Dream 16: Steaks

7/4/11

I was playing / socializing in the living room / bedroom of a house, when I remembered that I had left some steaks frying on the stove. The kitchen was fully furnished in black marble flooring, dark wood cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and mellowed in a blanket of refined, delicate, even sophisticated ambient yellow lighting.

The steaks were bubbling over the sides of the pan in coagulated, rich yellow fat and hissing grease, a pot of meat, smoking and salted. The butter popped and stirred, and I grabbed a fork and dumped the steaks in my plate, a juicy pile of slabs of flesh.

The steaks were salted; maybe someone had seasoned them earlier. Using only my hands, I gripped a flank and stuffed it into my voracious mouth, teeth tearing in as grease slid down my face. I chewed loudly and with zeal. My mouth never closed; it just kept on being fed.

Everything about the steaks was ecstasy. I smelled the meat still steaming into my nostrils -- I was breathing hunger. Every sinew tore in my teeth, gnashing fibers and slivers of the tenderest meat, dissolving on my tongue, melting as I chewed. And my hands were always reaching for the next piece: one groping the plate, blindly feeling around for the next piece, while the other in my lips, fumbling the loose bites downward, sliding along slick teeth and flapping tongue.

I grabbed a bottle of barbecue sauce, but I don’t recall using it. I just kind of waved it above my head and shook it like a rock, as I began to hear music and danced around the kitchen table in the hot yellow light.

Dream 15: Tension

12/6/10

The first episode of this warped nightmare is a series of false awakenings. First, I am in bed, dark dawn, exhausted, cross-eyed and babbling for Theo my dog. Theeeeeeeeooooooooo I moan, eyeballs itching from pus and contact lenses, hands slapping the side of my bed in search of fur and ears. Space itself is bending and I am quickly losing consciousness again as the dense grey of morning masks everything.

Eyes open - I must have been dreaming, and it is in fact almost dawn. With greater lucidity, I roll over and  l u r c h  myself up onto my bedpost, keeling over the rail blindly as I fumble for the light switch. My knuckles grate against the cold wall, fingers limply reaching for ... it. click click click click click as I throw the switch, but the light doesn’t come on. Damn it, I must still be dreaming, so I collapse into sleep again…

Dawn a third time. I must be awake now (please), because I need to get to class. I manage to get out of bed and numbly tumble into the dark living room, turning down the hall. I stagger through narrow grey, void of thought, but before I make it out the front door I wake up a fourth time. ARGGGGG After some confusion, I discover a sizeable tarantula under my bed and vainly fight it.

After this saga, I find myself awake and dressed, storming out of my living room in Long Island and running madly up to my bedroom, as I’ve just quarreled with my mom. Of course she storms in, and my sister follows to watch. And we have ourselves a good old-fashioned showdown. I get up in her face, like noses touching, naturally towering over her and my shoulders thrust forward, daring her to do whatever it was she threatened. Do it. You wouldn’t. Stone-cold fury in my eyes as I try to conquer my mom, intimidating her to retreat backwards around my room and leave or leave me alone. Defensively she grabs my neck, which is bulging and tense, and words end; we just stare grimly. Who will falter first? Who will win? Raw grit embalms my brain as I draw all power of intimidation into my brow and she keeps a steady grip on my throat. Her face is ice and she looks about ready to burst...so must I. 

Surprisingly, nothing happens. The tension dissolves immediately as I give up and dash out of the house with my sister in toe. I knew I could count on her! We pile into our Black Humvee and drive off down the street, me riding shotgun. Cruising slowly, looking for something as we pass through residential streets filled with people. We sense war in the air, the presence of a foreign threat, and suddenly everyone is a suspect. But I get the feeling that we, my sister and I, are in fact the terrorists.

The reality is still unclear to me even as I write this.

Pulling over, we leave the vehicle and head towards a tree, where four pistols are stealthily hanging from branches. We both grab two each, steel Magnums, and prepare to blast off down the road, armed and dangerous! Action. 

Pickup trucks and vans are pulling up next to and behind us, trailing us for a few blocks, then speeding off down side streets, as we continue our reconnaissance. I keep my sights on anyone and everyone, especially the motorists eyeing us suspiciously, one gun cocked and raised and aimed at the head. Pieu! I whisper as I pull a mock trigger and fire one imaginary bullet at a time at cars and pedestrians. Mock recoil. Pieu!

No one is chasing us yet, but everyone seems to want us dead, and my sister Kim at the wheel is doing a great deal of pitching as we accelerate to the point of speeding tremendously. My anxiety creeps up, and I pull the hammer back, as beat-up trucks begin to keep speed with us. Pulling into an underground parking complex below the mall, we abduct an older woman and her middle-aged daughter, Southern and middle-class, opening the back door and throwing them in. I fire a warning shot or two in the air and at an approaching van, howling and cheering. Kim, hit the gas! 

Climbing out my passenger window, I hang from the careening Ranger by the door handle. The door swings open as we run over some sidewalk and I’m hanging over the edge of the roof by my armpit, beating up against the side of the truck with the wind, shooting wildly, blindly. By now all scenery is blurred and we are the only car on the road. So we crash into the house of our hostages, right through the garage, and I scour the rooms for any more occupants as Kim holds the women hostage in their kitchen. I discover the den, and as I notice the TV is on, an older, heavyset man turns slowly in his lay-z-boy chair from his view of TV, towards me, and I’ve already drawn to his forehead, ready to fire.

“Who are you?!” I yell, Aim. His hands are raised for surrender but his calm demeanor shakes me, and I sort of snap out of whatever survival, autonomic fight-or-flight combat mode I was in. 

My gun looks foreign to me, and it’s awfully quiet everywhere. Who is he? A husband or something, I don’t know. I don't know. I stop knowing what’s going on. What’s going on? I slouch in confusion and exhaustion. I forget my gun and purpose.

“What do I Do now?”

Idea: Short Story: Two Old Store Owners

Background: I was in an Economics class, thinking about the theoretical conditions under which a producer (firm, company) can obtain the most profit from his business. I don't want to get too technical, but the idea is that there is a Minimum price at which you can sell an item and still make a net profit from that sale. Any price below, and you're a sucker who's losing money (for fellow economic geeks out there, this is the marginal cost of the good -- it should not be larger than the marginal price for which you sell an extra unit).

Anyway, I was musing about one of the fundamental, crucial assumptions made by economists, that is, that people are rational beings, who make rational decisions. I thought, is this really true? Are people always so sane and logical? Instinct and years of economics has told me No, often decisions made in market situations are not the optimal ones. In fact, they can be rather disadvantageous. I want to investigate that error in judgment.

Execution: I'd like for someone to write a short story, comedic, about two elderly men in a small town who own the same type of store (hardware? auto repair? appliance?) and are trying to put the other out of business. Except they are so stubborn and curmudgeonly, that they are willing to cut their prices so much that they take a loss, just to draw business away from the other. It actually becomes absurd how often they undercut one another...it gets so severe that it begins to occur multiple times per hour. Eventually some of the townspeople become alarmed by the rivalry that they try to warn the old owners against putting themselves into bankruptcy by charging too little, but each is so hell-bent on ruining the other that soon they are just giving their goods away.

The competition ends with both stores going bankrupt and out of business, and the men having to suffer defeat. Still, no embarrassment though; they are firm in their (irrationale) price war until the very end.

But does the story necessarily end there? Where do the men go after they lose their businesses? Do they learn a lesson? (I'm guessing not). Does the audience?

Inspiration: The short stories of Nikolai Gogol, who exploits the absurdity of the everyman in his ego-driven interactions with others equally as dimwitted as he.

Idea: Short Film: The Few Frictionless Minutes

This is an idea for a short film I had a while back. It doesn't have to be long, maybe five to ten minutes.

Background: I ask the question, "What would happen if friction (as in, the physical force that keeps ALL things from slipping) disappeared one arbitrary moment in time?" The answer is, utter madness would ensue. The entire universe as we know it would literally unravel, screw by screw, thread by thread, and everything, every structure around us, maybe even ourselves, would collapse and crumble like a sand castle, leveled to the ground. My film offers a close-to-lifelike as possible perspective on the first few moments in which the world experiences a complete lack of friction.

Some scenes to consider:

A group of college kids sitting in a living room, on couches, shooting the shit.

A middle-aged, attractive woman driving on the highway.

The crowd at a professional baseball game.

An amusement park, On the top of the Ferris Wheel.

That's all I can think of now, but any situation/environment will provide ample opportunity for action, because the force of friction is so overwhelmingly pervasive. I have no doubt that we take it for granted more than any other force commonly experienced. In dramatic, panoramic slow-motion, with the audio removed, the film would capture the following...

Execution: Set up the film by presenting all environments as they naturally are, giving a few glimpses of  the action going on with a variety of shots. Adolescents laughing and joking on couch ::: Woman checking her rear view mirror as she prepares to make a turn ::: Runner rounding first base, kicking up dust behind him ::: Sweethearts at the top of the Ferris Wheel, operator sweating under the sun at the bottom :::

This film will be scored, all orchestra, with no supplemental audio from the actual footage. At some moment, after the audience is settled into some comfortable understanding of what's going on, a musical cue is given (violins striking a high, dissonant note?), and chaos ensues in the natural world. Cellos hammer away, leading us through the hell that ensues...

Living room: Boys begin to slide off the couch towards the floor, simultaneously. They all start looking confused and horrified. As they are sliding, the entire room around them appears to slide as well. Zippers on their jackets are mysteriously becoming undone. The open windows are slowing falling, though no one is pushing them. Bottles of beer are slipping out of the boy's hands, spilling onto the floor. The screws in the hinges of the doors are slowly turning outward, as if drawn by an invisible magnet. The oscillating floor fan just falls over, because the rubber belt moving the fan blades deatches from the engine and snaps, and all gears within the fan itself come apart. Nails are sliding out of the walls, dropping the framed photos they were holding up.

Car: The car starts to drift in the road, as if it were on an ice rink. The woman cannot, for the life of her, grip the smooth wheel. All mechanical parts within the car fall apart simultaneously. The woman, screaming in terror, is too slipping to the floor of the vehicle. In fact, all cars behind and in front of the woman, on the road, are sliding, bumping, crashing, as the camera pans out. We see crazy things happening in the background as well, buildings wobbling, airplanes miles high nosediving.

Baseball Game: Batter up; friction goes after the pitch, so as the batter is swinging, he kicks his feet up and falls backwards as he tries to turn to swing. The bat flies from his hand. THE ENTIRE CROWD ARE DROPPING EVERYTHING AND SLIPPING OUT OF THEIR SEATS. Anything being supported with the force of friction, as opposed to hanging or leaning, is falling down. (Are you seeing a pattern developing)

Carnival: The wheel begins to drop.

The camera offers these surreal vignettes, flowing from one scene to the next, as chaos and entropy escalates. I ask the director, use your imagination; but beyond that, use your intellect. Try to comprehend ALL that would be affected within a restricted environment were friction to suddenly disappear. The list is far longer than what I have provided. Consider the macroscopic as well as the microscopic level of things. See the knots in ropes unraveling. See that crooked drawer slide out of the armoire and onto the floor. See entire series of books, pots, TV's topple off shelves. UNDERSTAND THAT, UNDER THE THEORETICAL LAWS OF PHYSICS, UNLESS AN OBJECT IS PERFECTLY LEVEL, IT WILL NOT SUPPORT ANYTHING, AND EVERYTHING WILL BE PULLED TOWARDS THE GROUND BY THE FORCE OF GRAVITY. FRICTION IS OFTEN TIMES THE ONLY THING KEEPING US UP.

I emphasize that all this should be occurring in slow motion. Also, don't put any subtitle on the screen at the moment of transformation, like "*Friction Gone*" or something corny like that. The shots, and the title of the film, will tell the audience all they need to know.

Other Specs: I'm not sure how this movie should end. My suggestion is you just cut to blackness after enough devastation has been shown, as the anti-denouement to this supernatural conflict. Keep the orchestra music going while you roll the credits.

Dream 14: In a Hotel

11/25/10

“Well, wait up for me?” My few friends already had their coats on, it was early Spring. We were ready to leave the hotel, but I realized that I first needed to take a shower.

“Sure.” They zip up, I watched them walk towards the station wagon in the dirt parking lot, and returned to the room. It was rather luxurious, lots of polished brass and white marble, and the sleeping quarters were open with large windows facing the late morning sun.

I enter the shower – multiple large heads, brass; stone tile surface; glass doors – then exit after some time…I realized that was still in my dress clothes, which were now soaked through. A minor inconvenience, no matter. Peeling off my brown silk pants, striped blue cotton shirt,  tan socks, I perceived people moving around in my bathroom…lots of them! Bodies large and small...colorful, or maybe just colors; But I turned my head in terror and there was nothing! Only, an empty bathroom, disheveled, much larger than it needed to be and full of furniture and clothing. The running shower sprayed SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS to my apparent solitude.

Despite the unlikelihood, I was certain I saw something, more than just suspicious. So to assuage my curiosity, I begin to casually pace between the bathroom and bedroom, actually pretending to the nobody in the suite that I wasn’t looking for them. I kept my eyes either fixed directly in front of me or locked on the steam-filled shower, carefully tip-toeing and making no sounds, ears perked and pupils wide. Again, flashes of colors and limbs in my periphery, so I break my mock trance and spin around, to a room full of life-size cartoon people: two dimensional, bold-outlined, colored-in-the-lines, four-fingered, wild-haired, empty-eyed cartoon people.

Not breaking stride, the flock of specters continued to mill around the bathroom, just all staring at me. Their faces displayed some curiosity, and even impishness, while mine probably just exhibited terror. I couldn’t even find words, just stood in the threshold between the two rooms and watched as they watched me for a few moments. I think I got the hell out of there quick, leaving the shower running and my wet clothes dripping over the rails.

Dream 13: Disturbances

9/3/10

It is possible that I’ve actually had this dream on more than one occasion…A recurring dream. My uncertainty lies in the fact that this realization was made by my dream-self during the dream’s course. Was this merely a delusion? Or archived memories being re-drawn, reborn?

I was meditating up in a tree-house, although not some slipshod, weekend hobby tree-house with one room and amateur carpentry. This was a home, in a tree, and made almost completely out of smoothed and polished wood. The word “autochthonous” comes to mind, since the structure blended almost seamlessly in with its surrounding sylvan environment. And my house had a lot of open space; the outer walls were practically all window (no panes of glass though…just open air, for a more complete synthesis with the surrounding nature).

            Boom! The crack of a shot echoed in the woods, and I felt immediately threatened. Someone had fired at me! A rifle, to be exact; I knew it was a sniper rifle, and that there was a sniper somewhere in the trees, targeting me. Boom! again. He was trying to kill me. I look out into the forest, over the canopy, seemingly miles afar into the treetops, in hopes of spotting my assassin. I see rustling, but nothing more. I cannot make out any human form. But I immediately get low to the ground and crawl towards my spiral staircase in the center of the room, to get down to ground level and a safer location.

            It’s around this time that I have the thought, the spark of lucidity, that I’ve been in this exact dream before. That my dream-self can actually have its own consciousness is amazing.

            Some adults are congregating on the floor below, men and women alike, and I recognize them as my acquaintances. They also are aware of the sniper, and report having been fired at as well. He’s going after all of us! BOOM! This time, the shot is closer, and although we are below the canopy now, I definitely see movement in the treetops, coming from the same direction as last time. Flash of blue wiggling and vanishing quicker than I can recognize it. Our assassin is advancing through the trees, approaching our dwelling for a better shot. I see the flash of some limbs flailing from a branch as our assailant leaps through the air to his next mark. The four (maybe five) of us crouch down and hustle behind a steel bookcase or large safe, whatever, for protection.

            At this point we discuss the necessity of defending ourselves, and that’s when I discover a black Glock in my right hand. As soon as I notice my weapon, however, four (or five) bullets WHIZ by my head in super slow motion, ripping and curling through the window space and through the room, around my head; they leave slow visual trails of bronze and nickel snaking like comet tails, thick winding coils wrapping around me, and past the trails I see a man in a blue shirt peeking out from behind a patch of branches…he’s only a few meters from me! A phantom, more than a man, acrobat with a deadly weapon, on a mission to end me. Instinctively I raise my right hand to eye level, close my left eye, aim my handgun, and fire three rounds into his chest. He falls from his perch.

***

Familiarity with the movie “Inception” is recommended, to fully recognize the action that takes place.

An individual builds his memory palace like a warehouse building, floor-by-floor. In the basement are his deepest, darkest, most sinister memories and ideas, monsters of the subconscious and irreconcilable regrets. As he enters the elevator shaft, enclosed by only an iron fence, and travels skyward, the memories become lighter, happier, more peaceful. At the tallest floor accessible by buttons reside the most magnificent memories, those of pure splendor and love, sunshine, the memories most frequently looked back upon with exuberant longing and adoration. This individual’s top floor is a beach, with his wife and children playing by the surf.

I am an intruder into this man’s mind. I have gained entry into his memory hotel, and am riding the elevator upwards. I know of a trick that hotel patrons use to access the exclusive penthouse suites, those located at the VERY top of the building, but which cannot be reached by the pressing of any one button. Instead, I know to hit the topmost buttons in all the columns simultaneously (granted, there must be more than one column…in this case there was). The elevator continues half a floor past the beach scene, and stops. I pry open the fence doors and climb to the next floor, which is concrete, barren, dark, and extends forever in every direction, like an infinite parking garage, absent of time. The only light comes from the beach below, and a perfectly square hole in the ceiling above the elevator car. I climb onto the car and hoist myself through the opening, up to the roof, the roof of this man’s mind.

Stepping out into the ascetic city streets, from the manhole whence I emerged, I recognize this place as the man’s subconscious. It resembles a post-apocalyptic New York City, where the sky is a churning stormy grey. My footsteps echo down the street, which is void of everything except the most plain, austere cement sidewalk. All cars, signs, coloring, has vanished. There aren’t even storefronts or entrances anywhere - the faces of the buildings are flat and windowless, stone blocks which may or may not be hollow. The face of the city begs for ornamentation and animation. Just then, the silent street produces three well-dressed agents, advancing quickly in my direction.

I suppose I am also an agent, but more likely a thief. My mission is to perform extraction or espionage upon this memory palace, the mind, and only now, once I have seen the raw, inner crust of the subconscious and its loneliness am I forced to face defensive combat against the mind itself. The three guards approach, question, and ultimately attack me. I manage to kill one of the guards in our battle. As the ringleader has my throat under his boot, however, his other henchman turns on him, rescuing my life in the process.

See, I had had the foresight to send a double-agent ahead of me to infiltrate the security of this mind: to establish himself with the reconnaissance team, and shadow the number-one until it was time for me to be hostilely confronted...at which point he would use the element of surprise and betray his own team and rejoin me. The plan worked; my accomplice takes me by the arm and pulls me up from the ground where I lay.

Dream 12: Makeout Sesh

8/24/10

After making out with Chelsea for a good 3 hours, intimate touching, rubbing, feeling, kissing, tonguing, etc., I had a dream that we made out for an additional two hours in the creamy pinkish light of our autumn afternoon. Throughout my dream, the Beatle’s “When I’m Sixty-Four” was playing from somewhere in the room, and astoundingly, every note was hit, even the clarinet solos! It was as if my brain had a vinyl recording of the song; it was hyper-realistic. For most of my dream, Chelsea I were staring playfully into each other's eyes.

***

After waking up, I related my fantastic and amusing dream to Chelsea, who was still lying next to me. I then fell back asleep, and dreamt that I was in an old yellow dusty courtroom, wooden, and the Beatles themselves were the defendants on trial. One of them stepped up to the interview box to give their testimony, but at no one's cue, the fab four broke out into song, again “When I’m Sixty-Four.” A live band carried the bouncy tune as the courtroom around me transformed into an elaborate, burlesque stage, complete with garish theatrics and choreography. It was a droll little number, and even I sang along.