21 Dream).

Its the closing scene of an enduring dream.

The van stops outside of a building, the door opens, and my two companions get out and go inside. There are people walking by and I get the sense that we’re just outside of some concert, though it was never established in the dream what band is playing. As they open the door, I realize that I forgot my hat at home, though this bothers me only fleetingly.

Alone now, I sit, feet outside the door, as I struggle to put my shoes on. I also want to bring books, notebooks, and other things with me — things that in waking life I’d typically put in my bookbag, but for some reason in this case decide to put inside plastic bags that I intend to place over my feet once I get my shoes on and tie tightly around my ankles.

As I’m in the midst of working on one foot, a girl comes up to my other shoe, which is just laying on the curb beside me, and asks, “You want this?” She says it in a way that implies she intended to steal it, so I just look at her very seriously and say, simply, “I do.” Then she leaves it there and just walks away.

I accomplish getting both shoes on and tying the bag to my left foot, but can’t get the right one to work. It won’t tie tightly enough, but in the midst of my struggling I remember I only intended to do this to one foot and so abandon the effort.

As is often the case recently, it was after writing down the dream that I realized there was a song playing in my head. It was Mr. Brightside, by The Killers.

In terms of what the dream may have been attempting to communicate through symbol:

The van may suggest that I need more space as I move forward in life and bring things and people (like the two people in the van) along with me. Much the same could be said of the shoes, which alone have associations with moving forward, and given the bags full of my possessions, it resonates with the van symbol even more. Shoes also have associations with identity, however (“to walk a mile in your shoes,” for instance), particularly one’s persona or social mask, given they cover the foot like the persona covers the ego in Jungian psychology. In this sense, the shoes also share similarities with the hat that I’d forgotten, as hats are decorative and a means of protection for the head, so perhaps also serve as a symbol for the persona. The sense that I was just outside a building in which there was a concert — which is said to symbolize harmony, enjoyment, energy and music — may suggest that if only I’d let go of things (my hat and the stuff in my shoe-bags) I could find community, energy, and enjoyment in life.

This dream reminds me of two things.

The first thing it reminded me of dealt with the symbols used in the dream, and how it related to events that happened yesterday — little things.

For instance, yesterday morning, as always, the pair of shoes that had been gifted to me awhile back were a bitch to put on. After my shift ended, I had driven a drunk coworker to a nearby Circle K to get more beer, and he wasn’t wearing the hat he almost always wore. The zipper on my bookbag had also broken and my book and papers had fallen out as I strolled from the truck to my apartment security door.

All incidents that may have been cherry-picked for useful symbols with which to weave the dream. In other words, this may suggest the dream was in part constructed of “day residue” that was reorganized or appropriated by my unconscious in the dream’s construction — which does not me essarily contradict its symbolic meaning.

Second, the message of the dream reminds me of my attempt to relax myself through self-hypnosis last night in an effort to get to sleep. I finally articulated to myself what has been a consistent problem with me: I can’t entirely relax or let go because I always seem to be on guard, sleeping with one eye open, afraid of being caught unaware and controlled, or taken advantage of. This applies to my perhaps-paranormal-related fears during meditation and sleep, but also more broadly across my mundane life.

Its disturbingly all-encompassing, as a matter of fact.

Potential Narcissistic Underpinnings.

There’s this woman at work, Jan, who tries desperately to appear nice on the surface, and the customers evidently love her. Before the pandemic, the owner of the franchise would post some of the customer comments on the monitor by the kitchen and it got sincerely irritating, the number of times you’d see her name mentioned.

Of course, if a person working the register as she does got good customer reviews, they gave out cash prizes, gifts cards, or whatever, so I imagine she’d always urge the customers to leave a comment and mention her name in the process. Given there are plenty of regulars on morning shift, when she typically works, I’m sure some degree of obligation was felt on their part to do so.

In any case, I get along with her well enough, but she’s one of those people that always seems to turn the conversation around to something horrible that’s happened to her or her loved ones (and so resultingly her) in her life.

When they desire to strike up a conversation, some people default to the weather, others to sports. This? This is her thing. Only it isn’t just for the purposes of small talk, of temporarily bonding with another human, its to elicit your sympathy and see her has oh-so fucking strong for being able to endure it all.

That’s my sense, anyway.

I was reflecting on how annoying that was today when, as is usually the case, I suddenly found myself shifting mental gears to self-reflection mode in order to ensure I wasn’t engaging in psychological projection; to ensure I wasn’t doing the same damned thing when I talk with people.

I identified two tendencies of mine that served as potential candidates.

People tend to come to me to spill their problems, and I don’t mind it, but it does get on my nerves when they refuse to let me get in a word edgewise now and then, when they talk over me or entirely ignore what I have to say. I always listen, so can’t they just take a goddamn commercial break and return the favor — just a little? Eventually, I began to aggressively interject occasionally just to prove to myself, if not to them, that I wasn’t just some mute ear to them, that I was certainly no door mat for them, that I demanded back at least some small degree of the respect I granted them in this context.

I considered whether this made me hypocritical with respect to my annoyance with Jan, but the circumstance with her, in all honesty, seemed quite different to me.

A tendency of mine that was also a candidate and has annoyed me for some time reared its head most often when in conversations with Elizabeth, who I’ll call Liz from now on. Liz is an intelligent, weird girl. She’s short and cute, seems to love driving and is rather ambitious in general. On top of all that, she’s had some paranormal occurrences in her life, has great dream recall (or at least used to, prior to the pot-smoking), and is generally open to the kind of weird shit that has happened to me all throughout my life. As a side note, I’ve actually been thinking a lot about her as of late. I miss working with her, miss her in general, and I regret not letting our friendship evolve into the sexual, potentially even the romantic.

In any case, as much as I liked being around her, I was always anxious being around her, too, maybe only because she’s smarter than the average bear and I feared sounding or looking stupid, which she would be more apt to catch onto than most, and which would impact me more given the degree to which I liked her and wanted her to like me.

The annoying tendency I noticed in myself while talking with her was this: she’d be talking about some experience and in response I’d offer a similar experience of my own. However reactionary, the underlying intention was to convey to her that I understood what she was saying — and beyond that, through that, in hopes of strengthening our bond, and perhaps due to the fact that despite the similar experience I was too nervous to come up with anything else to say.

To my ears, however, it always sounded as if I was trying to steal the spotlight from her and bring the focus of the conversation onto me, or perhaps indicate that she need not talk of it as I already knew. That I was trying to steal her story or one-up her story. That wasn’t the case at all, but that’s what it sounded like to me from that third person perspective on myself — and that’s how I feared she interpreted it, too.

So was this the same thing — could this be behind Jan’s annoying habit? Or was she truly trying to hog the spotlight, one-up people with respect to life’s sufferings, and in her case it truly stems from rather narcissistic underpinnings?

Or could it be that my self-analysis is faulty and despite my conscious rationalizations it truly has unconscious, narcissistic underpinnings in my own case as well?

Cascade of Cacophonous Thoughts (4/22/21).

In some strange way and for some stupid reason, I think my brain craves worry, for whenever I find myself not worrying about something, I always worry that I’ve forgotten something that I should be worrying about. If I can identify a worry I had forgotten, my worry shifts to that; if I find nothing, I still worry that I’ve forgotten something meriting concern.

I can’t fucking win.

***

Sex is the leading cause of death. If no one fucked, no one would be born, so no one would die. Lead by example and keep masturbating to break the cycle.

***

I’m in the kitchen, cleaning fryers, when her eyes meet my own. Above her mask, her eyes smile kindly, and I’m kind of lost there for a minute. I think I might have smiled my eyes back, but in either case I swiftly look away, anxiety shooting through me, feeling like some shy toddler. If I ever break the ice with her, its going to be a hell of a lot more difficult now, as I fear averting my eyes made her feel bad, or communicated my disinterest in forging any kind of bond at all, or just conveyed that I’m an asshole. Fuck.

***

Having just read an article regarding UFO reports by commercial airline pilots over Canada, I again come across a variation of that evidently requisite line, essentially the one stating that UFOs aren’t necessarily extraterrestrial — after which is typically offered the possibility that they’re merely advanced aircraft from some earthly, military power.

In this particular article, however, they also mention the fact that these reports have been made over Canada consistently since the 1940s. As a matter of fact, they’ve been seen all over the globe since at least as early as the second world war. In light of that fact, why is the notion that they might be advanced, earthly aircraft still constantly offered as a valid hypothesis? What military power on earth, if they had truly developed that awesome level of technology on their own, would sit on it for eight fucking decades? Its inconceivable.

The extraterrestrial hypothesis stands, in my opinion, as the only reasonable hypothesis for the true unknowns among UFO reports. Could various militaries have retrieved downed UFOs, covered up the fact, and been working hard to successfully reverse engineer and replicate their technology? I don’t doubt it, but I do doubt that they’ve had much success at all, which would make any functional UFO they have in their possession a prized and secret possession — and one they wouldn’t dare risk exposing or losing by flying them in anything less than restricted airspace in the most remote of locations. So this isn’t likely what most people are witnessing.

In any case, it is clear as day that they’re not man-made. Can’t we just officially eliminate that possibility already? The extraterrestrial hypothesis seems tame in comparison.

***

I like dogs, but those little, yippy, snippy ones have figurative balls five times their size and they desperately need a reality check.

As I was taking out the trash to the dumpsters today, I passed by a parked car where one of them stuck their head out the drivers side door, eyeballing me as he yip-yip-yipped like a fucking maniac. I kind of wanted to sit him down and have a little talk.

“Look,” I would say, “I know that your ancestors were wolves and all, but you’re the size of a large rat, you understand? I could punt you like a football across this parking lot with remarkable ease if I so desired, so just chill the fuck out.”

Sexuality, Atheism, & the Most Oppressed Minority.

4/16/14

“Are you gay?”

Leave it to a ten year old.

“Nope,” I said with a laugh. “Why?”

I forget her reason for asking that question specifically, or even if she gave me one, but the usual question came up: why I don’t have a girlfriend. After all, girls are always talking to me, she seemed to be suggesting.

“I’m sort of like an atheistic priest,” I tried to explain to her. “A sort of confessional with a pulse.”

Guys, girls, friends, strangers: people have always spilled to me, telling me their secrets, confiding in me, and unless I’m at my occasional point of overload I enjoy it and the insight into their character that it offers me. Over time I have learned not to leap to the assumption that simply because a girl talks to me, or even likes me, it implies she’s interested in me in any additional way.

She seemed to ignore that, electing instead to latch onto my atheism. This, she told me, was why I didn’t have a girlfriend: I don’t believe in a god. An interesting allegation, but one I’ve heard before. I tried to dodge it, I swear, but she somehow cornered me into a theological discussion.

In her eyes god exists, as does the devil, and everyone has a guardian angel or a guardian demon. She detailed it all. Curious. I told her it was her right to believe all that, but I just wasn’t convinced. She asserted it was just true.

“You have every right to feel that way,” I told her, adding as playfully as I could, “but personally, I think its crap.”

Since she asked, I told her my current viewpoint on the matter of the paranormal: reincarnation I find a likelihood, apparitions and out of body experiences come along with the package, but I see no suggestion of Good, Evil, god or devil, angels or demons. Its too black and white for such a Technicolor world.

The conversation made me feel incredibly awkward at first because the last thing I wanted to do was seem like I was trying to push any viewpoint on her. I wasn’t. Never would. That isn’t my place. It isn’t anyone’s place, in my opinion, but perhaps least of all some weirdo, balding maintenance man her mother works with. Without doubt she’s a bright kid, though, quite capable of holding her own in an argument and certainly mentally equipped enough to handle foreign viewpoints. But still. I felt like this conversation was somehow crossing a line. I wanted to talk with her about it and she wouldn’t let me exit the conversation, but I had that lingering fear that I nonetheless should not be having this conversation.

Maybe I just worry too much about doing or saying the wrong thing. I hope that’s all it is, but it never seems to make me worry any less. Kids are people, too, of course, and in my eyes they are without doubt the most oppressed and misunderstood “minority” on our blue-green Island Earth. I like talking to them most of all, I’ve noticed, because their minds are still open. They aren’t afraid to ask questions and are the most likely to actually explore possibilities. That’s why I wanted to be a teacher.

Never would I tell a kid what to believe, but if they ask, I’ll tell them what I believe without hesitation, and I always hope that doesn’t cross some line.

Does it, though?

Examination of a Mask-Slacker.

Leaning against the wall, I’m looking at my phone and smoking cigarettes before my shift starts. A truck pulls in and a skinny, cue ball bald guy steps out, maybe in his fifties, though I’m bad at judging age.

“You open inside?”

My coworker on the curb looks up from her phone, meets with his eyes, and kindly says, “Yeah, you just have to wear a mask.”

He stands there, staring at her for a moment. His vibe communicates to me that he feels as if he’s being challenged somehow.

“I just need to go to the bathroom.”

She remains calm. “You still have to wear a mask to enter the store.”

I feel heat rising.

“You’re lettin’ people take your rights away from you, you know that?” His voice shakes, his face turns red, as the words force their way out of his mouth, ultimately reigned in by conscience yet having put up one hell of a fight. “Ain’t takin’ ’em away from me.”

With that, he storms in through the doors, passionately defiant and maskless. Once he’s out of sight, she shakes her head, calls him a jackass, flicks her cigarette, and returns to her phone.

Here’s the thing: since as far back as I can remember, this fast food joint I’ve wasted away my life at — not to mention countless other places — have had a sign on the door that reads, or reads some variation of:

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.

And what’s more, this sign wasn’t justified by a global pandemic. It was, so far as I can tell, only enforcing popular taste. Despite this, not once do I recall anyone looking at such a sign and boldly proclaiming that their rights were being taken away, or that they were being oppressed.

I find this inconsistency interesting, to say the least.

After he marched inside, mad and mask-slacking, my coworker, her cigarette now finished and flicked into the littered lot, went through those same damn doors and returned to work.

Shortly therafter, he comes out, slim body presumably piss-free, and seems to have simmered down a bit in the brief, intervening period. He half-apologizes to me for his outburst, and proceeds to explain to me that while he understands why we have to wear masks while making the food, of course, it was just insane to him that he was expected to wear one just to use the restroom.

This, too, was interesting to me.

So you understand that I have to wear a mask for my entire shift and, like, that’s cool and all, but you can’t slap one over your fucking face for the relatively short amount of time it takes you to whip out your shroom-tipped meat torpedo into the gaping porcelain piss-mouth goddess and take a goddamn tinkle?

No disrepect, but you’re not walking back your insanity far enough, sir.

“These are weird times, man,” is what I manage to say.

No lies, no hurtful truths.

He nods to me in the wake of his confirmation of our fundamental, if vague, agreement, wishes me a good day, and proceeds to his truck.

How to Ruin a Smoke Break.

Out the back door I went, wanting nothing more than a few minutes of solitude as I smoked before resuming my fast food slave labor — and then saw, to my dismay, two people stumble into the parking lot. I swiftly looked away, doing my best to avoid eye contact. I felt the guys attention even before he called out, “Hey, dude.”

Don’t do it. Don’t ask me for a cigarette.

“You got an extra smoke on you?”

Fuck.

I politely turned him down, citing a limited supply, and had high hopes that would be the end if it. That they’d just leave so I could stare off into space and think and daydream without interruption, but no, he sat down on the curb a short distance away from me and proceeded to yammer my ear off.

He explained how they’d been at a bar uptown when a girl he was with, a girl who had brought him there, didn’t want to take them home, so she simply up and left them there. Now he was waiting on a friend to pick him up. He asked if it was okay if he waited here.

“Absolutely,” I said. “You just can’t sit inside, that’s all. Its take-out only.”

He seemed grateful enough to be given permission to rest his inebriated posterior on the curb, and spoke on bit — on and on, actually — before he suddenly stopped.

“Sorry, man,” he replied, “I talk a lot when I’m drunk.”

I respect the self-awareness.

“Its all good,” I told him. Yet was it?

As he continued jabbering, I noticed his skinny friend standing by him, staring at me with intense, unblinking, unwavering, bug eyes, talking aggressively at a volume so low that whatever he was saying was indecipherable. It was like he was holding a very involved conversation with me, only I wasn’t talking or even looking at him save for swift, nervous glances.

I could only hope that whatever he imagined I was saying to him wasn’t insulting enough to inspire his rage.

The guy who wouldn’t shut up asked me, “You know how when you do too many drugs it can kind of fuck your brain up? That’s what happened to my friend here.”

Kind of? I mean no offense, but the Ocular-Highbeam Mumbler here is light years beyond the Land of Kind Of.

Evidently they were both in recovery, and his mumbling friend recently wanted to get clean, so he was working hard to be the guy’s sponsor. I was confused as to how he could tell me he was in recovery while being shitfaced and not immediately address this apparent contradiction, but I didn’t ask, nor was I willing to judge.

He told Saucer-Peepers to sit down on the curb between us, and as Captain Blinkless did so Motormouth quickly added, “not too close,” and, “don’t hit him.” He didn’t hit me, but he was uncomfortably close, and he kept doing that staring and whispering thing. Finally, I could make out some words.

“All right,” he said, “I can show you.”

Please don’t whip it out.

That’s when I realized he’d been wearing one, solitary glove, MJ-style, and now took it off, fingers spread, revealing one nasty mother of a blister that had bubbled up at the dead center of his palm. I involuntarily winced and said, “Fucking ow,” and looked away.

At this point, the friend arrived, and Peepers stood up and started doing his routine with him. From the rolled-down driver seat window, the friend said, “I can’t hear what you’re fuckin’ sayin’, man.”

“Are you free?”

“I am free,” said the friend, and quite confidently. “Are you free?”

Peepers laughed and shot his hands up in the air, now yelling, “Hell yeah I’m free!”

My cigarette was about done, so I flicked it into the parking lot, got up, and entered the back door.

And now I’m free, motherfucker.

Water & Bloated Ceilings (3/31-4/3/21 Dreams).

3/31/21

I’m in the stock room at work, by the stainless steel sink where we clean dishes, though here it was just one large sink instead of three. Intending to clean the sink, I fill it up with this fluid that was incredibly pink, akin to Pepto Bismol.

4/2/21

I had a hangover and kept falling in and out of sleep. Right before I finally decided to get out of bed, with my face down in the pillow and this piercing feeling in my one eye, I had an incredibly vivid, animate image of staring down into this clear, blue, peaceful water, rippling slightly and reflecting sunlight on the surface. It was considerably beautiful.

4/3/21

In the dream, I was in my bedroom, which appeared to be modeled after the room I had when I still lived with my parents. As it was with my old bedroom as well as my current apartment, the ceiling was of the type that had those circular splotches of white paint.

It suddenly came to my attention that a part of the ceiling looked swollen, which is to say there was a large bump, as if fluid from above had formed a pool that had bent part of the ceiling downward and would eventually burst. Curious and concerned, I stood on my bed and poked at it with my finger. I found that it was incredibly soft and when I pushed my finger into it just slightly, it tore a hole through which I could see the attic, and furthermore see sunlight coming into the dark attic through a window. I then remember informing my father.

Water is supposed to symbolize emotions; the color pink, love and femininity. Given this, the sink might suggest my need to cleanse my emotions; the clarity of the blue water in the second dream may have represented that goal.

Ceilings are supposed to represent limitations, or maybe the barrier between one’s ego and higher self — perhaps further suggested by the fact that once I poked the hole I could see the dimly-lit attic above. While there was no water in the last dream, it was initially what I thought caused the bloated part of the ceiling. Could this suggest that the emotional barrier I have between my ego and higher self is thinning, weakening, or is that just a blindly optimistic interpretation?

A Pulled Tooth, MJK, & a Political Argument (3/29 & 3/30/21 Dreams).

After a few days of agony and a few days of moderate relief due to using every home remedy I could come across online, I finally secured an appointment with the dentist to get the wretched tooth yanked out of my jaw. The days of agony had left me sounding like a frantic and frustrated pregnant woman, screaming, “GET THIS FUCKING THING OUT OF ME,” and I knew if I didn’t get this taken care of pronto that pain would return. So despite my fear of driving, lack of any sense of direction, and anxiety over going to the dentist, I got up extremely early and, incredibly sleep deprived, got lost but ultimately found the place, filled out the stupid paperwork, and just marinated in anxiety in the waiting room.

Thankfully, that turned out to be the worst part of my experience there. The guy numbed up the area and got the tooth out in what seemed like thirty seconds. The whole experience was like heavy foreplay and intense sexual buildup followed by a pathetic and unsatisfying climax — only in this case it wasn’t sex but dental pain and anxiety, and for the pathetic climax I was eternally thankful.

Being told not to smoke for five to seven days was laughable. I knew I’d just have to be careful. The issue is that I don’t have a moderate bone in my body; every aspect of me is extreme. I take hard drags off a cigarette. I brush my teeth and gargle with intensity. Now I just have to be very mindful until this bloody hole in my jaw heals.

The rest of the recommendations — don’t suck through a straw, drink through a bottle, or spit — that was a pain in the ass, but manageable. Eat soft foods, and don’t eat spicy foods? This was kind if an issue, as almost everything I eat is spicy. I had to go shopping after work for soft foods, as I was incredibly hungry and there were no soft foods at work or at home, so I bought a tub of cheap ice cream and two boxes of stovetop stuffing.

So that wasn’t bad at all. Pretty awesome, actually.

I was out sweeping the lot at work when a strange thing happened. I’ve had this odd synchronicity popping up again lately where I think of something and it happens, or I think of someone and I bump into them. Well, I had been thinking of Donny, the morning maintenance man who has been out because he has prostate cancer. He’s been in and out of the hospital and I hadn’t heard about his current state in awhile, and so was thinking how I should ask someone.

On my way inside, I see his wife, Mickey. She’d gone through drive through and they’d screwed up her sandwich. I’m polite enough to her, but she’s truly one hell of a gossiping, controlling, high-and-mighty bitch, to be honest. I don’t miss working with her much at all.

I asked her how Donny was, and she said he was in the car, so I went out to see him. He’d lost weight and seemed weak, but it was good to see the guy. He said he probably wasn’t coming back, and I told him I couldn’t blame him; I wouldn’t, either. He should enjoy his retirement and, once he got stronger, spend his time engaging in his passion, woodworking. He agreed, and said that’s what he planned to do after he recuperates from the last surgery he was scheduled to have in the coming months.

Talking with him, I almost felt guilty for my internal bitching concerning my tooth pain and the rules I was expected to follow post-extraction.

After getting off at work at six in the eve and doing some shopping, I ate and watched some shit on my computer and then decided to get a little sleep. Upon awakening, I remembered part of a dream.

3/29/21,
11:47 PM.

I was cleaning out and organizing some house, presumably one I had been living in, with none other than Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of what is perhaps my favorite band, Tool, as well as A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. As we engaged in this activity, I was also doing something that made me feel pathetic and embarrassed immediately upon awakening: I was constantly trying to impress him or forge a bond by offering suggestive clues concerning who I was in “accidental” ways. It was less like overt advertizement, you could say, and more like product placement.

It was likely far less subtle than I intended, though he never called me out on it. While I would say things to him indirectly suggesting who I was and what we might have in common, what I recall most clearly is laying down a stack of papers of mine nearby him, where they would be in his direct view, the top paper of which revealed something specific I wanted him to know.

I was picking up and sorting a whole bunch of change on the floor at one point and he had just stepped out of the open doorway. There was this young, skinny, sort of feeble-looking kid beside him, maybe just barely a teenager, who he introduced as his friend, Jim. He mentioned him and I were very much alike, and he specifically pointed out the fact that we were both introverted.

Then I awoke with another new song by Chevelle playing in my head, perhaps my favorite song on the album that I’ve heard so far: So Long, Mother Earth. Though I don’t know if the specific song bears any meaning associated with the dream, it is true that Chevelle has been compared to Tool in the past — in fact, their song, Clones, was evidently inspired by these accusations.

I also know that MJK’s actual first name is James, or Jim, perhaps suggesting that the kid represented his younger self. Though its not my name, “Jim” bears some associations with my actual name, so perhaps this was another manifestation of my belief in the dream that MJK and I had similarities and I wanted to befriend him — though perhaps this was the dream’s way of suggesting I had more in common with who he was as a naive child as opposed to who he is now, as an adult.

I do work in a town he used to live in when he was younger, which may be another factor.

In any case, I woke up, ate some more, watched some more YouTube and at least two episodes of The X Files, took my sleeping pills and went back to sleep. Later I awoke, remembering aspects of yet another dream:

3/30/21,
10:11 AM.

I’m in the parking lot at work, talking with Mickey. In the midst of the conversation, she starts complaining about Biden, and I decide not to hold my tongue, as I so often tend to do. I ask her why I never heard a single complaint from her the last four years regarding Trump, and then I start tearing into that orange nightmare — and I don’t hold back.

Not. At. All.

I tell her that while I’m not a big Biden fan, Trump was clearly, infinitely worse. My verbal attack on him comes out of my mouth in a constant, aggressive stream, and I refuse to back down or yield to her in the least. All of this enrages her. She keeps trying to be superior, trying to be an authority, trying to instill fear in me, acting as if she can say anything and its my duty to take it but that I should have to shut my mouth out of some deep respect for her and her insipid political persuasions. I sense that she feels that if I don’t that at the very least I should feel guilty, particularly because she’s doing things for us.

I guess I’m part of a group of people, presumably from work, that are taking a trip out of the country, and she has various gifts that she’s giving to each of us before we go. I remember people gathering around in a circle, where these gifts were being given, I believe inside of a bar. I enter into it late, with someone there catching me up on what the things are.

When I eventually get on the plane, I go to sit at the very back, but I find that Channing, my friend from high school, is laying down on all the seats in the isle, on his back and seemingly asleep. Before I quickly go to find a seat a few rows up on the other side, he opened his eyes a crack and saw me. Once I take my seat on the otherwise vacant plane, I wonder to myself if this is first class, and if so, am I in the wrong area, maybe even on the wrong plane? It would be my first time flying, and I wasn’t certain how all this worked.

It was then, while sitting there., that I realized that I never told my parents I was leaving the country, and I was suddenly afraid they’d be upset. I decided that I’d just have to call them when I got there.

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.

Upon the Canvas of a Dark Bob Ross.

While I’m not the biggest fan of these earlier work shifts, there are some things I do enjoy about them — most of all the fact that, at least since we turned the clocks forward, its not nearly so dark out on my trek home from that fast food joint everyone in that damned town seems intent on spending their stimulus checks on.

After pulling out of the Circle K to head to my humble abode this early evening, I peered in my rearview to glimpse the town as it began to slowly fade into the background. What greeted my exhausted eyes was so stunning it could have been a Bob Ross painting — if only that nature-oriented, animal-loving, artistic genious with the soothing voice had flirted with his dark side a bit more on the canvas.

In a way, the entire scene, to imagine it from a third person perspective for a moment, kind of reminded me of those scenes in films where a guy calmly walks away from something like a building or car he’s rigged with explosives and is utterly unphased, doesn’t so much as blink or flich, as it explodes into an epic fireball behind him.

Granted, I was damned tired, but with the sun going down, the cloudy portion of the sky enveloping the hellscape increasingly behind me glowed a brilliant, beautiful orange, and it looked to me, as I drove down that long, tree-lined road towards home, as if the entire fucking cess pool of a town had suddenly gone up in flames.

If. Fucking. Only.