Sunday, December 26, 2010

Dream 11: My Bed

8/23/10

            Imagine a Desert Island. What do you see? Palm trees lining the perimeter? Crystal Blue Skies? Dark, ponderous ocean on all sides? The water trembled in the bright afternoon sun, hot and red. Quaking and rumbling, an almost imperceptible rumble enveloping the island.
            It was a small landmass, such that from the clearing in the center, you can easily see the entire shore all around you. It might have been as large as one football field.
            I was in that open space, lined by a circle of palm trees, filled with only sand, and occupying my space was a tower, grotesquely haphazard, built from large blocks of stone in no perceptible order. It looked as if some god had dropped granite dominoes from the sky, letting them fall as they may on top of one another, until it was tall and baffling enough to his liking. And at the top - the summit - of the structure was a savage woman and a fully furnished bed.
            I was not alone at the bottom, some burly man joined me. Samson-like, but at times we were one person, he was I and I he, especially when we began to climb up the stony crag. The wild woman guarded the top, taunting us gratingly, hissing, but posed no physical threat to me. I continued my slow climb, hoisting myself up multiple walls, like an infant pulling itself up a set of stairs, one by one, steady. The amazonian woman shrieked and flailed, but once I ascended the final rock and was standing at her level, she became docile and stood aside, even in a manner of humble servility, and gestured in silence towards the bed that stood at the edge of the cliff. I stood staring at the bed, which was my own bed, white sheets rippling lightly, almost imperceptible, in an invisible breeze. And as the sheets rippled above the island, blue skies and tan sand, the bed did not move.

***

            At the Stumpf house, I was having a sleepover with Alex, and he was teaching me how to shift gravity while sitting upright in bed. What he did was, sit with his back up against the wall, then  f o c u s. If you will it, gravity will begin to pull you towards the wall rather than towards the floor, and you can hover near the ceiling for as long as you want! I tried in vain a few times, then began to get the hang of it. Soon, I was floating out of bed, rotating slowly as my body levitated, like I were out in infinite space. Alex and I just chilled up there on the ceiling, in his room, for a while.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Dream 10: The Trap

7/31/10

Walking past Finlay Hall, I notice a student (somebody who in the waking world just looks like a wise-ass, although I do not know him personally) brandishing some long tire-iron / wrench tool, revealing to his friend in confidence that he will be removing the front door off Finlay this evening, as a prank. Not really troubled by this stunt, I made no move to thwart his plans; I was just curious as to how the campus -- staff as well as students -- would react to seeing the vandalism. In retrospect, if something like this had really happened, everyone would just be really confused, because it would just look like a door had been removed with a purpose, but nobody would be accountable for it. Anyway, the kid was compromising the security of the building, and that should have alarmed me, because no one ought to have to live in fear of foreign threats, especially in a gated community. But I learned this lesson through karma.

When I later returned to campus, I was about to enter my dorm room…in Finlay…when my door was no longer there. OKAY, NOW I CARE. Shit. So, being the target of a crime is the only thing that could make me feel morally aware? Well... I had to get on with securing my stuff, because now an invisible clock was ticking, counting down to whenever that kid planned to invade my room and disturb the peace. First thing I did was find a screwing tool, affix hinges to my thick, salmon-colored sleeping bag, and fasten the sleeping bag into a makeshift door. It shouldn’t work, but it did; the bag was flush with the frame of the door, assuming a solid rectangular shape despite gravity and other natural laws…whatever.

I then called my friend Kendall, briefed him about my missing door, and told him to keep watch for the evening; I must have had plans or obligations to be elsewhere. Nevertheless, I wanted to catch the criminal in action, or at least have him caught by someone. The trap was set.

=====================================================================

In a later dream, I promise myself to some girl, and later break her heart and make her cry because Yelena enters my dream and I choose to pursue her instead. Yelena, in this world at least, was the “one who got away,” whom no one could replace or be substitute for, and whom deserved to be pursued to the end of the world.

We are in her kitchen in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, preparing dinner together in the warm company of her family. I just enjoy washing dishes, quietly, by her side.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Dream 9: Recurring Spies

7/21/10

It was a hot day at the pool. People were crowded everywhere, the diving boards were popping and rattling with excitement, and the water cool. The black family that I had arrived there with, with whom I had just traveled back in time to prevent some catastrophe, pulled up in their white Cadillac and let me out, leaving me to conduct whatever surveillance I had to, or rendezvous with a contact etc., but  they waited at the gates as I joined the pool-goers on deck, monitoring me with binoculars. They were a man, his wife, and teenage daughter.

This area looked familiar to me, and though I had to stay focused on the task at hand I felt this buoyant certainty in my core that I had been there before, more importantly, that someone I dearly wanted to see would be there as well. So I walked around, scanning the pool and its patrons: dads, kids, suits, floaties…until I saw a chubby, black haired little boy, struggling to doggy paddle. His eyes were squinted to keep the water out, nose wriggling back and forth. Making more splash than speed, and hardly afloat, this boy was a young me.

My reaction was instant: touched with sympathy, grief, the feeling that I had to atone for something, a desire to make an impact on myself, to possibly rescue myself from future disaster. Even if it might jeopardize the mission, for just one moment I had to make contact with young Joseph in the public pool... I think I needed him more than he needed me.

So, apparently my bathing suit had been on this whole time. I slid into the deep end, and slowly drifted towards the child by the shallower water. There was no hesitation, anxiety, or doubts. As he resolutely slapped the water, I appeared before him, wordlessly taking his hands in mine. He didn’t question me, resist, or scream…just looked solemnly into my eyes and began to kick with confidence, keeping his head above surface with much less effort. I was probably smiling. We remained like this in the water for a minute, with I leading he in a slow and steady waltz through the shallow end, turning in slow motion, and the tenderness I felt for him could only be fully realized through the years which I spent searching and waiting for this moment.

Then, too soon, I had to leave. I don’t remember saying goodbye, nor the actual departure. Next thing I know, I was back in the Cadillac, I suppose somehow I accomplished whatever the mission was…maybe this was my mission.

In a later dream sequence, I am throwing snowballs at some girl as she is walking away from me. She wears a big furry ski coat, with the hood over her head, and though I don’t know who she is, but I think we are romantically involved. We are playing in an airplane military base in Siberia, where all you can see around you is blizzard. After a few tosses, I run up to her from behind, tackle her to the ground, and we wrestle and spoon in the snowdrifts, just yards from some austere-looking barracks, wherein an older aristocratic woman is spying us from afar through a large window, soundly, in the firelit warmth of her shelter.