dream!
LADYTRAP, INC.
the flip side of reality
previous week back to index following week
mystery at the border
I'm back in high school, in the choir again, dealing with sorting out my class schedules, etc. It's strange to have hat kind of schedule and adult supervision again.
Carolina's sister is moving back to Mexico, but since she has some INS and law problems, I accompany her to make sure she gets everything sorted okay. We are a bit wary of the Border Patrol, even though we are heading in the opposite direction. Maybe in this dream it is just as hard to move the other way across the border. We are on a bus, very close to the border now and a very strange thing happens. A kneeling right on the sidewalk next to the idling bus a doctor is treating an emergency case. He needs to get her breathing again and asks us if we have a "breather", which everyone knows is a molded yellow plastic piece, two tubes side by side, 1/4" diameter, about 2" long. Just as I am about to say NO Carolina's sister pulls one from her purse and hands it to the doctor, who saves the life of the stricken right in front of our eyes. He tosses the "breather" back just as our bus pulls away. It is a bizarre moment that leaves me thinking that there is some odd mystery to this girl, some untold secrets and perhaps a bigger reason for moving to Mexico than just to visit family.
I'll never find out.
Everyone spoke Spanish in this dream.
metamorphosis
It's fourth of July weekend, and I am going camping with Shawn and Simon Banks. While I'm gone I'm having Sparky's cage cleaned so he takes human form for the weekend. Wow, what a trip. As a human he is a very cool woman who reminds me of my cousin Danika.
The first chunk of my dream I get to know Sparky as a human and really trip out on the whole situation. In the dream she is an ex-cricket rather than an ex-lizard and I realise that she had grown to be rather big in the years we had been together... up to four or five inches long. (Also in the dream "crickets" actually looked like grasshoppers.) I don't know how to react at first, but she appears very friendly as we chat through the glass. She makes funny faces at me and laughs a lot, and we speak of this and that. But when I pull out my camera she freaks out and screams. I explain it's just a camera; not some cricket-destroying device and she nervously allows me to snap a few off.
I then let her out of the tank and I am full of happiness and really bonding with my pet. I realise that we were really close all along, but she could just never express it as a cricket or a lizard or whatever she was for the whole time I knew her.
Then the really interesting information comes out: she had grown up human, which explains why she knows english so well and can cope with human emotions and the human experience. Yet for as long as she can tangibly remember she has been a little critter. I propose that perhaps she was human in a previous life, which could explain that. (I watched Blade Runner last night so the idea of implanted memories must have been working here). Whatever the case is, she mentions that here she is with the attractive body of a young adult and she has never had sex her whole life and before she turns back into a critter at the end of the weekend she may as well take care of that.
I'm certainly not going to do it, a) because she is like a sister or cousin (And like a daughter or son as lizard), b) because I am very faithful to Erica don't want to sleep with anyone else and c) casual sex would really screw up our time-tested relationship as human/lizard. Maybe Shawn or Pat will be kind enough to help her out with that. Shawn's friend arrives and He seems pretty keen about it but suddenly I have protective father/big brother tendencies.
Anyway, we drop the issue and decide to play a quick round of pool before heading out. It's a boys-versus-girls game and a few notable events transpire: 1) A giant (2 meters diameter) mini-RTD (the round smart-card-reading computer I helped design at Cubic) end up sitting a foot over the table, making play an extra challenge. 2) Someone, thinking the game is over, starts collecting the remaining balls and after we snap at him we are forced to redistribute them randomly. We have to pay a quarter to retrieve the sold blue one that went down the hole. 3) The boys (striped) are about to win when the women come back and win on an 8-ball foul.
Then we drive to the campground to meet up with Simon Banks. Turns out it is not in the wilderness, as I was hoping for the holiday weekend, but is in Mission Hills where he has been hired to do some business-training seminar retreat at a boyscout-style campground. When we arrive they are sitting around a picnic table in ties, reading material from their notebooks. There is a barbeque running, and while cooking food I decide that oh well, no need to complain, may as well make the best of the weekend.
So a group of us go for a hike up a river into the woods and sure enough it gets wild pretty quickly! Wow. It is Shawn and Pat and Simon Banks and I. Sparky maybe joins us in the beginning but she isn't present later in this adventure so she must turn back early when the trail gets rough.
And rough indeed it is, as we have to climb over thick undergrowth, dead wood and boulders in the river. We are aware of danger, so Simon B. stays put at one point to keep guard as the rest of us are very driven to continue up the river with Heart of Darkness determination.
And then we see the dangerous wild animals. First is a great white shark whose attack we narrowly avoid and who continues down the river. We worry about Simon B. but decide that he can fend for himself. Next is a giant bear that we outrun and eventually the dangers are so great we need to retreat, so we head back down the river, as quickly as we can, yet still painstakingly slow and meticulous as we cross the same obstacles that blocked our upstream progress. We come to the area where Simon Banks was waiting and it is a terrible scene. He is bloody and dead. Awful. The shark is there next to him on the ground. Shawn and I conclude in despair that he was eaten by the shark and it will get us too. But Pat points out to us that the shark is dead too, so the shark DIDN'T kill him so we have nothing to fear. His confidence is encouraging, and convinces us that we have nothing to fear (Despite the fact that Simon B. is still dead and whatever killed him was able to kill a giant shark and must still be lurking about.) We conclude that since we have been talking to a former animal all day (And even almost beat it at pool) we must have a better understanding of animal instinct and reactions and therefore will be able to think more quickly in an attack and to keep ourselves out of harm's way. Seems like sound logic.
Well, that theory is tested very quickly as the enormous owlish/hawkish bird of prey that killed poor Simon B. (and the shark) swoops down out of the trees at us. We scatter, and I end up hiding in some thick grass. Pat crosses an empty field to hide there too, but he is exposed and I fear he is leading the angry raptor right to my spot. Somehow, and I wish I remember how, we get out of that situation and return safely to the campground. Once I am safe, I relax enough to wake up and start recalling this fantastic adventure.
*************************
SECOND EXPERIENCE:
L U C I D I T Y ! ! !
I just came out of the most incredible dream experience of my life. Wow. My body is still flushed with every state of physical euphoria and freedom possible, imaginable, incredible, lovable, admirable, gorgeous and all life......
After my first dream I went to sleep and fell deep into slumber. I was having an ordinary dream, in an ordinary dream state, which will become a reference point for my attempts to describe this phenomenon
Whatever happened in the dream before this incident doesn't matter. I was with a group of people, Pat was driving the Contour and we were parked on the side of the freeway, facing south (southwest?). We wanted to go north (NE?) and he backed right out into the freeway into what should have been a backward, pivoted U-turn onto the other side. But instead of making it to the other side he just accelerated backward on the southbound fast lane of the freeway, moving backward in traffic. We were moving fast. From my vantage I was so high above the car that I could look down onto traffic, and I saw a truck, speeding along next to us, which looked a bit like a military transport with a canvas roof over the back. For some reason I had the impression it was a sort of church and I noticed that the brightly-colored canvas blanket over the back was exactly the same red-green-brown elephant-sun-flower patterned sarong-y blanket I bought in Thailand, and which I currently hang over my window as a sort of curtain. My first thought was to call out to the driver (owner?) of the vehicle to ask if he had bought the thing in the same store in Thailand or wherever it was imported from in Nepal when
POW!
I realized that I WAS looking at the blanket in my bedroom, that I WAS actually existing in a dream while my body lay immobilized elsewhere! This has happened to me before (dreaming with eyes open and incorporating outside images into the dream), but that realization is always a trigger to waking up. In this instance, however, I didn't wake up and was able to remain in the subconscious state... it was as if my awareness flittered so very briefly into my physical world (I am going to call my physical existence in my bed next to Erica "Stage One") just long enough for me to understand what was happening, and then brought me fully back into the dream about the car (which I will call "Stage Two").
everything is so clear and obvious and ... LUCID...
and, SNAP, that realisation is exactly what snapped me into this completely altered state, which I can only imagine is the long-sought after lucid dreaming that people are searching. Not the standard "Cool, I'm dreaming, so let's fly around and have sex" lucid dreaming but a much more liberating and overwhelming state. It would be foolish of me to claim they are totally different states because in many key ways they are the same. The difference is the level of clarity and freedom I felt..
so -SNAP- I was then popped without warning into what I will call Stage Three, an experience so completely similar to my one-time mushroom trip that it is hard to imagine the two were any different. I have always felt (and read) that drugs are only one way to get you to a certain state of mind, and that it can be done through dreaming or other extraordinary experiences; this is proof to myself that the hypothesis may be true.
This morning I tapped into something overwhelmingly powerful within myself.
So let me describe Stage Three to the best of my abilities. Stage Two, as you know, was my standard dreamworld. And that story continued. I was completely aware of it: The group of us drove to a quiet neighborhood with big yards and old sidewalks and sitting in a front yard were Enav and Nicki and others we didn't know. I wanted to find Nicki to say hi but I was so out of that experience that I couldn't distinguish one person from another and I finally allowed myself to flop onto the grass face-first and succumb to Stage Three. I had no regrets about it; I didn't even care that I was not socially capable. I left my dreaming body below and flew into Stage Three. I have great difficulty in describing this state; it made more sense to my Stage Two self than it does to me now. Foremost on my mind is the near-freedom from my body, the ability to fly and project my will around. Secondly, I was still very aware of everything happening to that body. I was still deeply connected to it, and I could feel every wonderful chemical imaginable being produced by my own glands and being flushed through every vein. I could feel healing, I could feel energy, I could feel pure life being pumped through to my extremities in every possible way. And it left SO WONDERFUL. Vivid, pure, healthy, empowered. Every breath of air was pure ecstasy, filling my body with yet further forms of life and energy. Every breath of air as sweet as Alaskan summer, as warm and pure as Borrego spring. Organic, rich, thick air with every deep breath .
As I said, it was total metaphysical euphoria. I was aware of my body flopping around ridiculously in Stage Two and at times I was also aware of my physical body WAAAY down in Stage One, paralyzed, immobilized, eyes half-open, breathing deeply. Wow, I think I may have even been aware of my room and Erica next to me .... the feeling is that I somehow bridged all three worlds with a single tendril of awareness. As if the view from Stage Three was so good that I could finally see all the way to the bottom.
So what did I actually DO in Stage Three? So hard to tell. I hurled my consciousness around with childlike abandon, as if I had some powerful new tool but didn't know how to use it. Does this mean that if I can get back to this state I can learn how to use it to my advantage? Wow, I certainly hope so!
The time I spent at this Indian family's house must have been an introductory experience. Like I said, I threw my consciousness about in a purely experiential daze. My body wandered in and around the house, aware that no one I knew was around, looking for anyone familiar. I figured the family members were being polite by not saying anything about my strange behaviour. It was a bit embarrassing, but not enough to get me down. I figured they had left (I was more grounded in Stage Two at this point) and decided to head around the block and try to find them at Nicki's house. It was green and treesy like Chico. I headed around the corner, realising briefly that I had seen this house before, maybe in my dad's neighborhood (McKinley park) in Sacramento, and headed up the sidewalk.
A small dog was trotting ahead of me, moving quite quickly, and that gave me the idea to physically hurl myself into flight. Simon of Stage Three was making the body from Stage Two fly, and that was as amazing to me as if my dreaming Stage Two self would have been able to make the physical Stage One Simon's body fly around in the physical world. I flew faster and faster, but with some degree of caution. It was no problem to fly as precisely as I wanted, but I was afraid that at any point I might fall out of Stage Three, thus losing control and having my fragile Stage Two body dashed into the asphalt and gravel. This point is remarkably different than my aforementioned mushroom trip, in which I had no regard whatsoever for my own body left behind.
Also do understand that my labels of three stages are all my post-nocturnal interpretation that has come after thinking about these experiences in my rational physical self. At the time I don't think I was aware of a rigid structure of three stages of awareness; I was purely experiencing with little analysis. (That isn't to say I performed NO analysis... I certainly understood at one point what was happening to my frozen body in bed and certainly knew that I was dreaming. Otherwise I don't think the lucid jump would have been possible in the first place.)
Back to flying. Bs I flew, the dog (being my guide, or perhaps just tagging along for fun) ran faster and faster below me.
[I should mention flying in my dreams. In a typical flying dream, it isn't as if I am flapping wings or gliding effortlessly above the treetops. It usually starts out with me running. Big, long strides. I then leap, and land running. I leap again, this time further than the first time, and land again. I leap further and further, and eventually am able to just keep my body in the air without landing, in a very sort of tenuous flight. It's never complete flying, because there is always the feeling that I will eventually land out of this incredible leap, and it merely is a really long leap that just feels like flying. It is a continuous strain and struggle to keep from landing, and pure willpower keeps me from hitting the ground earlier than I want. And usually in the flying dream it never goes further than that.]
Well, that is how this flying started, just leaping down the sidewalk. I moved very quickly into the "controlled falling" stage. But I was so quickly familiar with this act that I was able to finally feel like I was flying free, that I WASN'T going to land until I (instead of projectiles and fate) decided when I was finished.
EXCEPT for this cogent caution and fear that I would lose control and hurtle to my death. And that was the only thing limiting me; I felt like I could have soared to Jupiter if I was confident enough. But instead I stayed close to the ground, flying only as high and fast as I thought my body could survive in a sudden fall.
I came to a recreation area, where people played volleyball and lifted weights. Heather Gunn was in a court shooting hoops or playing tennis or working out and I thought I would find the missing people here.
The rest of the Stage Two dream is noncontiguous at this point; I'm not sure if it's because I am now starting to forget it (I'm slowly coming off my high) or if I became fully immersed in Stage Three. At one point I am lying on the ground with a group of about six people. Most of them have guns and military outfits. My first impression is that we are at war, and then someone tells me (or I figure out for myself) that it is just a training exercise and around us are other similarly-sized groups of military men. Yet I still sense hostility and the man next to me explains why: The group I am with has been assigned to pretend to be gay members of the military. It is an internal-conflict exercise. I'm not sure if they actually are gay or not; it doesn't really matter. I tell the guy next to me that he can say whatever he wants because he has a gun in his hands, and his homophobic comrades can say whatever they want, since they too have guns in their hands.
I notice that we are laying right below the window in my bedroom (remember that the Stage One Simon still has his eyes open) and I lose all interest in the scene and allow myself to succumb to Stage Three again. I flop around on the ground, caring only about the sheer ecstasy of existing, and I know that it confuses and partially alarms those around me. They grab me and try to control my body. The window is open (in Stage One it was closed) and I somehow (with some struggling with the inept muscles) am able to get myself halfway out the window, hanging backwards out of it. It feels great to be outdoors. This is when I start to become very aware of how wonderful the air feels and how every breath is a soul-healing dose of fluid joy.
This becomes the most enjoyable and incredible part of the whole experience. In the physical world, Pat is stirring in the next room, and hearing that grounds me back in Stage One. I am very aware that I am lying on my back with my eyes partially open. I am very aware that my body is stiffly paralyzed, breathing regularly and deeply, and yet I remain in the dreamworld. This is incredible. This is the moment when I truly feel the connection between my mind and my body, between my consciousness and my physical experience. I am aware of how wonderful my body feels, and how absolutely euphoric my psyche is. I savor every breath and I can honestly say I felt as good as I have ever felt in my life. Despite being paralysed, I felt total freedom, awareness, pleasure. I could feel the chemicals still pulsing through the body and as Pat continued to talk on the phone in the next room (Chris's alarm company was calling him about some incident... I was even aware of that) I came closer and closer to waking up. I was aware of the room all around me and sensed Erica notice that my eyes were open, leading her to believe I was awake. That realisation snapped me finally out of paralysis and I can safely say that I was "awake" at that point (whatever that means after an experience like this), although I didn't feel any more "aware" than I did in the instant before. I told her I just had the most incredible dream experience of my life and I lay on my back, breathing deeply and savoring how wonderful I felt for several minutes, echoes of all that awareness and euphoria still swimming in my body and mind.
For at least half an hour I felt so very wonderful and full of life, and when I stood up to get out of bed I almost fainted from the lightheadedness of breathing too heavily. Hell, maybe that's what caused it all. Saturation with oxygen. The WHY doesn't matter (although I will write plenty about that later)... what matters most was the experience itself. It confirms that I truly have been making progress in my quest to understand the potential of dreaming. I believe I have (without drugs and purely by my own power) touched onto a plane of the human experience that is vast and foreign and mysterious, and a real treat to discover.
I am hungry.
lucidity analysis
This analysis logically follows my discussion of the usefulness of dream journaling. You may want to read that first.
I stated earlier that the actual experience of the lucid dream was the most important factor in this project, needing no analysis to augment it. Nevertheless, I will try to document as many factors as possible that may have led to this experience, so that I or anyone else might one day try to recreate the scenario. Some of the thoughts below are probably irrelevant but better to have more data than to omit something that may prove important later.
If you come across anyone else's experiences with this sort of lucid dreaming (or have your own thoughts), please contact me.
1) Recent dream-related conversations. I have been thinking quite a bit about dreaming in the past few weeks, including hours of conversations on the issue with several friends. Until recently, this project has been primarily an internal pursuit, but lately I have felt that the feedback from those around me can be immensely useful. And to little surprise I found that most people are more than willing to discuss at great length the mysteries of dreaming. Even the simple act of others relating their own dreams to me, an experience I once found dull, is now stimulating and helpful. (I also love to encourage people to share their dreams for their own sake.)
2) Recent review of early dream experiments I first began to experiment with dreams as a young teenager, when sixth grade best-friend Andrew Lieberman and I had the foresight to tape-record a series of conversations he conducted with me while I was in a near-sleeping state. (When I have the technology in order I will upload and post this 60-minute recording.) Well, in a fitting coincidence I came across both the tape and Andrew for the first time in several years and Wednesday night after a two-drink reunion at the Turf Club we sat down late at night and listened to the tape in its entirety.
3) Previous dream from same morning. I first awoke around 8:00 this morning with a stronger-than-usual urge to record the dream I had just experienced. It was an otherwise ordinary dream, likely inspired by last night's viewing of Blade Runner, War of the Worlds, and a few cartoons, one of which introduces us to nature and and animals, and in which a cute little skin-shedding lizard turns into a sexy lizard-headed woman stripping off her clothes. What I found important about the dream at that time was my conversations with my own pet lizard, very reminiscent of the dreams from previous years of conversations with my lost cat Mama. Perhaps this feeling of communicating with animals or bridging the communication gap between a man and his pet put me in a certain frame of mind for satisfaction and comfort.
Also, it could very well be that recording that dream and then going back to sleep put me into a level of dream awareness and set me up to pay attention to the next session. Or clearing my head of that first dream allowed me to focus more on the succeeding one.
4) Physical release. My left tonsil occasionally produces sediment, and for the last several weeks I have been frustratingly fiddling with a tonsil stone that just wouldn't get out! Well, I noticed that after waking up this morning it was gone. Perhaps its release after weeks of annoyance triggered these feelings of freedom and empowerment. Also sexual activity just prior to this second sleep session produced another type of release with which we are all familiar.
5) Recent dream experimentation. I had a conversation with Technology Alex on Wednesday about trying to stay conscious while falling asleep. On Thursday I took his advice and tried it myself. The results were interesting:
...as I started to fade I thought I could feel signals shooting in waves across my brain. I perceived them as signals for triggering new stages of thought and sleep. I felt as if they originated near the bottom of the back of my skull and swept through my brain to the furthest regions near my forehead. They seemed like chemical signals, but any effort to pay too much attention to them zapped me back into normal awareness and waking-style consciousness.
These "chemical signals", while not nearly as intense, felt very much like the "fluid joy" washing across my body in this latest experience.
6) Well-rested. After recording the morning's first dream, I was well-enough rested to not need to return to sleep. But the morning gloom and early hour made it nonetheless enticing to crawl back into bed with Erica and lose myself in warm sleepy oblivion. I had another conversation with Alex this week regarding lucid dreaming and he told me that it almost only happens to him when he is very well-rested. Maybe when we are fatigued it is hard for the mind to wander far from the confines of its usual functions... and lucid dreaming can only happen when the mind is ready to wake up and free itself but the body happens to still be sleeping.
7) Tai Chi. For the last few months I have been regularly practicing Tai Chi. It is a wonderful experience that has taught me a great deal about mental discipline and mind-body connectivity. More specifically I have learned about the importance of breathing
8) Recent thoughts about shamanism. I recently read Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It is the supposedly non-fictional journal of an American anthropology student's apprenticeship with a Native American shaman from Mexico (Don Juan). Don Juan uses psychotropic plants and other techniques to introduce Castaneda to ancient wisdom and methods of seeing. When on Thursday night I walked by Footnote Books in Hillcrest I happened to notice a book by Jim DeKorne called Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants, which got me thinking once again about such new-agey matters of enlightenment, etc. Extending the human experience beyond the realm of our everyday physical environment. Perhaps the dwelling of my own mind on this subject nudged me in that general direction, or got my subconscious seeking such goals.
One more thing.
That last paragraph leads to something that has been on my mind lately. Being trained as an engineer and raised with a vivid fascination with science, my dream experiments from the start have been a scientific endeavor, a methodical gathering of data, from which I hope to draw conclusions (and therefore understanding) about the human act of dreaming.
As I immerse myself deeper and deeper in the mysteries and surprises that lie just below the surface of this odd universe of dreaming, I find myself coming to very unscientific conclusions. I start to rely more on my own instinct and insight than on the bafflingly-meaningless body of data. The more I learn about dreaming, the more I realise that my understanding of it necessarily springs from my very subjective, emotional, personal reactions to my own dream states.
Furthermore, when I go back and read what I feel are my most meaningful insights about dream states, I find the language I use distressingly "new agey". Empowerment, freedom, mind-body connectivity ... come, now, Simon, where are you headed with this? Are you turning New Age on us or have you simply reached the limits of rationalWestern thought?
how to determine you are not in the USA
I got to a hotel roof with my sister and mother for a swim. There is no guardrail around the edge of the roof... is that because we aren't in the U.S.? At the 17th floor (where our room is) a catwalk crosses a courtyard to the roof of another building-- that is where the pool actually is, and once we are there I look back and count to verify that it is the 17th floor. It is actually the 18th, which leads me to believe that we are NOT in the U.S.... in Europe (and other countries), the main floor is the equivalent of 0 and "1" is the next floor up.
We are staying in the town to attend a rock concert/festival. When I get back to my house after the show my bed is made and the carpet is vacuumed.
the physical world of humans
I'm living in the physical world of humans, where everyone lives in nature and travels by foot. I'm a traveler, and I meet a tribe of people in the woods and another on the prairie.
I get involved in some sort of burial ritual in such a way that it looks a bit suspicious. My fingerprints are all over these body parts or open graves or something like that. It looks very bad, although it's totally innocent. It's not gruesome even; whatever we are doing is meaningful and symbolic. Later in the dream I'm driving with Erica and a few friends and a cop pulls me over. He's looking for a document with the Statue of Liberty on it that I haven't head of before but I know I have somewhere... but the glove compartment is so full of junk it takes forever to find it. He mentions the body parts but I explain everything and he's nice enough to buy it on the first try.
Ack, I'm so sleepy; I think I'll go back to bed for a while...
******************
During an afternoon nap, I conducted this partially-insightful experiment as a result of a conversation with Technology Alex.
bangkok
It's a trip to Bangkok! I go with a near stranger -- the girlfriend of a friend who will also be putting around Asia about the same time. It's a bummer Erica can't go. I arrive a few days after this person and meet up at our predetermined location in a busy marketplace. We each order a bowl of noodles and since she doesn't like hers and mine is fairly small we switch halfway through but then she orders a ANOTHER meal that's ten bucks! It has beans and noodles and an egg and I chide her for ordering such an expensive meal in this place where nothing should cost more than three dollars. Sheesh, I really wish I hadn't agreed to travel with her.
I decide to make the best of it and we end up in a crowded hostel with old paddling friends of Pat's, although Pat is not there. The shower in my room is completely full of water so I go on a quest for another shower. There is a door in our room I hadn't noticed before and I think it leads into another bathroom, and just before I go in one of the guys asks if he can quickly pee before I shower. He comes out fifteen minutes later, all clean. Then I go in, only to discover that it is not a bathroom, but the spare room of a big grocery store. Signs on the next door make it clear that the public is NOT welcome in there, although we suspect that there may be a shower somewhere back there. I spend a great deal of time walking around with my spare clothes under my arm, avoiding marching military men and trying to gather the courage top sneak in to use the facilities.
I chicken out and decide to ask the security/information desk in the supermarket (which is huge), staffed my an giant Aussie and a Thai man. They gobble on in Thai and English and when the Aussie sees me he thinks I am German and asks me in German to write my demands on a piece of paper (as if I was robbing a bank) and place it in the envelope on the desk. I get the impression he is making fun of me, and he certainly forbids me to use the shower. I should have just gone for it.
Bangkok is sunny and clean, and I decide to walk up into the hills to explore the non-touristy suburbs.
Oh, and either this morning or yesterday my hair started to turn grey.
mouth paralysis
There's a party at someone's uncle's big house. Shawn's, I believe. Many of us are invited, and those of us who can afford to buy all the food each cut a check for $233.
Before dinner at the uncle's house, we somehow end up watching videos from my old high school and many of them are my singing and dancing in the blue sequins of the show choir. It is very odd to see video of myself from ten years ago!
Then the food arrives. It's a pretty extensive spread but for the most part is rather unappetizing. Garden snails, plain bread, etc. There are also plates of ham and cheeses but unfortunately there is some trigger at the table and it renders my mouth (and that of several others) totally insensitive. This means I can eat but never feel anything in my mouth. Ack. Even drinking water doesn't appease my thirst... it's as if there is nothing in the ceramic mug (with starry night on it) and I'm swallowing air only.
Big bummer. Someone complains, and the uncle or some other big pocket buys a bunch of plane tickets for those of us whose mouth nerves were short-circuited. We're going to Hawaii, or maybe Europe, or Michigan even? And since the Dave Matthew's concert sold out we all get tickets to some yogi-style self-realization seminars.
We are now cruising around Paris in a car or bicycle or rickshaw and we close in on the Jardin du Luxembourg. A wave of nostalgia washes over me as we pass the bench in the corner of the gardens where I spent several hours in my early adulthood writing in my journal about life and love. The concert hall is near by and the show is about to start without us so we cruise by and talk to our friend who runs a little coffee cart just outside. She explains to us the ins and outs of the concert-coffee trade. Those folk who didn't get enough sleep the previous night or who have been drinking all day get their coffees, and then when the concert starts there are a few people on the lawn outside (who came only to listen to the music drifting over the fence) to serve. For the most part, this is a good time to relax and listen as well. Then the big rush comes at the end of the show.
I end up in a movie theatre with my sister. It's a rowdy crowd of pranksters and hecklers, and my sister ends up eating her apple core.
the alien occupation of taiwan
I go to visit Pete in Taiwan and the society of people he has become involved with. Guy Kelly is there, and Will Barley, and I think John Rubin as well! Everyone is curious to talk to me and to be my friend, and they ask me plenty of questions.
I find this very suspicious and when I tell Pete about it he cautions me to not talk to those men. He is concerned about what I may have already told them and I assure him that I have not divulged anything at all. After the talk with Pete I am very conscious of how these men and women behave around me and I notice that their questions usually involve what I think Pete is doing with his time and what his motivations are and how long I have known him, etc. I find it hostile and threatening, and very invasive. Will is mostly silent and brooding. John Rubin is vicious and not subtle at all. Guy Kelly seems genuinely friendly but knowing what Pete told me I am able to notice the skilled and subtle ways he can extract tiny bit of information in the context of a benevolent and amicable conversation.
It goes too far and one night in an observation tower (or communications tower) above the tangled web of urbanity I confront John Rubin about his intentions. He gets angry and yells at me and warns me that small folk like me shouldn't try to get involved in the private affairs of important people. He then disappears down a dark stairwell and leaves me in the dark to gaze down onto the banquet halls full of tuxedos and the factories full of overalls and the streets and corridors and ladders and catwalks and everything far below me.
I have a growing dread that I have crossed some sort of line and the silence becomes thick and oppressive as I anticipate something coming to "silence" me. Sure enough I am attacked suddenly by something I know is an extraterrestrial. It consists of a creepy head, maybe twice the volume of a human head, trailed by a few dozen rapidly moving tentacles, maybe three or four meters long.
It makes a few passes by my head and I realise it is just trying to scare me off. Although I am terrified I am also determined to not be pushed around and on the third pass I leap and grab the creature by the rubbery flesh of the tentacles, just behind the head. It is incredibly strong and quick and much more massive than me, but my hold is firm and my weight is enough to keep it from flying very efficiently. In unison we thrash about as the creature tries to throw me off by whipping me against walls and into the ground. It tries to fling me over the walls of the tower but maintain an iron grip.
After about ten minutes of this the struggle is wearing both of us down and a small group of shocked people now watch nervously from the shadows. The alien gets a final, violent desperate wind and dashes its own head onto the damp cobblestones. POW! It lies motionless and limp.
I sit on the ground and check myself for injuries with one hand. With the other hand I hold the flesh in the air as if to prove to people that I can't me misled. But a suspicious-looking woman stands next to me and I realise that the alien has not died. When its tentacled vessel was ruined it passed its will into the form of this woman. I appeal to who I think are humans around me to pay attention to what has happened and to beware this shifty woman. They shake their heads as if in disbelief and when I point once again to the dead alien it is gone and they advise me to return to my apartment and get some long-needed sleep.
WHAT IS THIS?? Do you not know how you have been deceived? Are you not afraid??
They seem to take orders from the woman who only I will claim is alien and then she addresses me quietly and angrily. I am to tell nobody about what I have seen, and, believe her, "they" will know if I squeal. I don't want to see what happens if I do THAT! She invited me to meet with her the following morning for an "information session" and I know that I have no choice but to go.
John Rubin seethes and glares in the corner and Will looks on with pity and concern. Guy stammers a few words of embarrassment, and even Pete looks apologetic and sad. Before even going to the information session I am able to figure out the whole situation:
The whole city is being secretly run by aliens. Most of the common folk have no idea, and the important humans who do know about it are kept quiet out of fear. John and Will and Guy learned this fact long ago and are kept in the payroll of the aliens in order to keep quiet and to pay attention to other humans to see what they know about the hidden balance of power. Pete has somehow stumbled upon the knowledge recently and these men were trying to determine if he was a danger or not, that is, if they can accept him into their ranks or if they should regretfully have him eliminated. Guy and Will are decent men but John Rubin is power-hungry and deceitful. He hopes to gain special status with the aliens and is willing to doublecross his fellow humans in order to promote himself. But the integrity of men like Guy and Will keep him barely in check... for now.
I am not so complacent as most humans and I make it clear that I will do everything in my power to expose this corruption to the populace. This is unwise, Will tells me, as I will either be taken as insane and thrown in the loonybin, or the aliens will quickly dispose of me or wipe my brain. I don't care; I can't be quiet and just live with this kind of knowledge!
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