21).

3/27/21

After waking up, I put on the coffee and checked my YouTube feed, excited to find not only that someone had posted a clip from The Joe Rogan Experience that featured a new interview with Doug Stanhope, one of my favorite comedians, but that it involved him talking about his experiences with lucid dreaming. Within a minute or two of watching it, as Stanhope was explaining a panic attack he had on the road, I had to pause the video, however. It triggered something I felt intensely and had on the tip of my mental tongue. Suddenly, the dream scene came to me.

I’m driving along this road that spirals up alongside a mountain, with cars occasionally coming from the other direction. Initially I get anxious when I discover that rather than a white line to my left, the road abruptly cuts off at the ledge, but my terror increases tenfold when my lane begins to increasingly narrow as the other widens. My car can no longer fit within the confines of my lane, so I have to veer into the other lane lest I fall off the ledge, but because the road spirals around the mountain, I can’t anticipate when I’ll run into oncoming traffic. Understandably, anxiety is at its peak.

At some point we stop the car in some lightly forested area to the side of the road and I get out of the car, and I think my father is there with me. Its now nighttime. As I’m outside the car, presumably just stretching my legs, another car pulls up, having come from the opposite direction, I think, and parks incredibly close alongside our own. In the back window I see Eve, one of my sisters, lift up her head and look out. Her eyes are hardly open and she looks very groggy, as if she had been asleep and had been awakened by the car stopping.

The only other scene I recall, though I can’t even be certain it came from the same dream, involved seeing myself from an outside perspective. My hair is long, perhaps down to my shoulders, and slicked back. While it is back to its original dark brown, rather than the current salt-and-pepper color, its incredibly thin at the top, and I remember thinking how ridiculous it looked. At the very least I should wear a hat, I thought to myself, though I really should shave it off entirely.

In real life, I’ve been shaving my head for years, and the peach fuzz has grown out a bit lately. Yesterday I recall seeing myself in the mirror and thinking I should shave it before work on Sunday, so to some degree I’m sure this served as the inspiration.

I am curious as to why my father and Eve have been popping up in my dreams lately, particularly without my mother and youngest sister, Linda. There was a lone dream scene featuring them that I recorded but failed to share yesterday. I remembered it when I initially woke yesterday, but the dream I later had during my nap seemed far more interesting. In any case, it seems particularly relevant here.

3/26/21

We’re in a restaurant that’s basically a huge room with a blue carpet. People may have small tables, but they seem to all be sitting in chairs. I’m sitting away from the crowd, amidst which Eve and my father sit. Just passed me, at the side opposite the crowd, a woman steps up to the microphone. At the exact moment she says something and turns her head to the side a bit, the Imperial March from Star Wars plays on the speakers. Though I can’t remember what it was that she said, within the context of the dream it seemed perfectly timed.

From where they are sitting, Eve points out to me that I tracked in mud with my shoes, and I can see little pieces of mud on the blue carpet of the place. Then my father hands me a piece of paper that the mechanic who had evidently been checking out the car as we were there had given him.

“See if you can understand any of that,” he says, and I could not. It was a list, all of it written in messy, cursive handwriting, and I couldn’t make out a single word.

Not only did this dream feature Dad and Eve, but it referenced Darth Vader, much as a previous dream did (3/16/21), specifically when I saw an ordinary, human shadow transform into the shadow of Vader with a bird perched on his shoulder.

Its interesting to me that I go through periods where my dreams, over the course of a variable span of time, seem to reveal connections between them — at the level of themes, specific symbols, or even suggestions that they’re part of the same narrative. For instance, the restaurant dream could easily have been a later act of the dream I had last night, despite the fact that they came to me in reverse.

Its also curious to me that I go through periods of excellent dream recall only to have it abruptly fall off, leaving me to remember little to no dreams for extensive periods.

I haven’t really contemplated the meaning behind these dreams much lately, either. What the fuck is going on in the dark, unconscious areas of my mind?

Two Dreams of Death & Betrayal (3/25-3/26/21).

3/25/21

I don’t know how I met them, but I kept visiting a small, cozy apartment to see an elderly couple. I came to know them very well, felt very close to them, and cared a great deal about them. They also seemed to really like me, sincerely care about me. Though we were in no way related, I feel, we became like family. A deep trust formed between us, a strong bond that I grew to feel was impenetrable, unconditional.

Eventually, however, something horrible happens — I either killed someone or they erroneously believed that I did — and their attitude toward me entirely changed. They reacted towards me as if I was an entirely different person and wanted nothing to do with me. I felt devastated and betrayed.

3/26/21

I work at a store in a mall with a black guy, a close friend. He appears to go missing one day and I go out looking for him. At night I go out looking around this huge lake surrounded by a forest that’s in front of the mall. Though he doesn’t see me, I find him among a group of people who I know to be members of a dangerous cartel or gang, and I overhear their conversation. From this I put together that he is getting into the illegal fishing trade in order to make more money and support his family, and that this is but his first step into the criminal organization.

In retrospect, this may have been inspired by Seaspiracy, a documentary on Netflix that I watched, I believe, the evening before.

Anyway, I sneak off around the lake before I’m discovered and sit down, taking cover in some trees a comfortable distance away. As I’m sitting there, gathering my thoughts, his wife and their two children — both young girls, I think — approach me and I somehow end up telling her about my recent discovery.

After doing so, I beg her not to walk over there, especially so given she has the kids with her, as I haven’t the slightest doubt the cartel members will kill them on the spot. After saying this, I remember looking up at her, and judging from her nonverbals and her general vibe that she’s so concerned and angry she’s almost certainly going to ignore my advice and all logic and walk over there, and the thought literally terrifies me.

Though I realize its likely just my paranoia, I’m concerned enough that she’s not sitting down like me, as they might see her and that might be enough justification in their eyes to eliminate potential witnesses to the conversation they’re having with her husband.

Suddenly I’m back in the mall, walking into the store I work in, which is populated with a lot of people. On my way inside, navigating through the crowd, I pass by my friend, who has suddenly and unexpectedly shown back up at work. He says nothing to me, and I say nothing to him, but we meet each other’s eyes and he gives me a hard look. To me his eyes seem to convey a mixture of anger and shame over my discovery, I feel, which he clearly now knows about, and disappointment over what he’s now forced to do, which I feel certain involves killing me.

As continue on towards the back of the store, I find that the place is suddenly and unexpectedly going into lockdown: no one else comes in, no one in can go out. I am briefly in a room inside the store that seems like a classroom, and I overhear someone sitting at one of the tables nearby the window, through which the night sky is revealed, who says they didn’t know that SpaceX rockets had lights like that. To me, this immediately conjures the suspicioun that this lockdown circumstance may have something to do with UFOs.

I suddenly can no longer ignore it and am becoming increasingly incapable of holding it: I have to piss, and pronto. I make my way to the bathroom, and this area of the place looks exactly like the fast food restaurant where I work. Unfortunately, just as I’m on my way to the bathroom, I find a woman is setting up a barricade right before the pathway I’m on leads to the front counter, beyond which is the dining room and restrooms.

In retrospect, which is to say in the course of documenting this dream upon awakening, I realize this lady, though here cast in the role of what would seem to be a manager, is the very same lady that first appeared in the dream regarding the RV and an apparent military occupation (3/24/21). As I realized in this former dream but failed to document at the time, she appears to be modeled after the actress who plays Grace Mallory in the television adaptation of the comic book, The Boys — a show my youngest sister suggested to me some time ago and which I binged two seasons of a week or two back.

In any case, as she’s putting up the barricade, I tell her I have to piss, but she tells me no one can go beyond the barricade. I tell her that if that’s the case, I’m either going to piss in the mop sink or piss into a cup in the mop sink, it was her choice. Either way, I was going to piss. Seeming mildly amused, doing a poor job of holding back a smile, she seems to respect my stubbornness like before, in the other dream, and just gives up, gives in, and tells me to just do it.

On my way to the mop sink, I enter through a doorway through which everyone else appears to be going out the opposite direction when I see someone I know. I tell them that my friend is likely going to kill me, so if by chance I die, they know who did it. Despite the fact that I’m in a hurry, I do my damnedest to emphasize this to ensure the person understands before we go our opposite ways.

Keeping with the classroom theme from before, the room I enter seems suspiciously akin to the art room from high school, which was more or less my sanctuary during those four, formative years. I spent lunchtime there. I came in early and left school late to do artwork in there. I spent as much time in that room as I could.

Unlike the old art room, however, this room had a mop sink exactly like we do in the stock room at work. Its basically like a small closet without doors that a single person, maybe two, could fit in, and it has a drain at the bottom. A former employee from years ago, who worked third shift when we had a third shift, used to actually piss in there, as sick and fucked up as that sounds.

So I approach the mop sink and keep trying to pee but I constantly suffer from preventative interruptions. People just won’t leave me in peace. They keep coming up to me, talking to me. At one point, a woman comes into the room with two kids and I fear they’ll accidentally see me, so I can’t just whip it out and let it go. One guy even came up behind me and tried to pee at my back. I yelled at him, physically turned him around, and pushed him away.

Then, once I’m finally alone, the most frustrating thing happens: I just can’t make it come out. Thankfully I didn’t, too, as I might have pissed the bed. I wake up shortly thereafter with a painfully full bladder and have to run to bathroom to piss for real.

Of Cluttered RV’s & Vans & a Militant Rob Lowe (3/24 & 3/23/21 Dreams).

3/24/21

I had a toothache last night, so on my way home I bought some ice cream, popped some ibuprofen, and then looked up some home remedies. I ate, and after watching two episodes of The X-Files, popped two sleeping pills and tried to get some sleep around three in the morning.

At some point after daybreak, I awoke to the sound of those air raid sirens, or whatever they call them now, and then heard loud booms that may have been thunder, though my paranoid brain immediately thought of bombs. I clearly wasn’t too worried, however, as I then fell back asleep.

In the dream, I’m in my apartment and think I hear dad in the hallway talking to Eve, the eldest of my two younger sisters, who in the dream evidently lives just down the hall from me. Opening my door, I find that it is him. He tells me about a small shelf in the hallway that someone doesn’t want and that I might find useful. I was happy to take it, maybe to put some of my books on it.

Suddenly the dream changes, or I have another dream.

I’m living in a big RV parked in some big lot, and I’m trying to declutter the place and get things organized. I feel very comfortable here. Some of the stuff seems to be mine, some I’m not sure about. Some of these possessions may have been from the previous occupant.

I’m on my bed organizing things when people start coming in, but until someone brings in their two kids I don’t realize I’m in my underwear and quickly cover myself. Very swiftly, there appears to be a lot of people inside, almost a party atmosphere, and that’s when a cop shows up and demands that everybody come outside. Everyone else rushes outside, but I take my time, putting on my pants and then my shoes.

When I finally open the door and step out into the lot, the huge crowd of people seem to be standing, patiently awaiting something, and it just doesn’t feel right to me. Something feels off. Ominous. I see some guy in a green military uniform walk in front of the crowd, and he walks like an angry man on a mission. He has a stern look on his face and looks exactly like Rob Lowe.

I’m sitting down on the steps of the jumbo RV and this slender, animate, elderly woman, maybe in her sixties, is warning me not to do something, and while I forget the specifics, she says its because the Rob Lowe guy won’t like it and will do something bad to me. I tell her, “Let him try it.”

She then says that most people here need something, and uses this one random guy nearby as an example. Again, I forget the specifics, but then she turns to me. “But you?” She says to me. “You’ll do all right.”

Or perhaps she says, “You have everything you need.” Something like that.

In any case, I’m surprised by this, as this wasn’t where I thought she was going. I thought she was going to try to coerce me into cooperation through fear, tell me how I had to get in line and be obedient, and I was ready to snap back. Instead, she seems strangely, sincerely confident in me.

My good friend Moe is suddenly beside me and he hands me a pen. I know he doesn’t mean for me to write with it, either; he means for me to use it to stab Lowe if he tries anything. Then he hands me a knife, bigger than the pen, which would clearly be more useful, but I’m confused as to why, if he had a knife, he initially handed me the pen. Then he hands me something even larger — I think it was an absurdly large gun — and I just look down at it and laugh involuntarily. When I look up at him and see the look on his face, however, he’s clearly serious.

I hide both the pen and knife in my sleeve, ready to stab the guy if I need to, but him and I sit there and the rest of the crowd stands there for what seems like forever. Then they try and move all of us to a bigger lot, after which I wake up with Chevelle’s new single, Self Destructor, playing in my head.

What’s interesting is that this dream of a cluttered RV seems to be a scale up from the dream I recalled the prior morning.

2/23/21.

I seem to be at my parents house, where the driveway branches off towards the barn. There, I put two, perhaps three people in my van, and they seem to be children. I fasten them in with seat belts and try to move my shit out of the van to make more room for them and because I’m a bit embarrassed by the clutter.

I turn to do something and when I look back the van has rolled backwards down the driveway, which turns into this long, hilly road that disappears into the distance. I immediately know that they’re too far out of reach for me to have any hope of running and catching up with them, so I scream for them to put it in park — not to step on the break, for whatever reason.

In any case, I know they’re too far away to hear me, and that even if they did that none of them knew enough about cars to be able to follow my instructions. I could do nothing but just watch the van as it cruised down the hill of the road.

An Uncharacteristically Goofy Dream (3/16/21).

Usually my dreams don’t take on the ridiculous dream logic so many people tend to associate with dreams as a whole, like watching a monkey wheel on by on a unicycle while sucking on a slurpee through his ear as I wave to him with my foot or something. There are jump cuts and there may be odd elements here and there in the narrative, but otherwise my dreams typically mimic conventional reality fairly well.

This morning, however, my dream narrative took on some uncharacteristically strange elements I don’t often experience.

3/16/21

I was inside the restaurant I work at, staring out the doorway window. My plan was to walk outside to my truck, but I hesitated, as I suddenly realized that I didn’t have any pants on. At first my worry is that people would see me in the car-filled parking lot, but that concern evaporates when I realize that if my pants are in the truck and my keys are in my pockets, this may pose a bigger problem. At that exact moment I suddenly felt my keys in my back pocket, however — I suddenly have pants on now, and the inconsistency didn’t confuse me at all.

As I walked towards the truck, I saw a shadow cast on the ground from someone behind me, but before my eyes it transforms into the shadow of Darth Vader with a bird on his shoulder. I quickly turned around, but no one was there.

As I got up to the truck, I noticed a crack on the window of the side door, but eventually concluded that it had always been there. I then noticed something new, however: a tiny hole in the same window that looked as if someone were trying to screw into it. I interpreted this as evidence that someone was trying to break in and so resolved to park closer to the building from now on, just to keep a closer eye on it.

Maria Cox & the Statue of Baphomet (3/4/21 Dream).

I was in a building composed of different rooms, almost like big bedrooms, where different parties of people gathered, and it seemed to be connected to this department store. I was looking for something in the store — shoes, I think — and I asked Maria Cox, who evidently worked there, where I could find them. She directed me to the last isle where I didn’t find any shoes but instead came upon a tall, circular, glass display case with various statues in it, though the only one that caught my eye was this statue of Baphomet.

Later, I was trying to find my room with my people and I was unable to find the right one. I kept intruding into the wrong ones, accidentally waking someone up in one case. I think this is where I can across Maria for the second time. We were in a room, standing across from each other, just talking a bit, though what we spoke of largely escapes me. She was easygoing, playful, and actually quite nice to talk to. I brought up the statue of Baphomet and how strange and cool it was that they had one in the store. She immediately agreed and that seemed to add fuel to the conversation.

As I’ve written of before, Maria was a girl I went to high school with and who I am currently friends with on social media. I never spoke too much with her, but she was friends with Gerty, a girl I was rather close with for a time. For the most part I recall the school dances I attended, when I’d always find her in a dark corner or against a wall, in tears over whatever jackass she came with. I denied my attraction toward her for some time, specifically to Gerty, but eventually it became unmistakable. As I’ve written previously:

“It took some time for her to become a point of focus — and there are levels to it. For one thing, she has transformed into a rather alluring goth over the years, a feel and look that has always inspired my passion with respect to women, at least when it’s authentic, and in her case, it most certainly is — hence Gerty’s insight so long ago that she was right up my alley.

Physically, to state the obvious, she’s hot as fuck. I have cast her in the starring role of countless kinky fantasies of mine over the years. She is also someone who, as seems clear to me from her Facebook posts, actually thinks for herself — a depressing rarity among the human population, it seems to me — and she is a rather rebellious soul in general, which only increases her attractiveness as far as I’m concerned.”

She is also a superb artist and has a certain fondness for Lady Luna and her sea of stars, which makes me want to get high with her some warm evening, sit back with her beneath a cloudless sky, and just talk about weird shit. This isn’t likely to happen, but its crossed my mind more than once.

Aside from that, I always felt Maria was kinky, exploratory in that sense, and was the type to go to fetish parties. I also failed to shake the suspicion that she was involved in Paganism, maybe even Satanism, or at least dabbled in it. And this isn’t Satanism in the sense that your average, Christian-minded person would consider it to be, either — just to be clear.

So why was Maria in my dream? What did she represent? Well, for one thing, it likely relates to goth culture.

A fair question to ask is in regards to my personal relation to goth culture. As far as I’m concerned, I’m on the outskirts, as with so many things. A detached spectator. A distant observer and appreciator. According to one man, however, that’s not nearly all.

A long time ago my good friend, Channing, moved out of his parents’ house and into a condo with a few friends of his. One of these friends was a skinny, black-haired boy striving to be a writer. He identified as a goth. He had a hard-on for the culture, and he seemed to resonate with it quite strongly. He had bouts of depression that reached the extremes of suicidal impulses and there were countless dramatic, emotional moments throughout the time he lived there. Though I can’t say that I got to know him too well, I was around the guy often enough — and heard of incidents involving him through Channing often enough — to know that I sincerely liked the guy. And, I should add, that I shared the worry his roommates had for his well-being.

Once he got to know me a bit, and before he flipped out in a major and characteristically dramatic way that sent him launching away from Ohio and landed him back with his parents in Connecticut, he said something to me that has, I confess, kind of lingered in my mind ever since.

When I denied being goth, he passionately disagreed. He said that when it came to the goth culture, I was a natural. That I was what they wished they were, what they could only hope to become. That I was what the average, run-of-the-mill goth aspired to be.

He could be dramatic, as I memtioned, but in a way — and yes, perhaps one hell of a sick, fucked up way — I took that as a compliment. Even so, I’m allergic to pledging my allegiance to groups. I am what I am: nothing more, nothing less.

My first real introduction to the goth culture was through my friend, Terra, who, especially in the early days, I often jokingly referred to as the Evil One, the Queen of Darkness, and perhaps more recently, simply, and accurately, My Dark Friend. She was never one of those hokey, I-Wanna-Be-a-Vampire goths, either. She wore dark cloths and often had on a spiked choker, but it never seemed like she was wearing a costume — this was simply a reflection of who she was within. She just needed to wear it on her sleeve, perhaps as part of the creative, artistic impulse we both share.

Though there was undoubtedly some conflict between us early on in our friendship due to my deeper desires for her and her seemingly contradictory feelings toward me, the friendship always held strong, and it became clear to me that I valued that more than anything — and I still do.

We’re both introverts, we’re both rather moody, anxious, depressive, and dark. We both seem to enjoy writing and engaging in artwork. We share what I consider a deep yet unconventional kind of friendship, a special bond that I’ve always cherished. She is one of those people that always makes me feel better when I’m around her. Her energy is soothing. I don’t have to hide my darkness as I do when interacting and communicating with most other people, or feel embarassed, dramatic, or ashamed about it. I can let it flow without fearing judgement, and it makes me feel unspeakably wonderful that she seems to feel the same way towards me.

We have often exchanged letters and emails over the years, and in her letters she tends to ask me for advice or a fresh perspective, particularly when it comes to her issues in relationships and feelings towards the male gender in general. This may be relevant because the day before I had the dream I had finally responded to her mist recent email, and it was on that very topic.

Unlike Terra, and even myself, Maria seems more confident, more personally empowered in general, and I think that’s one of the things I most admire about her. It could be an illsion, as I certainly don’t know her personally, but she seems to have found the kind of balance I seek in myself, and which Terra seems to seek as well — the reconciliation of the opposites: the dark and the light, the often false dichotomy of what is considered good and evil, the cultural notion of masculine and feminine qualities of the personality. She may not be the ubermench with a pussy that my ex-girlfriend Anne constitutes, but she’s certainly a strong individual. She’s certainly got a swath of admirable, undeniably alluring qualities that, like Anne, seems to get major aspects of my overall being aroused, including but by no means limited to the shroom-tipped, ever-spitting trouser-snake.

And to get back to the dream, this may be where that glass-encased Statue of Baphomet comes in.

Rather recently I finally read the Satanic Bible, which confirmed my sense that it was essentially an atheistic religion that embraced personal freedom and the development and expression of the individual. I was surprised to find that they also embrace magick ritual, however, which increased my fascination, though the portion of it that teaches curses doesn’t settle right with me. In any case, I could see Maria dabbling in this religion, as well as Pagan practices, which in turn increases my fascination with her. Again, I don’t know her personally, though, so this could be a ridiculous assumption.

Until my research today, spawned by the dream, I failed to catch on to the fact that I was confusing The Church of Satan with The Satanic Temple.

So far as I’ve been able to discern given my little research, The Satanic Temple embraces atheism, science, body atonomy, empathy, and peaceful protest — all of which resonates with me — but they seem to be monists in the philosophy of the mind and wouldn’t so much as entertain notions of out of body experiences, reincarnation, or psi phenomena, inside or outside notions of magick, which sets me apart from them. The Satanic Church, however, seems to incorporate all of the above for the most part but also embraces magick and, with respect to the inclusion of curses in magickal practices, is more than a little light on the notion of empathy.

The image of Baphomet I had in the dream — the statue — seems to derive from the Satanic Temple, not the Church of Satan, not the Satanic Bible. Even so, it seems that what the Levi-inspired statue resonates rather well with the values embraced by both — though I will certainly have to do further research into both and what distinguishes the two to be confident in this perhaps premature impression.

In any case, the image of Baphomet in the context of the Satanic Temple was evidently inspired by the “Sabbatic Goat” drawing of occultist Eliphas Levi in 1856. Here, Baphomet is depicted as an angel-winged, hermaphroditic humanoid with a goat’s head — both human and animal, both male and female, both good and evil. Between its horns sprouts a torch, symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge, and upon its forehead, a pentagram. Upon its arms are the Latin words Solve (separate) and Coagula (reform), familiar to anyone who has read up on alchemy in the context of Carl Jung’s analytical psychology or otherwuse. The right hand points two fingers upward, the left bears two fingers pointing down, meant to suggest the alchemical notion “as above, so below.” Baphomet also has titties — or, alternately, two children, one a boy, the other a girl, to either side of the human-beast, staring up at her/him — to suggest both masculine and feminine qualities. The tummy bears the symbol of the caduceus: two serpents winding around a staff, symbolizing the reconciliation of dualities, which anyone interested in Jung and his notion of a psychological Transcendent Function should appreciate.

In essence, the statue signifies the reconciliation of the opposing forces within and between us in our quest towards totality and the pathway of greater understanding through questioning and experimentation. Perhaps its presence in the dream suggested that I see Maria Cox, in some way, as just another manifestation of that ideal, and that this accounts for my fascination with an attraction towards her.

Cell Phone Guy & a Gifted Lighter (3/1/21 Dream).

Circa 7:30 AM.

I was in some gas station, with someone out in the car waiting for me with engine running, so I felt kind of pressed for time. I passed by a girl with shirt on that looked like it had a gray alien on it, and it looked pretty cool. I then saw a card table nearby with a few piles of folded shirts on it, and I found that while the one the girl was wearing was there, it wasn’t an alien one — but there was indeed cool-looking alien shirts in one of the piles that I considered purchasing. As is often the case, I decided I should be careful with money and so elected not to buy it, but thought that I may come back at some later date and get one.

I think I was primarily in there to buy a carton of cigarettes, but I also desperately needed a lighter, but couldn’t decide on one. Some were laying out, some were in bowls on shelves, and I kept picking one out, holding it, deciding against it, picking out another and putting it back again, frustrated by my own indecision, as I felt I really needed to hurry up.

I finally settle on one when this old guy, an old regular at the fast food joint I work at, comes up from behind me and slipped a lighter of his into the breast pocket of my shirt. When I turned around to see who it was, he was already looking dead at me with a warm, friendly smile and curious eyes. He seemed genuinely happy, perhaps happier and more at peace than I had ever seen him. I thank him, and he says something to me, but for the life of me I can’t remember what. I think it had something to do with the fact that he used to smoke but had to quit.

The dream ended there, but this was a guy that, in real life, I had nicknamed the Cell Phone Guy. He would come in frequently at night, always speaking to his wife on the phone because she didn’t trust him, always paranoid he was cheating on her. He was an elderly guy, very lively and personable, and he certainly did flirt with the girls a lot, so there may have been some justification for her paranoia. We always had kind exchanges, though our conversations never got too in depth. A regret of mine, to be honest. He always seemed like an interesting guy.

I didn’t see him for awhile until at some random point during this pandemic, when I had snuck out to the front of the building after dark to have a smoke one night. He came by in that same white van he always drove, but the van had seen better days.

So had he.

His age had certainly caught up with him. He had slowed considerably, had lost a lot of his characteristic spark and spunk. He spoke to me a bit. It seemed like he just really wanted to connect with someone. Evidently his wife had died and him and his new girlfriend, maybe his new wife — I can’t recall, exactly — who was on the seat beside him, they were leaving the state to start a new life together. He was leaving within a day or two and wanted to say goodbye to Marjie, one of the assistant managers he had taken a liking to, but she wasn’t there that night, so he asked me to bid her farewell for him, which I had forgotten to do.

I congratulated him and wished him good luck before my cigarette was gone and I had to get back inside. I was happy for him, but seeing what age had done to him — and seemed to do to him rather abruptly, it seemed to me — also depressed me. In the dream, however, he seemed back to being the lively, smiling, spunky, good-natured fellow I had come to know and looked forward to seeing for so long. It was nice to see him like that for one last time, even if it was in the context of a dream.

And it was a nice gesture he made, too, as I really do need to get a new lighter.

A Paranormal Dream & Altered States of Consciousness.

In the dream I had yesterday (2/22/21), I seemed to be traveling around, exploring paranormal mysteries, and I think I may have had a partner as well. In the twilight between sleeping and waking, I was reflecting on the dream and began thinking about the show Supernatural, though the cases in the dream certainly involved paranormal occurences, not the religious fiction depicted in the show.

After I opened my eyes and made some java, the likely inspirations for the dream became clear to me. As of late, I’ve been re-watching episodes of The X-Files from the first episide, and now, at the beginning of season five, it’s brought back to mind all that I loved and hated about the show. I also recently watched the Netflix documentary about Elisa Lam’s death at the Cecil Hotel, which did a good job of demystifying and satisfactorily explaining the case in my opinion.

More importantly, perhaps, I’ve been obsessively watching the videos on the YouTube channel of MrBallen. Origionally I became intrigued not only because he’s a good storyteller, but because he covered a lot of the mysterious missing person cases investigated by David Paulides, which he collected in his Missing 411 series of books. But he has a plethora of strange and interesting stories to convey.

Perhaps somewhat related, for at least the last two days, my state of mind has been peculiar. Today in particular I feel rather spacey and out of it, kind of depressed, maybe, just kind of staring off into nothing, very stuck inside myself, even for me.

My mind has kind of been slipping into altered states of conscious again. While I try not to write about the weirdness of my life in this blog, yesterday I slipped into mental imagery and a mood that felt associated with one of my apparent past life memories. The other states have been less potentially paranormal-related, but still weird.

This morning, I saw imagery in my minds eye that reminded me of a brief period in which a friend drove me to Pittsburg years ago. I think it was Pittsburg. It was more of the associated mood more than anything, but it was all-consuming.

Yesterday I sensed the difference between someone who had their shit together and myself, though its hard to explain what I mean by “sensed.” It felt as if there was this stable level of consciousness above where I’m at, a state in which I could actually be active and stable and reliable in the external world, but I can’t seem to ascend to achieve it.

As it has been since forever, everything seems so fluid and unstable in my life right now. At the core of it is this deeply-rooted fear of commitment and inability to follow through with much of anything. Is it just a desire to keep options forever open, or is more about being reluctant to take chances or risks for fear of being trapped in a decision I can’t back out of?

I’m thinking its more likely the latter.

Late for Break (2/23/21 Dream).

On break from work, I walk through a bad area in town in order to try to find a gas station. I thought I knew where it was, but its nowhere to be found, and the looks I’m getting from people in the area are making me feel nervous.

I walk out of that area as quickly as I can and roam around for too long, hoping to come upon some gas station, eventually making my way inside of a large building and onto a high floor. Inside, I end up talking to a girl, I think a red-headed girl, on the top of a long stairway or escalator. We strike up a conversation, but then manager Steve from work and someone else casually walk up to me, as if they’d tracked me down, and both the way they talk and their body language conveys that they’re not-so-subtley suggesting their power over me. They imply that I’m late for clocking in and it makes me feel guilty, which I feel is something they were aiming for, but I can’t help but suspect that for whatever reason they also just didn’t want me talking to the girl.

So I go back to work, having never found the gas station, only to find, upon clocking in, that I’m only five minutes late for my half-hour break. It seemed as though it had taken a lot longer, and Steve and whoever had been with him had acted that way, too.

Nobody’s Fault but Mine.

It is utterly irrational to blame your parents for who you are.

If you do blame your parents for all your suffering, all your trials and tribulations, all you have to do is extend your logic to its ultimate conclusion to see its inherent absurdity. After all, if they are to blame for who you are, then they were just as predestined to be who they are because of your grandparents, and your great-grandparents are to blame for who your grandparents became — and so on and so forth, all the way back to the first form of life, or even the circumstances that brought life to be, or all the way back to the Big Bang, or the quantum fluctuations that made nothing belch up something to begin with.

Alternately, we’re all ultimately responsible for who we are. We may not be able to control what happens to us, we may always have influences of varying intensities, but we always have a choice in how we respond and what we make of ourselves — and please understand that this is coming from someone who has made a cascade of shitty choices.

Even so, I believe in free choice. In free will and personal responsibility.

As far as I can see, for each and every one of us every moment presents a vast spectrum of potential choices ranging from the path of greatest resistance to the path of least resistence, and I think most of us lean toward the path of least resistance on default, chronically overestimating the amount of free will we put forth.

Not everyone starts out from the same point of departure, however, which is precisely why those who echo that whole “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps” bullshit instantly inspire me to punch them in the dick.

Or give them a cunt-punt. I mean, I’m not trying to be sexist here.

We may not be able to manifest the perfect external circumstances, but in the end, its up to us to manage our damage and pursue our passions, refine our talents, find or plow our own paths, or at the very least fashion our perceptions and alter our attitudes.

I still have that child in me that angrily points the finger here or there — anywhere but the self. He arises during intense emotional states, rears his angry little head in dreams. He is a poison in my veins.

He needs to learn. The inner child deserves a better outer adult.

Intellectually, I know the truth, and I need to start taking advantage of it. I need to take responsibility for who I am and invest more of my will in my external life.

Ultimately, I am free. In the end, I am responsible.

Anne at the Gathering (2/5/21 Dream).

During the early evening today, at the tail end of a wicked hangover, I lay down on my bed and finally got some sleep, during which I had a dream.

I’m inside what seems to be a massive building, making my way towards a huge room where people are assembling for what appears to be a gathering or party of sorts. While I don’t know why I was invited, I find that Anne, my exgirlfriend from years ago, is here, and that at least some of them are evidently her friends and family. Anne hardly acknowledges my existence, which has been a feature of her in my dreams since we stopped talking shortly after the breakup a decade and a half or so ago. Her daughter, Allie, and I speak a little, however, and she seems like a cool kid. I accidentally call her by my little niece’s name at one point, I remember, then laughed, shook my head and corrected myself. Given I last saw Allie when she was five years old, I’m not confident she remembers me — she gives me no indication that she does and I don’t feel its right for me to bring it up.

Despite having little to no contact with Anne, I appear to be getting along fine with friends and family members of hers, none of which I remember having met within the context of the dream, and none of whom exist in real life. We’re talking and eating and I’m amazed at how well I’m getting along. At some point, someone walks out of a closet door with a plastic Trump mask on, evidently in an attempt to scare me.

At some later point, there was what seemed to be a murder somewhere in the building, perhaps in the same room as the party, though I couldn’t get the details through the crowd outside the door in the hallway.

I recall trying to get my cell phone where some of us left them, in the party room just beyond the door, and mistakenly grabbing the wrong one, and at least for a time utterly unable to find my own. It was during this period of looking for my phone when I came upon one guy who I think I also saw at the party. I don’t know if he took my phone or I accidentally took his and tried to return it, but in my interaction with him — if you could call it that, as he wouldn’t look at me, his head always hanging down, and seemed reluctant to say anything to me — it became abundantly clear that he was determined to be a total asshole.

All of a sudden we’re both at the fast food joint where I work. There are managers at the fryers up front and I’m walking away from them, alongside the tables that separate me from the kitchen, where I’m taking something which I think is a small table with wheels. I see the asshole in the kitchen, his head down like before, cleaning the area around the backline fryers with a rag. I say something to him and he offers another response, or perhaps a lack of one, that pisses me off.

“I don’t like you much, man,” I tell him.

“Well, I don’t like you, either,” he needlessly informs me, never glancing up or turning around as he continues cleaning with the rag.

“What’s your problem?”

“My uncle died,” he says.

“I feel sorry for you, man,” I say to him, “but I didn’t do it.” I look up at the managers around then, and one of them communicates with mouthed words and hand signals that I should drop whatever I need to off in kitchen and then get out of there.

So I do, and then I wake up.