black gospel cats. I thought they might play something great, and I should stop and listen. Right then the dream became lucid—I was aware that this was my dream, and that I had control of it. Actually, I did not feel I had full control, only a certain amount of influence, depending on how hard I tried. Like I'd been dealt a hand and it was in my power to play it as best I could. So I conjured up Charlie Parker in the middle of the musicians. There he was, standing at least ten feet tall, with his horn. Then I thought I'd better give him a tune to play and I tried to think of something, "Lover Man" or something, kind of regretting now that I had to decide what happened in this dream, that I was no longer a spectator. And then it ended.

Friday, September 05, 2014

I was consuming heroin in little pebbly crystals, kind of like crack rocks, just eating them.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Someone at work took my chair. My spot was at a round table with a few coworkers, with similar tables nearby. I asked the others at my table, Who took my chair? They looked at me blankly. Then I got up, enraged, and yelled, "Who took my chair?!" Someone at another table got up and returned it, a bit contrite. I wondered whether I'd been too harsh and demanding, whether I'd violated a rule of decorum. I muttered something conciliatory, like "That's OK." I was hoping I wouldn’t get fired for being too angry that someone took my chair.

I woke up believing it was Sunday, but it was Monday.

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Had a final exams dream. The school was a sprawling, multistory building I didn’t recognize. In the center of it was a room in which rested the dead body of Mr. Pride, my late art teacher from high school, naked and somehow perfectly preserved. As usual, I fretted about how I’d do, not having shown up for class, not lately anyway, not having done my reading, and not having understood much, quadratic equations for example. I perused my notebooks and was amazed at the elaborate doodles in the margins, some of which suggested entire graphic novels. I felt a pang of regret and thought, Why don’t I do these anymore?

Monday, June 16, 2014

The band was playing an acoustic set, outdoors, to a fairly large crowd. One of the songs I was going to sing was Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land,” and I was singing it to myself in my head to make sure I remembered the lyrics. Everyone had their own drink. I had ingredients to mix negronis—gin, Campari, sweet vermouth.

Saturday, May 03, 2014

The kitchen window had been left open all night in a blizzard and now there was snow all over the sink and counter and windowsill. I was trying to make breakfast. I noticed that I’d broken an egg onto a saucer which I’d placed on a lit burner. That’s not going to work, I thought. Suddenly the stove was enormous, ten feet tall, and I wondered what I was supposed to do to use it.

Monday, April 14, 2014

I walked out of a store in a strip mall, it looked like the one in Storrs that had the A&P and Oscar’s and CVS. It was snowing. JL was there. A few other people. RS, one of my neighbors growing up, was there too. A small propeller plane pulled up to pick us up. As we climbed aboard I thought of the weight distribution—you have to distribute the weight evenly in planes like that, like we had to when we flew to Viecques in real life. As I took a set in the back I wondered whether my side—the right side—was too heavy. I also wondered how dangerous it was to fly like this in the snow. I wondered what it would be like if we crashed, those horrible seconds of anticipation and then the impact, which I could almost feel in my mind. It was a moment of brutal pain, then nothing.
I went to the Monaco Grand Prix with Dad. It was held outside of town, up in some hills somewhere. In the dream it was 2007, the year Sara and I went, and when Dad was still alive, but I also knew it was now, years later, and the passage of so much time shocked me and made me sad. I thought, what have I done in that time? And then I thought, Jackie was born.

Friday, March 21, 2014

We were staying in a treehouse. It was part of an elaborate complex, high in the sky, spanning several trees. Other people we knew were staying there. It was for some kind of occasion, but I can’t remember what. A calamity occurred, possibly a hurricane. There might have been a fire. As a result, all the ladders to the treehouses were destroyed. No one could get back down. We waited and wondered when we’d get rescued, and how. Maybe helicopters? Eventually I found myself back on solid ground. I don’t know how I got there. But there was one woman still stuck up there. She’d lost her mind and you could hear her prattling on to herself, like a crazy upstairs neighbor.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

PC and I had joined with a group of other people to rent an apartment for a semester of school. The idea was to save money and concentrate on our studies. There was a TV that wouldn’t work right unless you paid for it, by putting money into it I guess, the way pay TVs used to work at bus stations. If you didn’t pay it made an awful staticky noise that got louder and louder until you turned it off or fed it money. We wanted the TV to work so we could watch Yankee games. There was something the matter with A-Rod in the dream, not what’s really wrong with him but something parallel. There was great doubt as to whether he’d play again, whether he’d be any good. He’d been struggling with some kind of all-consuming injury, something that seemed not just physical but maybe spiritual. Crowds of reporters descended upon him as he emerged for spring training, ready to practice and to test himself for all to see.

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Frustrating morning dream about some dreary task that never got done, that I had to plan for and accomplish before moving on somehow.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

I was in some building, a cross between an office building for work and some kind of school building, with dormitories on some floors, classrooms and offices on others. I waited for the elevator to go up. The doors opened and an unconscious man fell out, his body curled fetally across the threshold. I took him by the shoulders and looked at him. Blood was coming from somewhere. I shouted over my shoulder at some people, “Call 911! Call 911!” full of purpose, feeling like I was doing the right thing.