simon's dreams
LADYTRAP, INC.
march 17-23, 2003
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a mysterious and foreign city
I end up visiting a hostel in a foreign city. It's a converted old Victorian or Craftsman house and at first the procedures are a bit confusing. It's not just a hostel but a sort of weekend camp. When you arrive you get put into groups and..
no, wait, it is in Singapore! or Nepal! actually it's a blend of both in this dream. It's in the mountains, as Nepal, but it is a single city-state, as Singapore. The culture is mysterious and spiritual, as Nepal, but technologically advanced like Singapore and with very strict rules, i.e. no gum chewing or disobedience is permitted. I go there with a tour group and am chocked that they allow tour groups of rowdy tourists to come here without getting totally jailed and scorned for their wild western antics.
I take a stroll around and the layout is fantastic. The city exists as a series of plaza connected by footbridges. Shady gardens and fountains here and there, and the plazas are all on different levels, like a canal-less three-dimensional Venice. I forget what the women are wearing but I remember seeing some junior-high-aged boys wearing some delightful looking imperial getups that make them look like ancient Chinese warriors. Red dragons or lions on their shirts. Straps across the chest that were once sword-bearing but are now decorative. Tassels Each boy wears his own version of essentially the same costume... same colors and cut, but each with a slightly different variation on the design.
NOW is when I end up in the hostel. When you arrive you sign up for a tour group and an employee gives you the orientation as to where the toilets are, etc., and I think you play some summer-camp-style games. Once that is all done I am on my own and can start thinking about my travel plan, I also eat my meal and need some privacy to make a phone call but all the bathrooms are occupied. I end up walking outside into the viney side yard and climb in through a bathroom window.
Okay, so some how I end up working as one of the tour guides for this place and eventually that leads to the position of research photographer for the main dude. I think this is for his magazine or travel guide. Apparently he is great with business and organization and needs someone to capture images for his vision. But it ends up being a very open-ended and creative position for me (i.e. I can shoot whatever I want). WE go down to the beach and the surf is just gorgeous. Delicate and consistent tubing breaks, the sunset shimmering through the scattered spray, glassy surface and fine, fine, fine sand. Everything around me is in color but I see the surf as a light-filled B&W Ansel Adams-style scene. In this part of the dream I see everything how it will eventually end up on film, i.e. B&W vs. color, under- vs. overexposed, print or slide. That's cool.
The surf is coming right up the the cliffs against which we are standing, and the bottoms of my shoes are moist with silver ocean. I shot the anemone and sea cucumbers rolling back and forth with the advancing and retreating surf. I make a phone call to my mentor for advice on shooting these. He tells me that my employer can be fickle at times but ultimately is a fair and stimulating person to work for.
Next I gaze up to the docks and hotels to the left, a mile or so down the beach, and see what I think are some amazing rock formations for my next subject. Well-balanced beam-like rocks, Joshua Tree colored, placed as if they were some sort of delicate angular Stonehenge. I zoom in and realize these are parts of boats and office buildings. Disappointing, but I get over it, and it's still beautiful.
handless
I'm visiting another town or country. Unfamiliar place, at least. Set up with a few tents... I have my backpacking tent but the others have set up a ridiculous large circus tent and filled it with living room furniture, kitchenware, etc. Not a bad setup, but I wonder what they'll do with all that stuff when it's time to leave.
This was one of those bizarre and comedic dreams... i can't remember all the goodies, but i was being pushed all over the city in a really slick shopping cart or dogsled. We did a flash tour of what seemed like the airport... long hallways, plenty of rushing people... and suddenly people are giving me all sorts of tasks, as if I had been sent in to help out. (like Pulp Fiction's Wolf?) These are mainly ridiculous or impossible requests. For instance they wheel me a guy with his hands sitting in his lap. The are unattached and wrapped in gauze. They ask me if I am ready to go into surgery and reattach them. It will be the world's first hand reattachement surgery and they expect me to do it! I tell Raul (he's the patient who was an athlete and lost the hands in an athletic accident) that, sorry, they'll have to find someone better suited for the job but nobody will take no for an answer. Eventually they have to.
We go downstairs of what is now a hostel or traveler's lodge. There is a bar and a pool table. I ask, for no reason, if anyone knows how to reattach a pool stick (Pat had two sticks with him that might well have been a pool cue broken in half). The bartender respons witha rhyming poem, making me think he has been asked this question many times. The gist of it is that there are plnty of cues on teh rack and why don't I just take one of those? All the cues are wrapped in strng and on a table a central cue has so much colorful striong round it that it resmebled a giant cone
nightmares in my head and in the world
I went to bed in an awful state of mind, close to tears with frustration and dismay. I am starting to lose hope, and it is killing me. That is exactly what every institution I despise needs us to do... to sink into complacency and mindlessly enjoy this fat wad of cash we have been given (At the expense of the rest of the world) to circulate through the money machine. I am starting to feel totally helpless, to the point that it makes me want to give up. I used to feel that I could really make a difference, but now I am starting to think that nothing I do can ever matter. Naturally that feels awful. Every moment of happiness I feel, every slice of pleasure I get from life, no seem like distractions from the real issue; that I have no right to enjoy any of my privileged life, knowing the pain and deceit that it stand on.
Shawn has started smoking again, after years of liberation from the tobacco monster, for precisely the same reasons. This is killing us all.
It is the ignorance and complacency of the common citizen ("brainwashed" seems harsh but oh so appropriate) that allows the kind of support this government needs to continue its reckless, short-sighted activity abroad and at home. Tell people you are protecting them from danger and liberating others in a just, moral move that the rest of the evil world won't support us on, and if they have no concept of global affairs they of course will believe everything you say. No frame of reference. What percentage of this population know that we are a disgustingly rich, obese nation not because of "American spirit" but because we are a parasitic empire?
[Fortunately,
a conversation I had with Erica last night has cheered me up a bit. She
gave me a pep talk and got me back into the "we will fight this to the end"
frame of mind. We may not be able to affect politics and foreign policy
(the ignored hundred of millions of pleading voices over the last three months
attest to that) but one thing we can do is start to change public opinion.
I'd like to think that most people who really knew the true facts of what goes
on out there would change their mind about blindly supporting a policy of
imperialism and unchecked capital enslavement. How couldn't they?
Only the most greedy, most heartless people in this country could possibly lack
the compassion to freely accept this gift bourne of blood and terror. So
my charge, the one reason I have to not give up on the world, is to start
educating those around me in the hopes that we can bring them around to their
senses. The marketing firms of this nation have a firm grip on the masses,
but we can appeal to passion and humanity. It is now my charge to collect
as many cold, hard facts about the repeated pattern of wrongdoing on behalf of
the United States. I will be an expert, with a dozen documented, true,
convincing tales that disprove any claim that this is a just war, that any
business this country conducts abroad is for its own greedy, grubby, fat little
hands. I will start, one by one to change the opinions around me. I
will convince people to put aside their own stolen riches and false sense of
security to remove liars from office and not support global terror. I can
start right here at home. There are plenty of misled folk in San Diego,
especially right at my own place of work. If you can change the American
voice, you can change the world.]
On to the dreams. Despite my pep talk and new sense of purpose, they were all terrible. And I NEVER have terrible dreams!
The evening started with unpleasant images of deformed faces, a stillborn baby, being interrogated in a dark room by torturers, a car wreck, fire. Really awful images. Quick dreams in that I awoke panting with each shocking image.
Next (And this dream is hazy) I end up in some terrible feud with Pam. I have doublecrossed her or she had doublecrossed me and otherwise we have ended up in this awful, potent, hateful conflict. I fear for my own life, and figure she does as well. I think I may need to kill her just to protect myself, and I am sure she is thinking the same, the kind of ridiculous downward spiral that we had in the Cold War. A Cold War between two willful people. However the drama plays out, we end up in a shattered house, my forehead pressed against the porcelain edge of a cold cracked sink. She draws the sharpened edge of an elongated utility knife gently across my neck, enough to make me bleed profusely but not enough to kill me, missing all the veins and pipes and such. This was very deliberate, to show she was in powerful control of my life. I remember vividly how soaked my pajama top was with blood. I think this realization for her was sobering, and she lost her will to kill me. Seeing how scared we both were in that moment brought us 'round to our senses, and either one of us or a friend gave some sort of pep talk to snap us completely out of it and forgive each other. It was actually a somewhat happy ending.
Then
I am running with Shawn and Rikker and Minka and I mention to Shawn "Sorry if
I've been especially down lately. This war has gotten me especially
depressed about the sorry state of affairs in the world. I've become more
sensitive to the environmental nightmare, the complacency of the majority, the
terrible stake unchecked enterprise has chained this country to.
ClearChannel has ruined music, Wendy's has ruined food, McMillin communities and
Shea homes have ruined shelter, Ford has ruined cities. Ruined them
for everyone, even those of us precariously out of their reach." Well,
something along those lines. You never need to be descriptive or eloquent
in dreams to get your whole point across.
That said, we march right into the thriving underbelly of desire, the pulsing vein of the enemy, the the motherlode of consumerism, the grubby hand of greed... the shopping mall. I naturally am frightened and irritated. IT turns out we are going to some big-money marketing event to see events planned to generate hype for the new "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie. Only being a great lover of this book allows me to continue. We stand there in a giant hall and watch the movie screen from the balcony seats. I Am disappointed to see that Arthur Dent is no longer the hapless, dorky man in a bathrobe but a 25-year-old handsome action figure on a motor scooter! Terrible! I have to pee terribly (that was the outside world getting into my subconscious, trying to rouse me) and the rest of the dream is a nightmare you'd rather not know of a sloppy public toilet with overflowing sewage, etc.
Part of me hopes these nightmares were an isolated incident and part of me hopes that I truly am a sensitive person, that as long as the world is troubled I, too, will feel its suffereing. This certainly means lifelong misery but it seems far better than blind happiness and acceptance. IS this a transition point in my life? Up to this year I have been happy, in love with life, in love with happiness, drunk on the pleasures of the world. Perhaps one's optimistic joy for life can only last as long as one's innocence...
more fucking war
Another beach? Pat? Gone.
Changed my clock radio station from NPR to Mexican pop music as I realised we have entered another "all news is bad news" period. The media eats war up like nothing else. The need to put out interesting reports for the bloodthirsty masses results in placing minor stories about this and that patriot missle about far more significant events that are conveniently kept from our ears and eyes.
I couldn't believe some people at work yesterday, anxiously watching CNN every 4 minutes to see if bombing began yet, excited about war as if it was their superbowl kickoff. Sickening. One man had written on his whiteboard a list of countries, beginning with Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc. Afghanistan had a line through it, and you could tell he was excited to cross off Iraq. Bastard. This is no game. IT's an embarrassment. These are adults we're talking about. Rich, voting, intelligent (?) adults.
what a boring dream
Pat and I are called in to be school teachers. We go to the small school up the street. I get placed as a math teacher. I think Pat teaches reading. I have one student, a black boy of about 12 years. He says he's my neighbor and why don't we hang out then? He's a patient student. We get paid generously in cash but must pay for our own materials. To earn some extra cash we get paid, to remove old fixtures and metal railings from the building. Since we get pid by the length of material, we of course go for the very long ones first.
spatial awareness
Happy birthday, Erica!
Early dream so details are scattered: A homeless or maybe just down-and-out man by the beach. He has a sense of purpose and steals a van to go do something good. I admire his resolve, but am saddened by his foolishness in that he will certainly be caught and arrested for reckless driving and car theft before he finishes his noble plan.
I jump in the icy water for a surf, but it is an unusual surfboard. Maybe it's not even a surfboard but an ironing board or river raft or something like that. The surf is high and there are documentary crews present.
I explore a dusty old attic/garage with Ben, my old music T.A. from UCSD. He is blind so he needs my help leading him around but he has remarkable audio-based spatial awareness. I wonder if all musicians have enhances audio-based sensibilities? Pat's ex-girlfriend Carrie is there as well for comparison, and she is clumsy even with her visions, clunking the surfboard around on everything.
I conduct or view a quick news report. It's in a homestyle diner whose clientele is mostly retired Americans. The report tries to decide if the fickle old women who always demand the exact same meal every time are a bane or boon. It's a typical news report in that it presents two side of the argument and never makes any conclusions. On one hand, it's a constant annoyance for the teenage waitress to have to constantly bring back the food because the eggs are not arranged in the proper order, but the owner is thankful for the repeat business in these "troubled times". We also examine a woman who is a step beyond the rest in that she is adventurous and orders a different meal every time. This is attributed to her having traveled the earth in her early days, although she IS in her fourth glass of orange juice.
jesus was way cool
pat and i have to go get first communion and it's like heading down to sign up for traffic school. First you go down to some office that's open late. It's a desk in the middle of happenin' downtown, two-story bars around a grassy square with people partying everywhere. It must be the middle of summer, since even though it's latenight it is broad daylight and everyone is wearing summerwear. It's kind of deceiving because the person at this desk takes your money and then sends you down to the real school, which is a crusty old building on 29th street in a crusty part of town. the first place was just an agency and we know we paid too much with our $29 by going through a middleman.
Anyway, getting first communion is insane. Amazing things happen in the sky. Clouds move in incredible patterns and 256 million colors. swirling patterns and flashing lights and colored lightning bolts. Much of it similar to the shimmering geometric patterns you see when you press on your closed eyelids with your knuckles. Incredibly beautiful music. Quite a scene, and the cool thing is everyone around can see it too. Rather than a self-created hallucination, this is all a supernaturally-created event and I watch it from lukewarm ankle-deep water on a tropical-looking beach. Can't wait for pat to get his the next day so's I can see it all over again.
I am amazed. I really thought this catholic thing was all bunk and now I'm starting to think that this god stuff is actually pretty incredible. I decide to ask my catholic friends about it (Astrid and Pete and ??) and to do a google search for <"first communion" hallucination clouds>... to see, just in case, if other people have seen the same thing. They have! There are even photos or illustrations on the web!
A second dream has me heading down to the roller rink for a night of fun. More first-communion related stuff; you have to pay about $45 for two different oils which you rub on your face and hands. One is a lotion (hands), one comes as a waxy bar (face and eyebrows). I head into the roller rink and it is PACKED! Full of young party-age people (21-23?). a total glammed-out slutty PB crowd. Fake boobs and baseball caps. Way different scene than the fun crowd Pat and I saw at Lauren's birthday party out the real world.
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