Wednesday, April 28, 2010

More Dreams

I've been suffering from insomnia again, and more or less on form, caved in and took some sleeping pills last night. I'm always a little loathe to do this, because while they do help me fall asleep, they also ensure that getting us is a right pain, and that instead of sleeping through the night, I wake up four or five times only to descend into a light sleep or pointlessly vivid dreams that usually wake me up anyway.

Which happened last night. One was rather gruesome, but an interest riff on a common dream, and the other was... odd. Even by my standards.

The first began with me renting a tuxedo for my prom. With my mother. We had had actually picked out the tux, and were selecting a matching waistcoat. Yes. I know. You don't wear waistcoats with tuxedos. I pointed that out in the dream, but I wound up picking a sort of brown and tan check brocade thing that resembled some towels from a Radisson hotel in Lisle, IL.

After that, we were walking down the street, when someone being chased by the police jumped through a plate glass window. Then that person was me. I had glass sticking out of me all over. But not like if you had gone through a window. There were pieces stacked together like pages in a book. I remember other people around me freaking out, but I was calmly trying to decide whether to pick them out or leave them in. I was thinking "it's probably like a stab wound. If you take them out the blood will pool and the bleeding will get worse." So I started picking them out. I think there were some in my nose I plucked out, but I began to not be able to breathe, and remember thinking "Ahhh. I'm suffocating. This is more relaxed than I thought it'd be."

Then I woke up. (This is the riff dream; every once in a while I dream I'm vomiting glass shards, so this is similar to that.)

The other dream I had is that I was walking through Astoria. I was walking down Ditmars Blvd towards my old house. As I turned onto 46th St, I saw someone I knew walking a basset hound, and turned away, thinking "How did I manage to time it out this badly?" I walked back down Ditmars and passed a Greek Orthodox that isn't there. I ducked in, and people were congregating in just before a service. There was a weird balcony of sort, of chair balances on a series of ropes that ran across the nave, and there was a sort of red silk rood-screen dividing the choir. You had to climb up the screen to get to the chairs. I did so, and a big Greek guy informed me that the screen was a Disco screen. I didn't argue. I think I got up and left before the service started, because I remember talking to a kid in a newsie get-up on stairs that ran the length of the outside, before a wrought iron fence.

That's it.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Inappropriate Work Anecdote

So there's this engaged couple where I work. I don't much mind the girl -- about the only way she ever really impacts my consciousness is that I start humming the first song on the New Pornographer's first album when she walks by -- but the guy, for some reason*, I just particularly loathe.

Until I noticed that the girl has a Twilight calendar (well, she would, wouldn't she?) on her wall with shirtless a Jacob on it**. Her fiance is the least Jacob-like person you could imagine, all pale and scrawny and Phish-listen-y. All of which, if you're me, conjures up an amusing image of the girl fantasizing about getting it hard from a wolf-boy while Weasel-boy ruts away single-A style.

Yeah, it's all a bit Artaud meets Sartre meets Genet, but it keeps a smirk on my face during the work week. And I'm preeety sure the grotty little oik totally deserves it.

*All right, he's a jerk and bears an uncanny resemblance to a weasel. Anybody who can get off looking at that probably pre-supposes the rest of this post.

**Not that I object or anything. It's arguably the seco... third... fourth best thing at work right now.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dreams, Odd

I've decided I need to keep better track of my dreams. Up till now, it's been a sort of half-assed, I-really-should-do-this type intention, but I had a dream odd enough last night to warrant some attention. My dreams are always pretty vivid, and this was no exception, but this one was rife with meanings I can't help but think will be more apparent upon reflection.

It's also worth mentioning that this was a dream that seemed very long-lasting but no doubt wasn't, and that it occurred in that period after dawn but before time to wake up.

I was traveling with a certain person (doesn't matter who, at least not to you) on a bus going down a dirt road. The road itself was grey and sandy, with low-lying scrub on either side. It wasn't like anything I'd seen before, but it had elements of I-10 and I-20 in east Texas and a ride I took on a bus through the Yucatan in Mexico.

We were at the back of the bus, and I was thrilled to be on a bus on an unpaved road, though I have no idea why. The bus was open to the air in the back, and the over-all effect was rather like being in the back of a Jeep with its top off, or maybe the back of a open-air cattle hauler. I had my iPod with me and was planning on watching something on it.

The next part of the dream was at something like a rest stop or a bus station. My grandmother (who died a little less than a year ago) was there, and I was quite excited and a little nervous to introduce her to the guy I was with. I remember giving her a hug and her saying something, but I don't recall what.

My next recollection is that we're driving down another unpaved lane. I don't know why but I think it was in Texas. My mother is now present amongst the other people, and she tells me we've just passed a sign that says "The elevation will be 7 feet in 7 miles." I am very disappointed that I was unable to take a picture of this sign with the camera I got for Christmas this year.

Before very much longer has passed, we go by a most unusual place. My first impression is that it's a pit mine or quarry -- there's a big hole and it feels like the afternoon sun is putting much of it in shadow. There's a lot of pinks and salmons and oranges and ochres, and later thought makes me think of Escalante National Park, if only in color range. But in the middle, there's a high mountain jutting up, catching the sun. After the fact -- as in, immediately after, when I awoke, but not in the actual moment -- for some reason, I thought of Mount Doom from the Lord of the Ring films. At that moment, a quarry charge went off, removing a substantial hunk of the side of the mountain. We watched the side of the mountain explode and then watched as the rubble rained around us, and hit the roof of the bus in small(ish) rocks. The only thing I've ever seen the like, I think, was in The Hand of Fear, and it was not very similar to that.

Not long after that, there was another, larger explosion on the mountain side that resulted in far larger rubble flying down. This time, the stones were large enough to crush a bus like ours, and watching the falling stones, there was no guarantee my bus would have been spared. I don't know if it would have been: (I think, though I'm not 100% sure), our bus was heading for a cave in a rock face -- a square hole in a sheer cliff -- when there was a sudden lurch, as if we were all falling. This is what woke me up. It was extremely visceral, the sensation of falling.

What makes me wonder is that this is the second time in less than two weeks, I've been woken up by a dream that involves falling off a roadway in a vehicle. Odd.