23 Dreams).

I. Lab Rats.

The entire dream seemed to be about us all going in these circles, these cycles, we were placed within by a higher force or intelligence, but we also somehow seemed to be physically bound to a locale as well. Most centrally among my companions was this girl I knew from childhood who used to live across the street from our suburban home. Her and I kissed at some point in the dream and began developing something as these cycles continued.

At one point as her and I were walking along a forest-lined road, I discover that she didn’t recall having ever gone to the beach with me or anything about our budding relationship, and that other events that had happened seemed lost to her as well. The rest of us came to the conclusion that “they” had taken away some of her memories, leaving her with only selected ones, and that this whole thing — the routine, being trapped in this place — was about them testing on and studying us like lab rats.

After I awoke from the dream, as my eyes were still closed and I was going over it, trying to remember all of it, it reminded me for some reason of the movie, The Forgotten, though it took some searching on the net for me to finally find the title of the movie after I got up around 9:30. As I reflected more on the dream after being awake, though, I found it reminded me more of Dark City, which I ended up finding on the net and watching.

Afterward, still feeling tired, I decided to lay back in bed sometime after one in the afternoon, do some relaxation exercises, and try and take a nap. I woke up at about twenty after two after having had a strange experience on the dreamscape.

II. “I Know This Isn’t Real.”

I’m looking everywhere, all around my parents property for two things, neither of which I can find, so I start walking around the block. Interestingly enough, I found one of the items — the wheelbarrow — alongside a dirt road maybe halfway around the block. As to how it got there, I could only assume that someone had stolen it.

I began walking with it back home, but then saw what I recognized as my parents old porch swing a few paces away on the other side of the road. After thinking back for a moment, I thought I recalled her telling one of the neighbors they could have it, so I surmised that this must be the neighbor in question. I then noticed a land line right by the swing with the phone off the hook. With some struggle, as it wouldn’t latch at first, I managed to put it back on the holder.

Finally making it back to my parent’s long driveway, I begin walking as the day descends into night. As I began to approach the house I suddenly realized I didn’t have the wheelbarrow with me. I felt confused, embarrassed, and a little frightened about what I assumed had to have been my absent-mindedness, and walked back down to the end of the driveway to discover that I had indeed left it there.

Once I finally get back to the house, it’s dark, and walk inside. My mother and sister, Eve, are there, talking amongst one another and not even acknowledging my existence. I try to tell my mother about the wheelbarrow, but whatever I do, I can’t seem to get her attention — she just keeps ignoring me and talking to Eve. After the third attempt, I scream, “Fuck it, fine,” and walk around the dining room table, which finally gets her attention.

As I then proceed to walk into the kitchen, where she stands, I scream that I’ve been trying to tell her about something but she won’t listen, and I’ve tried getting her attention three fucking times now. I’m furious. All this hassle and confusion trying to find the wheelbarrow and I can’t get her to even pay attention to me long enough to tell her.

At any rate, as I’m yelling at her in the kitchen she finally looks at me, the first time since I walked in the door, and she just looks me in the eyes and flicks me off before turning around again. In response, I hold up both my middle fingers and stick them in her line of sight.

“Two for you,” I say. “I found your fucking wheel barrow.”

Shorrly thereafter, I sit down on the floor in front of the television with Eve beside me a short distance away, I think on a chair. Then my mother comes in and sits beside me, deliberately hitting me with her knee as she does so. I don’t react. I just sit there angrily, hand on my chin, trying to ignore her, staring at the screen on the boxy television on the floor, just stewing, steaming.

Suddenly, for whatever reason, I begin to suspect that somethings incredibly off about all this. That it was all an illusion, all a dream. For a moment I called myself crazy, as my vision was so damn clear, but I soon became absolutely convinced.

That was when I turned to my “mother,” grabbed her by the shoulders, and screamed as loud as I could, with all the rage swelling in me, “I know this isn’t real,” but no voice came out. I screamed it louder, and this time I could hear it, however faint, but the dream darkens, fades, and for a moment it feels as though I’m in that otherworldly Void I often go to during my astral projections.

Then I wake up.

I’m downstairs at my parents house and the family is around me. My mother wants to say something to me, but I politely tell her to wait a second, as I have to piss. While I do need to pee, it’s also because I want to write down the dream I just had on my phone before my memory of it fades.

First, though, I have to piss, and as I race to the bathroom stuff falls out of my pocket. I decide to pick it up later. Once inside, I pull down my pants but become utterly confused when I see my boxer shorts. They have sort of a patchwork pattern, though the biggest patch is red-colored with tiny white hearts on it.

I’d never buy this. I’d never wear it.

In any case, I start to piss, but accidentally piss on my father’s shirt, which for some reason was draped over the toilet seat.

Something seems off about all this, I think to myself. I can hear my parents outside the door, talking to each other about the trailer they’re helping me move into next August, but by the time I finish up and exit the bathroom, they’re already upstairs, preparing to go to bed.

I pick up the things that fell out of my pocket — some money rolls to roll some change of mine — and then remember that I wanted to write down that dream, but I left my phone in the bathroom, so I walk back in. I’m shocked to find the toilet’s no longer there. In its place is my old computer chair, which had broke. I inspect it, however, only to discover that it’s no longer broken.

“I’m not still fucking dreaming…?”

As soon as I say it, I wake up in bed.

Invaders to Mars (10/24/23 Dream).

I went to bed sometime after five in the morning, did some relaxation exercises to help inspire what I hoped would be a deep, restful sleep, and then went on to have another nightmare.

If I was intentionally a stowaway, I certainly had no idea where I’d end up, and was rather surprised to find I’d accidentally been sent to a colony on Mars. Once I’m discovered, a kind woman meets with me and tells me that the colony was a secret project run through my old college that had apparently been rumored for years, or so she said, though I’d never heard such rumors.

They all lived in huge, clear domes, and as the woman, apparently in the lead, tells me excitedly about it, I compared it to one of those independent communities an old friend told me about, something akin to a hippy commune, though these weren’t hippies. As a matter of fact, I remember being rather frightened and frustrated over the fact that I may not be able to even smoke cigarettes here.

The general message seemed to be that I was stuck here now, though it wasn’t because they were holding me prisoner or anything like that. It didn’t seem to bother me, though, and she said that she’d set me up in a place. I told her how I imagined it may be here on Mars sometime in the near future if we can terraform the planet and make the atmosphere breathable.

Now it’s suddenly some time later, perhaps years later, and we recieved word of an imminent alien invasion. Everyone’s freaking out and uncertain what to do. I pack what I find most valuable of my possessions in my book bag, at least what I can think of at such short notice, which amounts to books I still wanted to read or might want to read again.

We all watch out from a large window in our high building — something akin to an apartment building, it seems — and down into the dimly-lit courtyard, anticipating their arrival with fear. Then, out of the darkness, we finally see one. My first impression was that it was shaped like a seal. It’s a rather smooth, featureless, and flat creature, however — not two-dimensional, mind you, but flat in the way Gumby is flat. It’s colored pitch black and is utterly devoid of eyes, a nose, or a mouth. It just looks like a flat, featureless seal-shaped thing with two small fin-like protrubances on the side, lifting its body up as the bottom third of it remained flat on the ground, seemingly slithering along. It sounds ridiculous, but the sight of the thing inspired a feeling of terror.

After seeing it slither out of the darkness, we all got away from the window, fearing it might see us despite its apparent lack of eyes. Shortly thereafter, there was a crash as something was thrown through the window. Looking on the floor, I see it, and it looks like a molten rock, maybe the size of a baseball, resting inside of a shallow little cup or bowl made of cloth just slightly bigger than the rock itself. Though we all understood it shouldn’t be touched or moved, one guy tried to grab it anyway and suffered instant agony. For whatever reason, I then poured water on it and heard it sizzle.

More rocks were thrown, I believe, and that’s when we all panicked and exited the room to find another place to hide. Along the way I picked up one of these large, flimsy metal sheets that were nearby, as they were the closest thing to a shield I could find. I feared getting hit by one of those things.

We were well down the hallway, almost to a more secure hiding place, when I realized I’d left my book bag back in the room. I made the insane decision to turn around and go back for it, but someone stopped me, and we then continued to proceed to another room.

As we were hiding there, waiting for one of the seal-things to come up the stairs, we discovered something on the floor that looked like a big black slug without antennae, maybe as long as my forearm. It seemed like a tiny version of the seal-thing, but without the flippers and the apparent ability to lift its “head” from the floor. Much like the molten rock, we all knew not to touch it, but a dog that looked a lot like my parents black Shephard did and suffered immedeately. A nearby cat touched it as well, but only briefly, which seemed to inflict less damage.

My fear at this point, for some reason, became so great that I instinctively pulled myself out of the dream. I took a moment to collect myself and then grabbed the notebook beside my bed and began taking notes. It was about 8:20 in the morning.

After I went back to bed maybe twenty minutes later, after calming down a bit, there were quick flashes of what seemed to be a continuation of the dream — with a giant, white and gray human-looking creature with a big nose that looked like Muppet from the mind of Jim Henson breaking through the wall and other flashes I can’t recall — but it didn’t seem to truly align with the original dream.

In any case, there was a point where I woke up from a dream into another dream in which I thought I was awake. I was in a dark room and spoke with my mother. I told her I had another alien invasion dream and she suggested that I gather all the dreams together and make them into a book.

Deer in Headlights.

So I walk into the building, having just finished sweeping the parking lot, when a beautiful, slender, well-tatted woman with long, dark hair meets my eyes with her dark and beautiful own, smiles, and waves. I wave back, but with a tilt of the head and a look on my face that apparently clearly betrays the fact that I haven’t the foggiest fucking clue who she is — and she calls me on it.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

I shamefully confess that I do not. As soon as she mentions she used to date one of the guys that used to work here, and that she’s now his baby-mama, I suddenly recalled her. Due to how unbearably sexy she was (and is) and the fact that she was dating a guy I knew, I always had to be careful not to gaze at her for too long, just out of respect, and it was a constant struggle.

Now she’s smiling, making great eye contact, and clearly wants a bit more conversation in the least, but I’m so anxious all I can think about is escaping the situation. So I politely say it was nice to see her and go to the restroom before heading behind counter.

I’ve just gotten used to laughing at myself over this kind of shit.

I honestly don’t know how I ever got laid.

UFO Logo & A Painfully Bright Light (9/12/23 Dream).

In the dream, I see a simple image, almost like a logo. It’s a dome with at least three lines jutting out from its underside. Like the icon for high beams on your car, but with the curved part of the half circle pointed upward and far fewer lines. My initial sense was that it was meant to convey a UFO, but given what happened next, maybe it was meant to reference high beams after all.

From behind or around the logo there is a shimmering white light that grows so bright and painfully blinding that I’m jolted out of the dream. In bed, I’m on my back and I’m holding my arm over my eyes as if to shield myself from the light.

My Parents’ Bunker (9/11/23 Dream).

My parents have a bunker on their property — or perhaps more appropriately, a multi-leveled underground city. The initial room is rather bland and vacant save for big boxes of candy, among them KitKat and Reecies cups. The deeper levels have areas akin to an upscale hotel or college campus where you can relax and read or watch television. Some areas mimick natural settings, like a beach and a lake, and others are akin to an amusement park. At some point I recall wondering to myself how my parents managed to afford all of this.

In one area there was a sort of train, but the cars were like glass boxes you sat inside, and as I rode along inside of one along with others, I saw my friend, Elizabeth, working inside a glass booth.

One guy talks me into going into a rather dark and crowded bar with him, where he meets up with his girlfriend. As I’m standing there, some girl leans her back on me and we start talking and there’s some mild flirtation going on. I can finally see her face somewhat and she reveals that her and I know each other from high school — some reasonably-attractive redhead I used to know.

At some point, the electricity goes out in the bunker. Once the lights come back on, as we’re trying to ascertain what had happened, one of the redheaded twins I worked with until recently — the one I tended to focus on specifically — suggests that we take a look at the security footage from the cameras placed all throughout the bunker.

I’m suddenly distracted from solving the mystery, however, when I suddenly remember that my parents are down here somewhere. I needed to check on them to see if they’re all right. I first find my mother, who is hurt, though I can’t remember the details. I go to a higher level so as to get better phone reception so I can call for an ambulance, but before I get a chance to do so, I find my father. I find him on the ground, a few others around him — apparently he’d fallen out of one of those glass box train cars. He had hurt his head, and I could feel the tender, soft, bruised area at the top of his skull.

I then tried to call an ambulance for two, but became very anxious. I wanted to take charge but was terrified I didn’t know how to handle this alone.

More Violent Dreams.

8/26/23

While I was busy doing something else, someone — I think it turned out to be dad — took my car in and got it fixed. Under the hood, it looked too clean and spacious, which made me nervous. When I put the key into the ignition, the truck sounded too quiet, and it drove perfectly. There were huge holes in the pavement right before I got onto the road — more like huge, gaping cracks in the pavement than potholes — and I almost fell in one but got to the road okay.

8/30/23

Dad had wrapped up a dead body in white sheets, put it in a wheelbarrow, and asked me to put the corpse in the shed. Out there by the shed, I decided to have a cigarette before moving the body. As I smoked, I wondered how it made him feel, wrapping up the body — if it disturbed him. I wondered if he was traumatized by it or was okay with it. I knew he hadn’t killed the person himself. I think it may have been me. I also wondered about it stinking up the barn, and knew that putting it in there couldn’t be the final solution. Eventually, I ended back at house only to realize I’d forgotten to put the body in the shed. I had just left it in the wheel barrow by the shed door and realized I should take care of that before someone sees it and starts asking questions.

Evidently, dreaming of hiding a dead body may suggest you’re attempting to hide something — potentially aspects of yourself — from others in response to overwhelming guilt and you’re terrified of being found out. In general, it’s thought to represent fears of criticism and judgment.

In general, fathers represent wisdom, and we often dream of them when feeling lost. This may suggest I don’t know how to handle these aspects of myself. Wheelbarrows represent hard work, which perhaps suggests the degree of effort I put into hiding aspects of myself, and sheds represent shelter and protection — though the dream suggests I nonetheless failed to accomplish sheltering and protecting these aspects.

9/1/23

The cute, red-headed twins from work were going to a place they called by name, though I can’t remember the name, and asked the manager if I could come along with them and the others. They got permission and began walking down the sidewalk, with the others and I following behind. We came to the place, which turned out to be a restaraunt inside a larger building. As they went to sit down, I decided to go out to smoke, as the urge was intense, but I realized I couldn’t smoke just outside the restaraunt, but had to go outside the larger building it was within. It was difficult pushing the doors open, as there were things pushed against it from the outside.

Also, maybe in the same dream, I was inside a boat on land that was attached to a building in such a way that it constituted a singular structure, though not an entirely stable one.

Buildings are supposed to represent some aspect of the self; our inner architecture. Public buildings specifically reference social aspects of ourselves and our social relations, perhaps as it pertains to our job. The Russian Doll theme of a building within a building could reference how I compartmentalize myself, and my desire to relax and enjoy myself requires effort in escaping the social situation. As for the boat attached to a building, it may suggest my attempt to bring my intellectual inclinations to explore and grow into the social sphere and my external life in general and how unstable that feels.

9/2/23

I think others and I were on the run from someone. We visited a house with multiple stories, on big plot of land, owned by an old lady and occupied by her and others. She was very protective of her land. I had gone there for third time with friends of mine for a specific purpose, hoping she wouldn’t remember me, and trying to elicit sympathy in an effort to manipulate her for what we believed to be a good cause. She acted as though she didn’t recognize me at first, then ultimately surprised us all by shooting at us. I felt a rain of bullets pierce my skin but somehow survived. I briefly woke up in bed out of the dream and I could still feel where I had been shot in my side. Elsewhere in dream, after recovering, I was graduating in some way and moving away, secretly gathering up things — documents, I think — that I had hidden so as to take them with me.

9/3/23

I don’t know if I got in a fight or what exactly happened, but my face was banged up and swollen when I looked in the mirror.

Bigger’s Trigger.

12/24/07

When we were in the midst of reading Native Son, we came upon the issue again. It became evident that in the Prof’s eyes, as in the eyes of the character of Max in the novel, Bigger is not responsible for who he is, and certainly not for the two murders he committed. In Max’s courtroom argument against the death sentence, he says that it’s not right for us to kill Bigger. We should separate him from society for life so that he is unable to do it again, yes, but we should not kill him. It would be unethical for us to murder this murderer, they say, ”for being the way we made him.”

We should understand him so as not to demonize him. We should ”hate the sin but love the sinner,” and remember that ”to understand all is to forgive all.” But we don’t want to understand Bigger. If we did, we would have to face the fact that we’re responsible for what he’s done.

Following?

See, we set up the conditions that drove Bigger (and what he symbolizes) to do this, and as such his actions, at least in his heart, are comparable to the actions of self-defense of a soldier of war. To understand Bigger would force us to admit our guilt, and we want to blot out our guilt. So we blot out Bigger. We enjoy having a villain, having someone to hate, and so Bigger as a rapist and a murderer serves a function for the people. Labeling him as evil serves a function for the people. We are now licensed in our conscience to hate him, to kill him. We must kill the killer (through the government’s monopoly on justified murder) to show that killing is wrong and will not be tolerated. We blame him for making us have to kill him, all the while trying to blot out that we drove him to his own murders.

This is not about justice, Max and the Prof say. The reality is that we get off on killing him.

Through his death sentence, we get to express our unconscious hatred and violence. The hatred and violence which is normally held in check by society but which is now temporarily suspended with respect to how we feel and deal with Bigger because he expressed the hatred and violence that we agreed (upon social contract) to suppress save for the legally-sanctioned windows. Like the legally-sanctioned window through which we vent upon him, if only vicariously.

Basically, they’re saying: we drove him to kill so we would have an excuse to kill him.

This is their fucking cultural conspiracy theory.

And I may agree with the suggestion for life sentence in such a case, but I do not agree with the logic behind it. Or the philosophical ramifications of extending that logic to its inevitable conclusions.

The Prof speaks about the concept of moral luck, where some people are born into situations that offer opportunity for ”good” choices, while others are not. Bigger’s environment hindered his emotional intelligence, they say. There was negligence from childhood on; there was no real physical contact or true love. Such trauma affects the brain. If we see Bigger as a victimizer, so be it, they say, as it seems perfectly justified. But we should also see him as a victim.

We can’t blame him for what he did, says the Prof, any more than we can blame a dog for not being able to do algebra.

True, all true, I agree. Save for the dog and algebra thing. Save for the implication that the two mentioned facts here — that he is a victim, that he is a victimizer — have the strong relation to each other that Max and the Prof suggest. They do not. In service of the ultimate purpose of their argument, they cannot.

If him being a victim excuses his victimizing, then our victimizing him would be excusable as well, as he victimized us. The logic goes both ways. It must. And so round and round and round the blaming finger goes, swirling towards event horizon.

Histories, memories. In the Prof’s eyes, this no doubt constitutes the core of our identities. But while he sees character, and I would be inclined to assume on that basis all else, as rigidly deterministic due to nature and nurture, I perceive the matter quite differently. Circumstance obviously has an effect on our choices, but all circumstance does is create paths of lesser and greater resistance. It’s probabilistic, not deterministic.

Of course, that raises the question as to what the deciding factor is. What makes the probability-wave crash upon the shores of actuality one way, as opposed to another? Is it all randomness?

I say not. I say it’s free will. I say this is the core of identity. I say this is the determining factor.

We typically overestimate the amount of free will we put forth in our lives, so we often take one of the paths of lesser resistance — perhaps the path of least resistance — and so, given enough data regarding perhaps nothing more than the ”closest” and most relevant variables, we are pretty damned predictable. This, however, is not equivalent to fate. This does not mean we are predetermined. This does not make free will some flimsy idea from a former era we are best to look back on with scorn, humor, or embarrassment.

This does not free us from personal responsibility. This is not the cosmic fucking pardon.

If that were true and you logically extended this argument of fate (even if only through the medium of nature and nurture) you would have to admit that no one was responsible. That’s this logic’s ultimate conclusion. You would have to admit the Big Bang itself was responsible, or the singularity preceding it was responsible. That or just infinite fucking regress.

People have overcome their conditions. Reprogrammed themselves. And despite being opposed by forces trying to hold and beat them down. Despite influences from every which way trying to drive them to the contrary.

We are more than the products of our pasts. Our genetics. Our environment.

So many say of people who drop bombs and shoot others during war, ”They’re just following orders. They’re just doing their job.”

True. And yet.

We don’t create murderers. Killers. We don’t create anyone, we can only influence. We only create the gun, make the bullets, load the weapon and put it within arm’s reach. And that indicates somethings fucked up about our society. No argument there. But don’t make the mistake of glossing over the fact that the murderer made a choice he didn’t have to make.

After all, he chose to pick up the damned gun and pull the fucking trigger.

If we’re all just products of fate, of course, than he’s not responsible for his actions, but neither are we — and so we’re not responsible for him. It’s personal responsibility or no responsibility. There is no gray area.

UFO Dreams & the Seneca Stones.

8/20/23

I’m sitting with a small group of people on a very small porch or set of stairs that hardly has enough room for all of us. It vaguely reminds me of the steps just outside the residence of the parents of two friends of mine from high school. We’re all looking up into the night sky, beautifully splattered with stars, and I become fixated on a few dimly-lit, colored “stars” moving back and fourth across the heavens above us in erratic paths. No one else says anything and I wonder if I’m the only one that sees them.

The dream leaves me with the same general emotional state these dreams, which have been recurring for three decades now, always leave me with: a sense of awe tinged with fear that lingers for the rest of the day.

8/25/23

Luminescent tube-like objects, each slightly twisted in a different manner, appear all over in the dark night sky. They don’t move, but simply hover there. No one knows what they are and everyone seems to be simultaneously awed and frightened by them. I appear to be living with my parents, or at least my mother, and I watch the glowing sky-tubes in wonder from my bedroom window, curious as to what they are and why they’re here.

The next day, a guy comes to visit and shows me a stone he found in his yard that morning. It’s a flat stone into which an elaborate design has been carved and for some reason he wonders if I know anything about it. He had a similar stone that was stolen from his house sometime the previous night, and I immedeately jump in and tell him that I had mysteriously found it lying on my bed that morning. He explains that they’re both from the Seneca Indians, which I know to be my ancestors from my father’s side, though I don’t tell him.

It’s been some time since I’ve had one of these dreams, and I find it curious that I suddenly had two of them in the space of a single week. I have, of course, been following the UFO subject in the news quite closely and watched the sky from my apartment window last night during a severe storm and tornado warning in which the power went out, so perhaps that in part accounts for last night’s dream.

Immedeately upon awakening I looked up the Seneca Native American tribe to see if they actually existed, and they do indeed. While my father’s mother always insisted she was part Native American, she was a rather strange lady and my father always doubted it, and his results from Ancestry.com revealed no indications of any natives in our bloodline. Why the dream chose Seneca specifically makes me curious…

Moths & Rats.

At the sight of that big, yellow, lowercase “m” stretching into the beautiful blue sky, they can’t resist the Pavlovian response. Like frantic moths to a porchlight, they are drawn to the parking lot entrance, and with gurgling tummies and drooling face-holes they approach the door, blankly staring at the sign, struggling to understand that simple word, “closed.”

Others attempt to pull into the drive-thru, ignorant of what the orange road cones blocking their path might mean.

“Gasp! What is this, an obstacle course placed before me on the pathway to my artery-clogging consumables?”

Like rats in a maze, they accept the challenge, drive through them, around them, even over them to place their order at the speaker. No response from the magic box they bark at is forthcoming.

No.

No cheese for you, mousey motherfucker. Not tonight.

Take your bloated ass home and stick a burrito in the microwave or something.