boccaderlupo

I dreamed I was up on Church Street. The wreckage of an old arcade. Half the building had come down. It didn't look like anybody could be living there, but you'd see people winding through the ruins.

There was a guy I knew, not from the waking world, a couple years older than us. He was a sort of sambo player who also did some striking. He was constantly grinning, good natured, unselfconscious. He had set up in an old, wrecked studio, and was training there. He was a high rank, with those cut-sleeve sambo outfits. We trained a bit. He had a strange stance, which I assumed was due to some obscure striking mechanism that he didn't deploy, and I kept dropping him again and again, simple stuff, single legs, etc. He kept getting knocked down and getting back up again, like it was nothing, unperturbed.

*

I dreamed our family had moved to Italy, to a valley below the town where a bunch of our family members moved to after the war. A nice little house, very small and cozy, yet with a tiny courtyard. The wife and I were cleaning it out, throwing away garbage. We had been talking to my friend from high school, whose parents had moved to Bulgaria. They were in some kind of camp, and I was trying to arrange for them to come to us via train, and they would live with us. But things didn't look good. There was some kind of war going on now out there, disrupting things.

My aunt came down from the hill for a visit, bringing some neighborhood children with her. She wanted to go get gelato with them, so we accompanied them; she pressed a crumpled-bill into my hand, to pay for it.

*

I dreamed I was portraying a British secret agent. With my brother, who was also a British secret agent. Fancy suits. We were aboard a steamship, docked off New York City. There were spies everywhere. We ran across the mazelike decks of the ship, dodging bad guys, making heroic leaps, defying gravity. We threw a couple of the bad guys overboard into the water, then slid down a rope to the docks, making our escape.

I dreamed I was back at the gym. It was full of light, light blue walls. A deejay was setting up. One of my old training partners, a very strong fellow from overseas, was having a birthday party of some sort. They asked my family and I to stay, as they were making pancakes for the party, but we had to keep moving on.

I dreamed I was driving through a New England town in an old Ford Mustang. My passengers were two east Asian folks, a man and a woman, old and wizened, wearing brown clothes that almost looked like old sacks. We were trying to get to a particular train station in a particular town; the train there would take you straight through to Boston. Unfortunately, there was no obviously route to the train station, and when I finally thought I found one, I ended up in a dusty field overflowing with people, like a country fair. It was all I could do to turn the car around and drive out of there. To my frustration, the map said the station was less than a mile away right beyond the field, but there seemed no road, and I thought I could hear the distant whistle of a train.

I pulled in to a gas station and, leaving my passengers in the car, went into the attached country store. There was a guy on line in front of me who turned out to be the actor and director Mel Gibson. I asked him about the station, and he started explaining a convoluted route to get there. I told him that I suspected the train station was just beyond the field, but he shook he head. "No, it doesn't work that way," he said, loading up his arms with groceries. "Let me show you."

We left and stood outside the store, and he pointed and gesticulated, explaining the way I had to go. The train whistle sounded again, closer.

*

I dreamed I was waiting on a corner in the rain. Some campus in Essex County, a bunch of college kids with me. Maybe we were waiting for a bus. The rain was clear, a light spring shower, but I didn't feel like getting soaked. I walked back to my car and got in it, hoping to wait out the rain. Three Albanian guys strode up to the car. One knocked on my window. When I rolled it down, he reached inside at my throat. I had a knife, and slashed his hand and forearm. He recoiled in pain, and the guys started hollering at me. A cop strolled up to see what the ruckus was, and the Albanian guys accused me. The cop stared at them, then at me, then back at them.

I dreamed the wife and I were detectives in that city by the sea that I often visit when I am asleep. A few blocks from the ocean there was a building, mixed-use, maybe four stories, that sprawled almost a whole block, bodegas and such on the bottom. We were looking for someone inside, but when the super let us in, the interior was deceptively small, with steep steps leading up a blue, blue staircase that ended in....nothing at the top, no door, nothing but rickety handrails. We walked the halls and staircase again and again, then went outside and scoped the building out. It was impossible. There had to be more to the building that that. People who seemed to be residing there kept entering and exiting, but we were stumped.

Our colleague, a red-headed Mexican fellow with a handlebar mustache (no such person in real life), asked the super where the door was to the rest of the apartments. The super, perhaps thinking this fair-hair fellow was a gringo, pretended not to understand the question, to which our colleague bellowed: DONDE ESTA LA PUERTAAAAA.

Meekly the super showed us a side door that blended into the blue walls of the staircase, and a whole other part of the building opened to us, bustling, bursting with life. We went to a window and watched clouds rolling across the sea in fading orange light.

*

I dreamed the director of my wife's school had been a famous cabaret singer in yer youth. None of us knew this, not even my wife. We went out to breakfast with her and the family in a classic New Jersey diner. People stared at her wherever she went. A young man came over to her with a record, the cover depicting her at the height of her career, some decades prior, and asked her to sign it. She smiled and did so, and we were all taken aback by the sudden realization: this was her. You think you know somebody...

I dreamed I was with my family in some unrecognized home. It didn't seem like our town. Things were bad out there. The whole family went to visit a shop we had seen, a kind of flea market that also had a variety of desserts and such. My son found a rack of "belly tees," and pulled out one featuring The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. "Purple Rain." He handed it to me, laughing. An Indian fellow nearby started chuckling, but then I noticed he was wearing a "belly tee" featuring the New York Yankees, worn over a dark thermal, which he hurriedly began to doff. I laughed.

We returned to the house. The marketplace had been full of light and humor. Outside, though, it was darkness. People walked by bearing torches, headed for parts unknown. My son-in-law was an artist or sculptor; he and my daughter intended to go out, but I was dubious. I knew my son-in-law might be a target for a certain drug dealer who lived in the area, some unknown vendetta. They decided they would wear disguises. My son-in-law made a sort of paper mache dragon costume, painted a variety of colors, almost like one of those Chinese dragons but in Christmastime. The dragon had lanterns dangling from its horns. My wife and I both painted our daughter's face: bride of the dragon. She didn't look like herself anymore, although I wondered how my son-in-law was going to move in that daffy costume.

We watched them depart down the alleyway. They turned into the street, their shadows snuffed out by the fires passing by.

I dreamed I met my family for dinner at an antiquated rest stop on the Parkway. They were all driving in a large SUV. I, instead, had a small plastic orb that I would squeeze my body into and would obey my mental commands, and I would roll along the roads with the greatest of ease. As we turned to leave, I saw miles and miles of traffic on the Parkway—huge, menacing vehicles of all kinds—and began to rethink my decision.

*

I dreamed my boss asked me to watch over his pets while he was away. They consisted of a very old, nearly lame white horse; a gaunt, aged pitt bull; and two younger, sprightly dogs. He explained that I was to "put them through their paces," a fitness routine he had devised for them, where they would jump up straight in the air on all four legs, then do a sort of push-up, and then again and again. I saw the old horse, in desperation, begin to jump. It was a sad spectacle, the animal's tongue half-hanging out of its mouth. Likewise the old pit bull, whose legs seemed to collapse underneath it when it landed.

My boss seemed unfazed by the goings-on. I wanted to tell him, "you're killing these beasts," but then he departed, and I was left to watch over them.

*

I dreamed the wife and I went to visit an old friend who had moved back to Brazil with her husband. It was in a kind of old suburb, homes closely set together. Despite the tropical foliage and heat, you wouldn't know you were in Brazil. We parked our car and got out, and went to the indicated home. Two little old wizened ladies stood at the door, and opened it for us. I tried my best to say thank you in my mangled Portugese.

"You're not gonna try and use that to speak with people, are you?" said one old lady with close-cropped hair, a tinge of a Queens accent. "We're Jewish."

"Jews of Brazil!" I replied in English, smiling. "How'd you end up coming down here?"

They just shrugged, and we went inside.

There were many floors and stairs in the beige, damp house. The first floor had about two feet of water. Many other people were there, all English speakers, as well; artists, it seemed, refugees. Our friend and her husband took us around and showed us our room. The air was humid and filled with strange bugs and spiders. A bevy of them had crawled up around my mouth, and one had stung me in my armpit. I swore to myself then that I would never return to this country.

I dreamed the wife and I were taking a small boat around Antarctica. The place had thawed out, and the rivers were flowing.

*

I dreamed the family was at a feast in Belleville at a church I had never heard of, for a saint I had never heard of. We walked around the block. Kids on bicycles did wheelies in the middle of the street. Outside the church, at an adjoining pizza place, people were sprawled out on the sidewalk and curb, sunbathing. It was much too cold for that. Inside, we ordered pizza through a set of Western swinging doors, and inquired as to how to get to the church, even though it seemed right there, just out of reach.

I dreamed I was talking with my father, buonanima. He spoke of a time when he was a child and he had arrived home, only to find the devil with his face pressed up against a window, wearing a hideous grin. My father was terrified. He found a small drum, and began to beat it, louder and louder. After a time, the devil, seemingly troubled by the drum, slunk away and did not return.

I dreamed we lived in a world where seas were rising exponentially, and many had taken to living on ships. Civilization was mostly broken down. I was on a ship that was tossed interminably by grey waves. The chief of our tribe sent myself and another scout to the mainland, which in this case was Texas, somewhere near Dallas, to investigate a community there. I was just happy to get off the water.

I found in a sort of large, pueblo meeting house what might have been the last of the Boomers, as it were: very aged post-hippie and yuppie types, their faces creased with age, whiling away the time, generally happy and oblivious to the incessant rise of the seas. Deep inside this structure there was a horrific machine: at least 20-30 people had been hooked up to electric chairs that lined the edges of a room, where one flick of the switch would kill them all at once; all that remained in the chairs were slowly rotting skeletons. I intuited, as with all dreams, that another tribe was converging on this otherwise happy place, and that they would soon add the inhabitants to the victims of these chairs, whomever they were.

My goal was to ascertain whether there was viable land or gold among these folks. They heedlessly gave me some bags of gold, and continued swinging in their rockers, oblivious to the encroaching doom. I headed back to the ships.

I dreamed I took the wife and I to a drive-in circus. We parked amidst cars arrayed this way and that in a field that was partly enclosed by a kind of half-stadium. They were looking for audience members to join a troupe of clowns, and I halfheartedly raised my hand. They announced the retirement of my favorite radio deejay, and I grew sad. Suddenly, the guy in the car next to me, some muscle car from the high times, rammed into our vehicle. I made the wife get out of the car, and, along with another fellow in a neighboring car we rammed right back. The front of my car was severely damaged—the guy had a sort of battery ram that looked like a cowpunch on the front of his vehicle, and it was tearing through our more modern cars with ease—yet somehow I managed to push his vehicle far off into one side of the field. People were yelling and screaming. The guy's car sputtered, spinning in a ditch, turning back towards us. I got out of my car and leaped onto his, and pulled him through the windshield, strangling him.

*

I dreamed my brother and I were at some kind of restaurant on a river, maybe down in South Carolina (I've never been to that state). The son of the owner of the restaurant, a rotund, ginger-haired lad, wanted to take us on a tour of the environs and maybe stop at some riverside bars. I told him I wouldn't do so if it involved driving, as I anticipated drinking booze. The kid told us we could go by boat, and directed us to a small vessel on the side of the place. He began piloting us upriver, but we became entrapped by the current, and couldn't go any farther.

I dreamed we were chasing the devil across land and sea. The devil in this case was portrayed by actor Steve Buscemi, in high camp style, with a mustache and all the accoutrements: red horns, pitchfork, red cape, although he would sometimes doff these in preference of a fedora.

We met with hundreds of other people in what seemed like a large barn. Christians of various denominations, people of myriad other faiths, all sitting at tables with white tablecloths, as a convention. There was a coordinated reading of the old rite of exorcism from the 1600s. My son, sitting next to me, was asked to read a part of it, handed a microphone. He read well, but then the next speaker was from far across the building, and nobody at our table could hear.

A group of boys dressed like scouts came rushing in, bearing antique muskets and blunderbuss and wearing headbands with feathers in them. On the headbands were cards with an insignia: a weathered gravestone with a death's head. They were here searching for the devil, but he had already fled the premises.

We got on a plane to scour the area from the skies. It turned out, however, that the devil was on the plane. Indeed, he was the pilot, and set it to fly straight up in the air until it ran out of fuel. The angle was so steep we all crashed to the rear of the plane, pinned, unable to move. The devil, on th other hand, sauntered out gaily and tipped his fedora at me. I was angry and flailed at him, but was unable to do any damage. He leaped from the plane and into the night.

I dreamed we were listening to a tune and watching its accompanying video. Four streetsigns at night, seen only in silhouette at first. Some kind of electronic beat, very minimalist. My friend from the Pines nodded along. At the end, you could read one of the signs said: "Abbey Road." Then, the title of the song showed on the screen: "Die, Stubborn Century."

I had gotten new eyes implanted, given to me by some kind donor. The operation had been done inside a sprawling mall, lounges all about, high ceilings above with vast skylights. I had to blink a couple of times to get the images to click. Everyone was happy to see I made it through the surgery. They told of various folks who had come to visit while I was under, some of whom I knew in the waking world, others not. Some gangster types, even. "I'm well liked," I thought.

I visited my brother's old friend from high school. His office was in the mall, and I had to wade through crowds to get there. A lady in the office said "shhh." The man's infant child was there sleeping in a corner of the office. After greeting him, we went over to see the kid, who was on a bottom shelf, filed away beneath all sorts of supplies and surrounded by cats, indeed clad in one of those animal outfits they put on kids these days. I lifted a sheet of paper and there the baby was, snoring away as he ought to.

I dreamed I was walking along the national mall with the president elect, he of the orange countenance. He was explaining that I was to be the handler for a lady spy from Israel; they wanted to make sure she wasn't up to anything nefarious. We went through a passage in a wall into an underground elevator in black vaults below the surface. Here I met the woman, a few years older than myself, with a braid of frayed reddish hair and sharp features. Garrulous, she talked a lot, complaining disinterestedly about various things. This person is a spy? I thought to myself. We sat in an kitchen in that underground vault into the wee hours, her talking, me just listening and wondering.

*

I dreamed I was in Oklahoma, a large gathering in a warehouse-like space. Lots of old coworkers were there. An old boss of mine, dead now nigh on two years, was also there, clad in his Class A getup. He looked somehow shriveled and sick, with sunken cheeks, and it seemed like he couldn't get up from his seat. He was asking me about something, perhaps to get him something, but I couldn't really understand what it was.

I dreamed I was traveling with the family in Florida. We were walking along a road, then took a footpath, a supposed shortcut, through a swamp. Up behind up, swimming through the grass, came a serpent with horns and hair. I tried to run, but the grass inhibited my movement. All I could see and hear was a rustling in the grass...

*

I dreamed I was climbing a mountain that was also somehow indoors, or rather had platforms set all along it. The way was so steep that I would have to run on all fours, but I found other travelers speeding past me standing upright. Still, I continued on my way, stooped.

I dreamed we had assembled a boat for my son, from parts in a box, as one would furniture. It had some cartoons he likes drawn on the sides of it. We transported it inside an old van down near the river, and rolled it down the hill and into the water. On the way down it rolled blithely through two lanes of crisscrossing traffic, nearly getting struck, then plop, in the water, which was smooth like a mirror.

*

I dreamed our office had been given access to some luxury suite on a horsetrack. It was decorated with New York Jets paraphernalia, and I believe it officially belonged to the other of the team. The office secretary was there; she was trying to make arrangements to get on the track and actually ride one of the horses, which I thought was an ill-conceived notion, but then one of the waiters, a tall, pale fellow in glasses, snuck up behind her and began being abusively rude. I grabbed the guy and tossed him on the ground. He reacted with rage that faded into the surprise.

"I know how to fight," he told me, voice quivering, as I slammed him on the ground. And that was it.

I dreamed the wife, the son, and I traveled down to D.C. by rail. From there we were supposed to catch a plane to Rome, but we never did. Instead, we spent a day or two loping around an elaborate train station (I've never been on the trains in D.C.). The ceiling of the main station was covered with a variety of mismatched artwork, including canvases and graffiti of all kinds, a kaleidoscope, swirling colors and contrasting styles. You would stroll along looking up, trying to make sense of it all.

The station was quasi-deserted, as if the town was on holiday. We sat at a cafe where a young woman explained to us, very patiently, the history of the station and how its ceiling came to be this hub of artwork, but I can't remember the details.

*

I dreamed I was part of an elite squad of assassins who was set to take out this dangerous gang that had taken up residence in a school near us. We had made an attempt earlier that had failed, and now our team was in a bar, making plans on a second assault. We had to exclude some team members who had other obligations, like family things, and this didn't sit well with one fellow, a member of the Army. He planned, I knew, to get us all so drunk that none of us would be able to participate in the raid, and so we would be forced to postpone.

I knew, however, that this was something I had to do all by myself. So I pretended to ingest a copious amount of Wild Turkey, and fell asleep with mouth ajar, as if I were the first one who drank myself unconscious. The others were having a swell old time, but slowly they passed out in drunken stupor. Then I got myself up, gingerly placing my half-filled glass on a table, and getting myself ready to go to work.

I dreamed I was baking a cake that looked like a fish. I was sitting in one place for hours, folding various types of batter and such (I don't know how to bake) into little cubes that looked like a blue-scaled fish, and piling them into a pan that would then go into the oven. It might have been for my son's birthday.

From time to time I would amble about the place, which was full of people waiting on food, including the cake. There were in attendance two historic masters of capoeira and jiu jitsu, respectively, both from Brasil. I spoke to them in my limited Portuguese. They didn't know each other, and I was inclined to introduce them, but I couldn't remember anyone's name.

There was some grumbling about how long the food was taking, but finally I finished with my part of the cake and sent it off to be baked.

I dreamed a group of gentlemen of means had convinced several NFL players (from the Chargers, for some reason) to play an exhibition "game" against several aging stars of Euro soccer clubs. The modified rules, which prohibited tackling in the American football sense, amounted to a game in which the soccer players kicked the ball while the American footballers threw the ball around like handball, trying to send it into the net. It promised to be something of a spectacle, and for some reason the Americans still wore helmets, despite the dearth of tackling (perhaps just a visual cue to the spectators).

This hybrid experiment was taking place at an indoor stadium in Jersey City (I know of no such stadium in the waking world), and I was somehow involved in the proceedings, perhaps as a guy who'd made the original pitch for some kind of hybrid contest.

It was a low-scoring affair at first, with no goals for the first half, but then, due to a seeming total lack of defense, ended up going into the 50s range in terms of scoring, on both sides (I believe the soccer players prevailed, but only by a hair).

During a break in the game, I had gone to a restroom with a large, oval mirror. It was overhung by a curtain. As I raised the curtain, I noticed that my reflection had its back turned to me. I demanded it turn around, but when it did, my face was twisted in a demonic snarl, darkness raging.

"You can't even bear to look at me," my reflection sneered, and once again turned its back.

I replaced the curtain over the haunted mirror and returned to the sidelines.

I dreamed my friend from college escorted us out into the pines, where he’d made a grisly discovery on one of his regular walks. It was some immense animal, unidentifiable, hairy skin but its body turning to mush, swarmed with giant, hideous flies.

*

I dreamed of a fountain inside a small, tiled room, on which was also lit a constant flame. There was a voice coming from the foundtain, that had a threefold hymn. I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like:

Remember the God
to whom you turn;

Remember the God
who gave you form;

Remember the One whose words
in your soul burns.

*

I dreamed my son got jumped on Ridgewood Ave. while he was walking over to visit his girlfriend (he doesn't have a girlfriend in the waking world, to my knowledge). It was either in front of Sal's junkyard, or one of the perpetrators was a kiid named Sal, or perhaps both. He had fended them off and only had a few scrapes to show for it. We were trying to get him to describe the exact location, and I was drawing a map using a pencil. My son found it funny that the map was drawn on a paper on which was printed a different map.

I dreamed the wife and I went to Williamsburg with another couple. We were at a cafe, and I had gone to the bathroom. When I emerged, there was a woman there whom I recognized—I used to work with her at the bookstore decades ago, and I suspected she had a crush on me of some kind. She was Turkish, with dark hair and dark brows, and we clumsily reintroduced ourselves to each other. (This person does not exist in the waking world.) When I introduced my wife, she cringed some. Then we left.

Outside, we mounted spacecraft that looked like streamlined electric razors and took off into the night sky. It was something along the lines of a video game, but not quite. We were instructed by a grizzled old fellow over the radio, a veteran pilot who understood the nuances of flight and the game.

Within this "game" there existed various species of malevolent physical entities that could only be slain by firing a laser beam from our craft down their gullets. Often they were gigantic. We flew from the cafe into a twisting underground passage. Here, our coach explained, lived a beast called Dharma (no obvious relation to the concept of the same name, at least superficially). It was a massive reptile like a Komodo dragon, striped black and red and blue, with two giant, pincer-like nails that it would use to rake the earth. Fortunately, it would never look up, so a savvy pilot could fly through its coils virtually undisturbed, so long as you minded its writhing body.

Having bypassed this beast, we landed on the streets on the other side (Manhattan, maybe?). Here we dismounted and waited on a queue for the subway. There was a young woman here who was also among these evil entities, but she behaved more like someone possessed, flailing about on the ground, but alternatingly lucid. Our coach stood now with us, and tried to do battle with this possessed woman, blasting her with a laser gun, but it was of no use. She crawled towards us, and suddenly a vicious second mouth appeared on her torso, snarling and howling.

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boccaderlupo

May 2025

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Page generated May. 24th, 2025 09:13 pm

Entries tagged with dreams

Escapes

Pancakes at the gym

A distant station

Famed detectives

A painted dragon

Three dreams in as many weeks

Travels and a feast

The devil and the drum

High water and hell

A drive-in circus and traveling upstream

Chasing Satan

'Die, Stubborn Century'

Of spies and after-hours requests

A serpent and a wolf

A boat in a box

A train station and a gang takeover

A fish cake

A hybrid game and a haunted mirror

Mess in the woods

A flight