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.

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.

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.

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.

Dream 8: The Dreamed Dreaming

7/19/10

In a deep, maternal redwood forest, upstate somewhere in mountainous New York, the Fordham grads and I were visiting John Shanley for an afternoon of celebration and brotherly sentiment. One of the first things I saw at his house was a mammoth rock wall in his backyard, menacing because of its supreme height and ornery problems, but also enticing. I left my friends in a sprint and leapt up that wall, scaling it with macho ease, swinging, shifting my weight appropriately, going for that hold just out of my reach…shooting my legs out in front of me…rolling my shoulder to its elastic limits…stretching my fingers out, and grabbing on. I was thankful for all that I had learned, about myself and my body’s athletic potential, at the Rock Club in New Rochelle. And I was pretty sure that I was impressing everyone stories below me.

Randeep decides to follow after me and, being a jackass, wants to throw me off the wall. He pulls at my shirt, shaking and jostling me, and I start to lose my grip, when all of the sudden I feel very solid and grounded, like the rock, and freeing one hand from the hold, I grab Randeep by the arm, and yank him of that wall and fling him down to the ground. This was a shock to everyone, as Randeep is way taller than me and occasionally has unnatural strength on his side. Unfortunately, he landed on his face, and wasn’t moving much. FUCK! I thought, I really hurt him badly! So I rushed down to see him, oh man he hasn’t moved yet, his face was just smushed into the earth and his eyes were squinted, and I asked if he was alright. “Yeah,” he responded, “I’m fine.” Ah, forgiveness. We’re friends, after all.

At that moment, I realized that if he hadn’t been the one to fall, I would have, and I would have smashed my face into the concrete or whatever it was, and so I figured that my self-defense was justified. I was simply playing fair. I mean, I could have just resisted pushing him off the rock face, and been peaceful, but since Randeep was antagonizing me then he should have been prepared for retaliation. Not really the best moral to a story, but a just one.

Afterwards, I was in a German-style beer-garden lodge, literally a log cabin, with an anonymous friend of mine (I drew no sort of association between this character and anyone I really know, but if I had to choose one person, it would be my cousin Erick). We were in the basement of the lodge, and I was aware that someone, a large German man, was tailing me, or spying on me. I went upstairs to get some food and a beer, but as a precaution I texted Erick the ominous message, “Someone is following me upstairs…I might die.” I figured that was warning enough.

Upstairs, I was waiting at the bar for my order to be taken, and the shady figure sidled up next to me and said something…a pleasantry maybe, while slowly unzipping a large…white…broad… confidently sinister smile from his hard face. I don’t think I responded, I just ordered a bratwurst with sauerkraut and relish (although I really meant caramelized onions, in retrospect).

Walking over to the dining area, away from the gentleman whom I wasn’t sure was still surveilling me, I took a moment to admire the beautiful Aryan girls all around me: one in particular caught my attention, a tall, dimpled mädchen with short, curly blond hair, parted behind her ear in a little, ivory clip. She was dressed in 1950’s garb, like a child of WWII, and closely resembled a celebrity. Like a cross between Scarlett Johansson and Nicole Kidman, she was gorgeous. And the way she pursed her lips when she smiled, leaving no wrinkle but only smooth, plush cheeks and two little red curls...beautiful.

For whatever reason, I last found myself in a dark warehouse full of hipsters. At first I mingled a bit, scanning the building for anything interesting, peeking into musky rooms with carpets, rooms without carpets, rooms with lights and those without, rooms with kids on dirty mattresses, and decided that my time would be better spent if I found a quiet spot to be along and transcribe a dream that I had the other night.* So I grabbed a plastic folding chair, walked down some old stairs to an empty garage/kitchen, sat next to the sink, and finally got around to writing the following dream…

…In which my dream self, in the kitchen where I now leave him, transcribes Dream 7, also known as “Many Upsets!”

Comment: I actually dreamt Dream 7 a few days before Dream 8, but I had been lazy about transcribing it. It was only until Dream 8 occurred, wherein my dream self took the initiative to perform what I had neglected, that I realized I no longer had an excuse to put off the task. I am pleased with my subconscious for being so responsible, for keeping my waking self motivated and focused.

In a way, then, Dream 7 actually follows Dream 8, both chronologically and thematically! Read both as if my dream self actually dreamt Dream 7 some time before visiting the hipster dump.

Dream 7: Many Upsets

7/15/10

It was the end of the school year, and I was saying goodbye to all of my friends, as well as anyone I ever associated with. I walked through locker rooms, classrooms, quads, giving hugs and wishing well to everyone. One of my guy friends was on his laptop, and I approached him with a favor to ask: I wanted him to look up this Biggie Smalls song, one whose title was eluding my memory, but which I recall being very “soulful” and despondent, like Cam’Ron’s “Harlem Streets” or Jay-Z’s “Never Change.” I even could vaguely remember how the melody went, but despite all my efforts I could not put my finger on the title! So I was extremely frustrated, because I felt it was an appropriate theme to our final parting. Peter White came over and tried to extract some more details about the song from me, but it was no use. I was disappointed, but got over it. As I left, I especially made a point to say goodbye to all the girls I ever spoke to, giving them hugs and of course a big smile.

Ms. Rosenbluth, one of my teachers at the time, was preparing for a yacht cruise, but before leaving campus she appointed me with the responsibility of delivering her a particular apple from a specific location. Then she left, purse swinging over her shoulder. I found whatever apple she had left for me, took it, and headed to the boat where she would be waiting.

While crossing over the aluminum bridge from the dock to the deck, I took a bite from the apple. Upon inspecting the gap I created, I discovered that the apple had been stuffed with prescription pills and other illicit drugs! The whole pulpy inside of the apple was like a landfill of chemicals, and I must have been the drug mule! Looking up from the apple in my hand, I see Ms. Rosenbluth sitting among a group of adults, poised and somewhat aloof, expectant…then she notices me. I’m speechless, mouth open, chunks of apple and capsules falling from my jaw, eyes empty with fear, staring at her dumbly. She looks ready to jump overboard and slice my head off, but she can’t because she is in public and among company. I only speak the words, loud enough to transmit, “I’m getting you fired for this.”

Ms. Rosenbluth’s glare responds in opposition to this threat, but as she’s getting up, possibly to seize the evidence from my hands, I rush out, then run like mad in no particular direction, apple cupped in both hands now, legs knocking into each other more than actually striding, because I am a scared lunatic. I have to find campus security and report that my teacher was either a drug abuser or dealer, but that nevertheless she had to be stopped!

At this moment, my dream self is struck with the unshakable feeling that it had once, at some former time, either itself dreamt this very sequence, or awakenly prognosticated the incident. Even more bizarre, my dream self recalls the motives it prophesied for his actions. Whether the prophecy was self-fulfilling or predestined, is indeterminate.

I feel a sense of accomplishment and gratification in busting my teacher for drugs – a criminal. Approaching campus, I think it best to show the security guard the apple. Instead, the black woman in the booth happens to be a moron and / or poorly trained, because the first thing she does is pick out each pill from the fruit and put them all in a metal tin, then walks me over to the headquarters to deliver the drugs to her superior. I was beyond appalled…the stupid bitch had just totally DESTROYED my case, because it could no longer be easily proven that the drugs had come from the apple! Instead, the contents of the tin were just a juicy mess of medication that could have come from anywhere.I was dumbfounded, stammering to the head honcho as convincingly as I could about what I had witnessed, with this bitch humming next to me, holding all that my life was worth in a box. Nevertheless, I try to explain what had happened. He nods when I’m done, then grabs the container from the woman and walks into an office, where other old, white, authoritative-looking men are sitting.

Everything was jeopardized, and to freak me out even more, at that moment Ms. Rosenbluth slides urgently into the office, doesn’t notice me thank God, and enters the chief’s quarters, probably to turn the story around to incriminate me! I creep around the office, laying low, feeling like a convict myself, wondering what will happen next, when I catch the security boss sweeping the halls, looking for me. Taking a risk, I make myself present, and he looks relieved; they believed my story and arrested my teacher!

Then, I became horrified: I actually took a bite out of that laced apple…who knows how many drugs I ingested simultaneously, and what sort of awful things are happening to me??? Am I going to drop dead any moment, or get so high and screwed up that my brain liquefies? Shit, Shit! I run to the nurse’s office, goddammit they won’t even let me in, I have to wait for the receptionist to buzz me in, then when I finally get to her desk, no one is there and I’m told to wait?! WHAT! And then, a bunch of Asians drunk off their asses blunder in, one of them slurring that they just got wasted on a booze cruise, and their friend needed immediate attention. For some reason, I grant them this; I forsake my health to let total strangers receive medical attention before me…why?

Well, when I saw the sick kid in question, I almost felt like throwing up, and my sympathy for his plight was more extreme than my own. This kid’s mouth was protruding grotesquely, his jaw might have even been unhinged, because there was a blockage of vomit in his throat. For some reason, his puke had dammed up in his mouth, and he was choking. I could see that he was getting no oxygen, and took control of the situation. Prying open his mouth with my bear hands, I inspect the mass of chum that is blocked up all the way from the back of his throat, as if his stomach were reversing itself out his mouth. I had his friends hold his jaws open, grabbed a broomstick, and jammed the handle (which looked like a toothpick, relative to the unnaturally widened, stretched-open mouth) deep down in there, shoveling out what I could to free a passage to the lungs. After loosening up the upset - bile and pink undigested food – by scooping globs of it out from his taut lips, the kid could freely vomit the rest up on his own, and did so, everywhere. He puked up his own bodyweight I’m pretty sure, as his friends looked on in stupefaction. I just ran out of there…I finally had to take care of myself.

Wandering the ship, I find a lonely perch of railing looking over the dark violent blue waters and force everything in me overboard.

Switch scene: From the fourth floor of Walsh Library, during finals week, I must run down to the first for some reason. Passing through a section of desks, I see Brandon Smith, completely wasted, annihilated, sick. His friend, a female, is comforting and coaching him as he vomits into a wastebasket next to his desk. His vomit contains an unnatural amount of dental floss. I don’t think I say much to either of them. I continue on until I get to the first floor, pass the help desk, then exit the place, intent on something.