Thursday, December 31, 1987
QUARTZ—dream journal sequence
QUARTZ journal entry
My night terrors all began with the Zebra Killer. The bad dreams, the waking up, the screaming, the paralysis, the terror of being perused, and then strangled. My grandmother said that I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. More like the living. When my brother was woken by my screams, he said he'd wait to hear if there was an intruder before he'd get out of bed. Either way, he'd hide under the covers.
I thought I was losing my marbles. My mother is schizophrenic and though they keep telling me it isn't hereditary, some part of me can never let go of the idea. Needless to say, I analyze things to the point of death.
My mother is also a clarivoyant. Second Sight runs in the family. Bad enough to be crazy, but clarivoyant too? A self-negating double whammy. When she predicts or finds something, I want to make a rational case for it. Nothing to do with the supernatural or intuition.
I became a non-believer of the supernatural during the wee hours while trying to sneak into the house—the door hinge cracked like someone knocking—I inadvertantly became one of my grandmother's famous banshee ghosts—the ones who knock at the door when death approaches.
Within the week, someone in the family did die, I don't remember who. Her brother Bill? So there I was, both a believer and a non-believer, and also a witness. I toyed with the idea that my real events might be linked up with events yet to happen, and perhaps we provide the link that makes it seem like precognition.
How else to explain the time my high school girlfriends and I were joyriding down Mt. Tam and suddenly, there were a weird dreamlike image of black tires spinning in front of me—distracting me to the point that I said, I don't want to alarm you guys, but I keep seeing spinning tires. They all laughed, called me names and seconds later, the brakes gave out. The owner of the antique red Mercedes in front of us was not happy to be our brake shoe at the T stop. But it kept us from going through the fence and the house below.
Many dreams that I described in detail to my friends would come true. Sometimes I'd misinterpret what I saw, What distinguished them from regular dreams was that they were lucid--no fantastic dream imagery. Normal boring everyday events. Looking back, I blame the dreams on the enormous amounts of grass we used to smoke—it was the late 60's and we were in the middle of it all. But that 's another story.
My hooded dream-murderer demon evolved into other images. I grew bold, or rather, weary of it, so I tried asking it what it wanted with me. I even asked it to unveil itself. Once it changed sex and it became my aunt Jane with whom I was having trouble, and later, it became me. Fear: my own worst enemy.
Through the years the dream image plagued me but I've never written down when these dreams happened. Location doesn't seem to matter—I've had them while in Europe and in Mexico. Imagine what a bloodcurdling scream in the middle of the night will do to the morale of the hotel clientele. Guests lined the hall, some dressed only in sheets looking like real ghosts with white faces! Pardon, I said. Was my face red.
My boyfriends learned not to grab me when the night terrors happened. Besides learning how to scream, I learned to fight in my sleep too. There's a section of the brain that paralyses nearly everyone who has nightmares—so the won't physically respond and hurt themselves or sleeping partner. But I figured out a workaround. I also have thin boundaries. I can fight with the best of street brawlers in my sleep.
Those cliff falling dreams when one wakes up stiff, in a cold sweat and can't move, is an example of this sleep paralysis-- only I, a small statistic, have learned how to move like a ninja warrior.
I even went to my doctor and a therapist who both said I was sane as can be expected, and that it was a result of stress and illness. It seems to happen in cycles. Each time it happened, I thought I should check into the local mental institution— was there something that horribly wrong with me to give me this night terror?
When some friends died, two patterns emerged. One type had symbolic dreams in which the clues of two friend's tragic deaths were hidden. I found out about the deaths after the fact.
My mother banged at my door early one morning. I was in the grips of a dream so horrible and dark I refused to wake u or even remember it but I remember that my cousin Ricky was in it. I remember how the red lights cut through darkness like knives, the sound of metal and cars. He had died in a motorcycle accident on 4th Street in Santa Rosa earler in the morning. I was there. I witnessed it. I saw him slumped over the parked car. Red, red everywhere.
Not all the dream experiences were terrifying. One night, after a wedding and too much champagne, I imagined dwarves marching through my kitchen stacking up crockery, and fixing the sink all night long. I expected to see a lot of dishes in the morning—along with a hangover. My landlady said that was Emilio Celli, her father-in-law. He loved to fix the plumbing. I saw him again and again at the bathroom sink. It was leaking.
When a friend's mother, Betty Lang Wall drowned in Noyo River, I dreamed I talked with her underwater—I remember the salt stung my eyes. With a knife, I cut a baby from my belly. Then Micaela called to say Betty was gone. Washed out to sea.
Another time, Boschka Layton, ill with cancer, died of a heart attack at nine AM, right when I dreamed I rode a black horse through warm dark tunnels, His hooves thundered louder and louder and louder until we reached the opening but it was almost too small for us to squeeze through. We were reborn into bright light in a green garden, the horse was now a colt. I suppose I was younger because I had no sense of age. Rebirth.
It became harder for me to explain it all away as mere coincidence. Either I was crazy or I wasn’t.
My night terrors all began with the Zebra Killer. The bad dreams, the waking up, the screaming, the paralysis, the terror of being perused, and then strangled. My grandmother said that I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. More like the living. When my brother was woken by my screams, he said he'd wait to hear if there was an intruder before he'd get out of bed. Either way, he'd hide under the covers.
I thought I was losing my marbles. My mother is schizophrenic and though they keep telling me it isn't hereditary, some part of me can never let go of the idea. Needless to say, I analyze things to the point of death.
My mother is also a clarivoyant. Second Sight runs in the family. Bad enough to be crazy, but clarivoyant too? A self-negating double whammy. When she predicts or finds something, I want to make a rational case for it. Nothing to do with the supernatural or intuition.
I became a non-believer of the supernatural during the wee hours while trying to sneak into the house—the door hinge cracked like someone knocking—I inadvertantly became one of my grandmother's famous banshee ghosts—the ones who knock at the door when death approaches.
Within the week, someone in the family did die, I don't remember who. Her brother Bill? So there I was, both a believer and a non-believer, and also a witness. I toyed with the idea that my real events might be linked up with events yet to happen, and perhaps we provide the link that makes it seem like precognition.
How else to explain the time my high school girlfriends and I were joyriding down Mt. Tam and suddenly, there were a weird dreamlike image of black tires spinning in front of me—distracting me to the point that I said, I don't want to alarm you guys, but I keep seeing spinning tires. They all laughed, called me names and seconds later, the brakes gave out. The owner of the antique red Mercedes in front of us was not happy to be our brake shoe at the T stop. But it kept us from going through the fence and the house below.
Many dreams that I described in detail to my friends would come true. Sometimes I'd misinterpret what I saw, What distinguished them from regular dreams was that they were lucid--no fantastic dream imagery. Normal boring everyday events. Looking back, I blame the dreams on the enormous amounts of grass we used to smoke—it was the late 60's and we were in the middle of it all. But that 's another story.
My hooded dream-murderer demon evolved into other images. I grew bold, or rather, weary of it, so I tried asking it what it wanted with me. I even asked it to unveil itself. Once it changed sex and it became my aunt Jane with whom I was having trouble, and later, it became me. Fear: my own worst enemy.
Through the years the dream image plagued me but I've never written down when these dreams happened. Location doesn't seem to matter—I've had them while in Europe and in Mexico. Imagine what a bloodcurdling scream in the middle of the night will do to the morale of the hotel clientele. Guests lined the hall, some dressed only in sheets looking like real ghosts with white faces! Pardon, I said. Was my face red.
My boyfriends learned not to grab me when the night terrors happened. Besides learning how to scream, I learned to fight in my sleep too. There's a section of the brain that paralyses nearly everyone who has nightmares—so the won't physically respond and hurt themselves or sleeping partner. But I figured out a workaround. I also have thin boundaries. I can fight with the best of street brawlers in my sleep.
Those cliff falling dreams when one wakes up stiff, in a cold sweat and can't move, is an example of this sleep paralysis-- only I, a small statistic, have learned how to move like a ninja warrior.
I even went to my doctor and a therapist who both said I was sane as can be expected, and that it was a result of stress and illness. It seems to happen in cycles. Each time it happened, I thought I should check into the local mental institution— was there something that horribly wrong with me to give me this night terror?
When some friends died, two patterns emerged. One type had symbolic dreams in which the clues of two friend's tragic deaths were hidden. I found out about the deaths after the fact.
My mother banged at my door early one morning. I was in the grips of a dream so horrible and dark I refused to wake u or even remember it but I remember that my cousin Ricky was in it. I remember how the red lights cut through darkness like knives, the sound of metal and cars. He had died in a motorcycle accident on 4th Street in Santa Rosa earler in the morning. I was there. I witnessed it. I saw him slumped over the parked car. Red, red everywhere.
Not all the dream experiences were terrifying. One night, after a wedding and too much champagne, I imagined dwarves marching through my kitchen stacking up crockery, and fixing the sink all night long. I expected to see a lot of dishes in the morning—along with a hangover. My landlady said that was Emilio Celli, her father-in-law. He loved to fix the plumbing. I saw him again and again at the bathroom sink. It was leaking.
When a friend's mother, Betty Lang Wall drowned in Noyo River, I dreamed I talked with her underwater—I remember the salt stung my eyes. With a knife, I cut a baby from my belly. Then Micaela called to say Betty was gone. Washed out to sea.
Another time, Boschka Layton, ill with cancer, died of a heart attack at nine AM, right when I dreamed I rode a black horse through warm dark tunnels, His hooves thundered louder and louder and louder until we reached the opening but it was almost too small for us to squeeze through. We were reborn into bright light in a green garden, the horse was now a colt. I suppose I was younger because I had no sense of age. Rebirth.
It became harder for me to explain it all away as mere coincidence. Either I was crazy or I wasn’t.
Tuesday, December 1, 1987
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