22 Dream).

I live in a small room or apartment on the second story of a house. At night, I wander around the neighbor’s yard in the dark, I may even enter the home, and all the while terrified of getting caught.

Once back in my room, I look out the window, which overlooks the neighbor’s yard, and discover someone is indeed home, at least now. They’re using a machine to lift up an old car and move it to a new location a short distance away — but then they just drop it, and it hits the ground violently.

Now I’m watching television, and beside me is my maternal grandmother, sitting in a chair. She reaches out for the television in an attempt to change the channel, but given I was in the middle of watching something, I stop her. I tell her to wait until I’m done, and then she can watch whatever she wants.

This compromise doesn’t satisfy her — she’s clearly impatient and is utterly unwilling to be satisfied with anything less than want she wants immediately. I then try to bring up a similar circumstance in my youth, only in that case, the roles were reversed, my hopes being that this will inspire empathy and understanding — but I hardly get a word in edgewise, as she starts yelling over me immediately, and in a manner so overreactive, so extreme that it confuses the hell out of me.

It’s startling, the crazy behavior she’s suddenly exhibiting. She isn’t just angry, she’s in a blind rage, and all because she wants the channel changed. She’s acting like a defiant child throwing an epic temper tantrum. Her face contorts, she sneers at me, her face blood red. She looks like she’s possessed. She continues hissing obscenities and while most of what she says escapes memory, at the end of it she screams, calling me a “little whore.”

My grandmother died in April of 1999, though she never looked so weak as she did in the dream, nor do I ever recall her screaming and throwing an insane tantrum like that. It was so out of character for her, so frightening in that respect, that it woke me out of sleep with a jolt.

Allegedly, dreams of the dead suggest you have unresolved issues with the person in question. While this makes sense given the childhood incident I was trying to tell her about, I no longer recall the incident, nor whether it actually occurred in the first place. I’ll also add that while the bulk of my memories of my maternal grandmother are positive, there were moments of negativity.

There were lone incidents in which I found her particularly cold — at least one, anyway. I had visited her in what would prove to be her last apartment, and while in bed I was experiencing something unusual going on behind my eyes. I struggled to explain it to her, but all she had to say in response was, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

During high school, when she learned I was atheist, I visited her in her aforementioned apartment, and the subject came up. She told me that no one needs to be religious, no one needs to go to church, but that you should always believe in a god. Though she said it minus the “a.” I asked her why, but I felt fear and anger from her and she refused to talk about it. I don’t think I ever brought it up with her again.

There was also a period in my life where I remember having arguments with grandma, specifically when she would watch over my sisters and I at the new house (and so this was after 1988) when my parents were away. I forget what the argument was about, but I do remember being in rage at her.

After writing down the rough details of the dream, I saw memes and videos on my Facebook feed that morning dealing with possession, reminding me of how I thought how she was acting possessed in the closing scene of the dream. Was the dream influenced by the Facebook algorithms, by memes and such I had seen the previous day but could not remember, or was this truly synchronicity — or perhaps just coincidence?

Sadly, as is typical, I haven’t the fucking foggiest clue.

I’ve surely felt that kind of rage before, it’s all-consuming, blinding, tunnel vision focus. But what specifically does it have to do with her?

Earthquakes, Haunted Places, & Leaky Ceilings (8/3/22 Dream).

A group of us are upstairs. I walk into a dark area alone, though not far from the group, when I feel a strange vibration in the floor. I ask if anyone else felt that, and while I think at least the girl I was with — presumably my girlfriend — confirmed that she had, this was soon forgotten, as the entire upper floor started shaking violently, the ground moving like ocean waves.

At some point — I believe while we were upstairs — the group is all around and someone puts a heap of pills in one hand, and then another heap of pills in the other. Both hands can’t hold them all and some of them spill to the ground. All of them are different colors, though the pills in one hand are bigger than the other. Someone tells me the big pills are double-strength, and I should take one or two of those, and double as many smaller ones. Rather than wash them down with the smaller water bottle I stole from work and had already drank out of, I get one of the bigger, unopened bottles from the pack I bought myself.

Suddenly I’m downstairs, alone, in what appears to be the stock room at work, only all the lights are off. Our stock shelves are on tracks so you can roll them and only go down one isle at a time. The second or third isle from the back of the room is exposed, and right above it is a missing or moved ceiling panel from which water is leaking. On top of the shelf right below it is a carboard box with cross-hatch inserts placed in such a way that it catches the leaking water and directs the flow — yet it only directs it to the floor of the isle.

So what might this dream mean?

To start with the leak: water symbolizes emotions and the unconscious, which would seem to imply intense emotions from the past are leaking into consciousness, interfering in my present. This interpretation seems to be reinforced when one considers the previous scene upstairs (remembering that attics, like basements, represent the unconscious) which in retrospect reminds me of a large room my family and I were in when we took the Haunted Flashlight tours at the Madison Cemenary, particularly upstairs, a supposedly haunted area. Aside from the haunted aspect — the past “haunting” the present, that is — we experienced an earthquake up there in the dream, which is said to symbolize intense moods and emotional instability.

The box atop the shelf in the stock room, a kind of jerryrigged means of catching and directing the flow of the water leaking from the ceiling, still confuses me a bit. It’s meaning may derive from the fact that it’s a temporary fix for catching and releasing the water — in other words, the aforementioned intense emotions — in a controlled manner. The fact that it had cross-hatch inserts, as one would expect of a box designed to hold bottles, perhaps indicates it represents my drinking habit and the fact that, while drunk (and high) I engage in writing, artwork, and relentless masturbation.

While I don’t play around with pills nowadays, that scene in the dream may reinforce the drinking part of the interpretation, as alcohol is, of course, a drug. The fact that my hands were overflowing with pills may suggest that I’m doing it too much, too often, which falls in line with the fact that I had to call off yesterday due to being hung over, which is when I had the dream.

Death, Discrimination, Hot Cops, & Other Things.

7/7/14

Dear Specific Grouping of Fossils Who Shall Remain Nameless:

Age clearly does not equal wisdom.

Explain dementia. Explain your own mind, fully capable yet stubbornly ignorant.

Days ago you guys said it all and your simple comments still eat away at me. What’s your beef with the skin on those kids, or the sexual persuasion of others?

We are not all one, nor should we aspire to be. Each should be an individual and raise a one-finger-passed-the-pointer salut to the mentality of the flock if you ask me. You didn’t, but screw you.

Variety is important genetically, culturally, individually. Diversity is not only beautiful, it has survival value. So the way I see it if you judge people by gentiles, color-code, or sexual persuasion you’re not just a run-of-the-mill asshole, you’re an enemy of life.

And I don’t care if that’s how you grew up. It was no more justified then than it is now. I don’t give a ragged rat’s left butt cheek if “that’s just the way the world was” back when you were a lad or a lassie. Life is not static. We made it out of the Dark Ages; evolve out of your medieval mentality.

You developed in the womb and escaped, after all: it is presently well within your capability to free your cranium from your anus.

Idiots.

7/8/21

Never in my life have I had issues with the law. Not once have I been put behind bars. I’m certainly not boasting or complaining here, either. If it ever comes to pass that I am thrown in jail, however, I only ask that the smoking hot, jaw-dropping, gothy-vibing, bad-ass lady-cop with the sleeve of elaborate tattoos that just walked into the dining room at work is the one to put the cuffs on me and take me away.

Please?

7/9/19

We hear stories about human ghosts, even the ghosts of animals, such as dogs. Never do we hear stories about insect apparitions.

Why?

Imagine you’re a moth, flapping about happily until one evening you fly a bit too close to a porch light and meet your crispy demise — only to awaken in that stereotypical tunnel with an even more brilliant light at the end. Unlike the hesitant disembodied humans scattered along the length of the tunnel or the eternally immobilized deer stuck forever at the mouth of it, you, as a moth? You’d have no tendency to linger, certainly no tendency to turn around and head back to haunt the living. No, you’d waste no time flying frantically straight toward the light.

You were frigging made for this. This is kind of your thing.

And it was this stupid, half-baked thought that kept distracting me during meditation this morning.

7/9/15

The first words someone offers me upon coming into work for my third shift:

“I had a dream last night that you died,” she told me. “You came back to life, though, so it’s all good.”

Evidently her and a coworker had come to my grave and I emerged from the fresh soil covering it — a little off-color, yes, but it was no zombie, I was still me, complete with a mug of coffee and a cigarette.

I’ll take that as a happy ending.

Lalo & a False Awakening (7/6/22 Dream).

5:09 AM.

I’m sitting just outside a house with some girl, someone who makes me comfortable, with groups of people scattered here and there across the yard. One group nearby was comprised of friends or family. In the distance I see Lalo, the character from Better Call Saul, who calmly walks up to a group, takes out his gun, and executes at least one of them.

I feel helpless. I fear he won’t stop there and I keep closing my eyes tight, saying under my breath, “Please not my family. Please not my family. Please not my family.”

I wake up, and I think my mother is there as I frantically look around not only for a functional writing utensil but something I can write on before my memory of the dream fades. I’m getting angry, but in the end, I fail. I then have another short dream before waking up for real and writing it down.

On Coping Mechanisms Before the Unknown.

I like shows like The Leftovers and Outer Range because they explore the different coping mechanisms humans adopt when faced with the unknown.

Anomalies in life represent cracks in our worldview, and this may only suggest our worldview is incomplete. On the other hand, it may suggest that, while our worldview may serve as a useful map or model, it has its limitations — or it may even suggest our fundamental assumptions are entirely incorrect.

When such weird shit happens, some people are quick to bury it. They don’t want to know the truth behind it — hell, it terrifies them just thinking about it. So they ignore that UFO sighting, that out-of-body experience, that telepathic experience, that past life memory, that apparition they saw, that precognitive dream.

Maybe they hyperfocus on mundane matters in their life, distract themselves with sex or drugs. They might take refuge in religious interpretations or attempt to dismiss it all by echoing the ridicule such subjects often recieve from popular scientists. In any case, they all appear to value comfort more than they value understanding, and for them comfort requires maintaining the status quo.

Then there are those that love the mystery, but not because they want to solve it, not because they have a burning desire to put the puzzle pieces together, but because they feel they need to maintain that mystery, that magic in life.

Fuck all that bullshit.

Others, they keep looking. They research, investigate, contemplate, and experiment when opportunities arise, determined to achieve greater understanding. They play with models, oscillating between belief and doubt, trying to distinguish between facts and bullshit, changing their views in accordance with subsequent data. They value understanding over comfort.

I truly wish this last reaction was more common.

Foreboding Figures & Alien Masks (5/2/22 Dream).

Its nighttime and I’m with a few others on a boat in the middle of a lake. At some point a tall, foreboding figure appears, wearing a coat and a hood, his face lost in the shadows. I know he is here to either kill us or take us away. I fall overboard, backwards and intentionally, submerging myself beneath the water, where I feel safe. I feel guilty about abandoning the others, though I knew if I had stayed I would be unable to help them, and even if I failed there was no sense in all of us being killed or taken.

These justifications do not alleviate my guilt in the least.

Once I make it to shore, I scout at least two buildings — apartment buildings, I believe — looking for the figure, though I cannot recall by what means I tracked him. At some point I am in the snow-covered parking lot in front of one of the buildings, and I see something sticking out of the snow, buried but partially revealed. Pulling it out and holding it in my gands, I find that its one of those plastic masks that fit around the entirety of the head, like a Halloween mask. Its a mask of a Gray alien. As I look down at it, I feel disturbed and confused. As I’m holding it, examining it, a woman drives towards my direction in the parking lot, about to drive passed me. I can see that she’s striving to see what I’m holding, curious regarding what I’ve found, so I hold it up to show her, wanting to share my confusion in a way. As soon as she sees it, however, she averts her eyes, now wide with fear, and continues driving passed me with slightly increased speed.

I know that water, according to Carl Jung, is a symbol for the emotions and the unconscious, so perhaps my falling into the lake is meant to signify my tendency to dissociate during times of high stress. Beneath the water I felt entirely comfortable and safe, which just reinforces the interpretation. Being on the boat and falling off of it may even reference my out-of-body experiences, which tend to occur when I’m stressed, though not always.

Jung would say the figure signifies my shadow, my inner anti-ego. His presence and my fear, along with the potential out of body interpretation, may suggest that he instead signifies the aggressive entity I encountered last time I was down there in that otherworldly place. Or both may be accurate. Regardless as to the nature of my OBEs and the otherworldly environments I fall into, perhaps the entity I encountered actually is a psychological projection — perhaps it is my shadow, in other words.

In any case, trying to track him down on land and pulling that alien mask out of the snow is more difficult for me to interpret. I submerged myself in water, I pulled the mask out of snow, which is to say water’s frosty version: is there a direct association here? And perhaps another association given that the figure had no face, and I later found the alien mask? Maybe the alien mask was itself a reference to the shadow, which by its very nature is “alien” to the ego.

In further contemplating the mask issue, I remember that at some point yesterday, I believe during the drive home from work, I was thinking about masks in the psychological sense. I remembered how a friend of mine back in high school, and a line in a song from the first Shindown CD, spoke about how they don’t wear masks.

I call bullshit. Everyone wears masks.

We cannot see our Origional Face. The masks we show the world (the Jungian persona) and the masks we show ourselves (the Jungian ego) all accentuate certain aspects of the inner self, play down others, and bury other aspects entirely. Every single soul has a vast plurality of masks, a wardrobe of ccountless costumes. They change in accordance with moods or states of consciousness, they change over the course of one’s life, and over the course of one’s lifetimes. Its how we both grow in self understanding (“find ourselves”) and evolve (“make ourselves”). We all evolve at our own pace, but the process is inevitable.

Dreams are always interesting, but sometimes I wish that — assuming that they are indeed messages from the unconscious — they would communicate their meaning more clearly.

Spiders & Insecurity (4/21/22 Dream).

In an earlier part of the dream, I have two pet spiders in a glass tank in a dark room. One of them managed to get loose and scurried under the small table the tank rested upon. I try desperately to find it, mildly worried that it may be poisonous and either bite me or someone else. I appear more concerned that this isn’t its native habitat, however, that it may constitute an invasive species, and that my small error of letting in loose may have grand, far-reaching consequences.

Later, I’m in some building where I apparently work and I see someone come into the vestibule from one of the two doors that lead to the outside. Its Chad, an old coworker, and I find myself focusing on his ear — or rather where his ear should be. In its place is a hole with what appears to be something like a curled up ear inside of it. It makes me think of a Gray alien for some reason.

Chad seems insulted and resistant when I tell him he has to leave. He ignores me, exits the vestibule, and enters the building. I finally grab him, I think by the shirt sleeve, at which point he starts acting weird and dramatic. He falls to the floor, and with my grip still on his sleeve, I drag him across the floor. Hardly any effort on my part is necessary, however, as he uses one hand to slide himself along towards the doors, where I’m taking him, while remaining otherwise motionless.

Once he’s outside, I try to lock both doors in the vestibule that lead outside, but neither will. You could basically push them open with ease. Inside, I ask whether or not those doors ever close and I’m told that they don’t. At that point Connie (an old store manager who I absolutely loathe in real life, and who loathes me just as much) appears at my side, and I lean in as she whispers into my ear, talking shit about someone who works with me, a woman who doesn’t watch over her children, and how it was her children that ruined the doors. At that point, the alarm wakes me up.

Dreams & Visions (3/22).

3/12/22

I’m in a parked car with three other people. Inside the car I also have everything I own. I step outside and sit on the curb and some foreign guy throws a big coat over me, says things to me in what I think is Spanish, and with what little Spanish I know, I try to thank him. The other three people in the car get out and walk away, but I’m hesitant about going with them. They didn’t lock the doors and I’m afraid someone might steal it and all my possessions.

3/16/22

In meditation, I find myself on the steps leading off the back porch of some ancient-feeling house, leading to backyard where I somehow know a secret party is being held.

3/17/22.

In an image that arises in my mind in the twilight state right before I wake up, I see a bunch of tiny, green seedlings with two leaves each coming out of a rich mound of earth.

3/30/22.

In the dream, there is a guy down the road, some distance away, who evidently has the clicker for my truck, and he keeps popping my hood open. It happens about four or five times, though I don’t think he’s intentionally doing it.

I finally walk over there and step inside a bar, where I talk to the guy, who is a foreign fellow. Mexican, perhaps. By this point the circumstances of the dream appeared to have changed, however.

Now this guy somehow has my truck. Evidently it had been towed, and I ask him how much its going to cost to get it back. I can’t understand him, as he’s either speaking with a heavy accent or speaking a different language altogether, so I ask him to repeat himself a few times. Eventually, it becomes clear that it costs a little over fifty dollars. I try to see if I have exact change with the cash I have in my pocket, but eventually give up and hand him a hundred dollar bill.

My math skills are apparently even worse in the dream world than they are in waking life, as I want to get a drink but worry I won’t be able to afford it given the money I’ll have left over. I consider walking back across the street to my truck, in which I’ve left my wallet, so I can get a drink before the bar closes — which doesn’t make sense. I then awoke to the alarm.

The Copycat Puppy Dream (1/4/22 Dream).

I’m sitting on a curb outside of some store and there’s what seems like a station wagon beside me, parked so its ass end is aimed towards my side. While the back doesn’t seem to be open, there are no windows and the frame where there should be a window stretches almost down to the back bumper. There, crawling around freely in the back, is a small, agonizingly adorable puppy. He’s playing around by himself, and I watch him, smiling.

Concern starts to rise when he gets too close to the edge, and ultimately my concern turns out to be justified, as he falls out. I quickly scoop him up in my arms, petting him, making sure the little guy is all right, worried that the negligent owners may come out of the store and raise hell that I’m holding their pet. Once I’m confident he’s okay, I put him back in the car.

Just then, this foreign fellow comes out with some others. I try and speak to him, to tell him what happened with the puppy, and while I assume he doesn’t know English, he doesn’t even try to understand me — or make eye contact or acknowledge my presence at all, for that matter. He walks behind me, kneeling down where there’s another puppy that looks to be about the same size, sitting in a corner.

This was the one part of an elaborate dream or set of dreams that I remembered upon awakening this morning, but it was the part I elected to write down first. By the time I did, the rest of the dream had faded.

Two things about this dream struck me. First, it seems to be an evolution of a recurring theme in my dreams regarding having forgotten and neglected my pets, though in this case it was someone else, not me.

The other part that struck me is that it appears to be a copycat dream. A few days ago, I had read a short status that Maria Cox had written on social media. She had worked out and then had accidentally taken a nap, and upon awakening recalled having had a dream regarding saving puppies.

As to its potential meaning, its supposed to signify spiritual growth, and even someone giving assistance in that respect. Its nice to have a dream that doesn’t signify something dire, but it bothers me that my mind may have unconsciously plagiarized — or at the very least been heavily inspired by — the dream of another.

Though I suppose its possible this was supposed to signify the aforementioned assistance. Maria Cox does seem balanced, after all — a goal of mine — and aside from being sexy as fuck, she fascinates me.

It is strange, though, that despite not having seen her in person since shortly after high school I’ve written about her several times in this blog.

Fridges, Pets, & Scrotums (12/5-6/21 Dreams).

12/5/21

I think I first saw the fridge in a cluttered, well-lit basement or garage, where it was being stored, as I had been planning on moving out. I had decided to stay, however, so some guy who was with me was going to help me take it back into the kitchen.

Then, abruptly, I’m in the kitchen, staring at the fridge. Is this my fridge, though? Its colored dark orange with silver handles and looks like it came straight out of the 70s. To boot, the doors opened the wrong way, but it didn’t seem as if we had put it upside down or anything. Opening it, I saw that it was packed with stuff, including some things — grapejuice I remember specifically — that I knew I wouldn’t drink. I imagined I’d just leave it there forever, ignoring it, and the stuff would just go to waste, which I found to be a shame.

12/6/21

In one dream scene, I had a pet. If it has a definite identity, I can’t quite remember — it may have been a rabbit or a squirrel, but whatever it was, it was some small, fuzzy creature about the size of my hand. I had tried to take care of it and keep up with it, but I had suddenly realized that I’d forgotten all about it and felt tremendously guilty, horribly irresponsible. Searching for the critter, I quickly find it hiding in a pile of my laundry after accidentally stepping on it, though it seemed to be okay.

This is a recurring theme in my dreams, this scenario of having a pet and then forgetting I have it, having forgotten to take care of it, and then feeling incredible painic, guilt, and self-loathing once I remember it, so I’m quite familiar with the potential meanings:

– Not living up to my responsibilities.
– Failing in an important area of my life.
– Neglecting some aspect of myself symbolized by the particular animal in question.
– Neglecting creative passions.

The animal in this case was of an ambiguous nature, however, and while I did forget about it, I also remembered having put forth more effort in nurturing it and being responsible prior to having forgotten it, too. So hopefully that signifies some improvement.

It probably deals with my feeble attempts to slow down my drinking (which, I mean, is an improvement), my desire to get assessed for ADHD despite having done nothing as of yet to meet that end, and having finally done some of my laundry the previous evening after having put it off for too long.

In the other dream scene, I may be in a bar, perhaps some stadium, and I see a large, Styrofoam cup with huge chunks of ice inside left unattended. Much as I do at work when cleaning the breakroom, I proceed to dump it and throw it away in the trash. As I’m in the midst of doing so, I hear a guy saying, “Stop,” so I stand up and throw it in the trash. When I stand up, there are two guys standing there. Both look like those stereotypical buff, over-aggressive high school jocks constantly seeking situations in which they can assert their masculinity and show what a tough guy they are. The skinner, taller one keeps back a little, but the shorter, bald, and more buff guy gets in my face.

“Can’t you fucking hear?”

“Yeah, but I was in the middle of something.”

In response, he grabs one end of my nutsack through my pants and pinches hard, twisting a little. Trying to play it cool, mostly because any movement or struggle will most certainly exacerbate the situation, I start making sarcastic comments, implying he’s coming onto me. He says nothing, just keeps on pinching and twisting harder and harder and it really begins to hurt.

I think of punching him. I really, really want to punch him, but my arms won’t cooperate, my fists won’t wad up, I don’t have the confidence or know-how to fight. I’m not sure I even know how to throw a punch and I’m too afraid to try.

The testicular pain forces me into waking up at about ten o’clock in the morning, a full hour and a half before my alarm is set to go off. And I went to bed early. So that kind of pissed me off. My balls didn’t really hurt, either, though there was that residual sense of pain, like when you get punched, pinned down, stabbed, or shot in a dream and that phantom sensation lingers after you awaken. In other words, I don’t think it was an actual, physical sensation that then got incorporated into the dream, but rather vice versa.

I wondered what the message behind this dream could be, though, and what I immediately thought was:

“You can’t reason with some people. You can’t talk your way out of some situations. You need to learn to fight, to get physical. To take care of yourself. To defend yourself. To grow some balls.”

And given my balls, or at the very least my scrotum, played a rather painful role in the dream, I have to imagine it had some meaning. There are other possibilities as to its meaning, of course — fertility, sex drive — but power, confidence, courage, the ability to defend oneself, it makes the most sense in this context, methinks.