News From the Front - iers of DreamWorld

So I thought I might as well start this off with a dream. A crazy dream. A dream full of embarrassments and full of all of you, dear friends...

The dream from the point the memory recorders started switching on began with a sunny afternoon in the front living room of a house - I don't know which house it was, and in the context of the dream I don't know which house it could be. But that's ok because it brings me to one of the key features of this dream: it's in the future!

My brother, sister, and I are playing go-stop with my deck. Things are a little hazy here at the start but I know that there is some dark sticky substance that gets on the tiles at some point; my brother and sister decide to cut little grooved indentations into all the san-pi to distinguish them; I get pissed and eventually turn a deck of cards into a make-shift go-stop deck because I think that they've ruined the game (and ruined my deck incidentally).

It's about at this time that my mother starts laying into me with all these crazy questions - pragmatic questions about an upcoming trip that will be from Michigan (presumably where I am in this dream) to, guess what, somewhere over near New York (yeah, spooky). I know this because I remember looking in the dream at a map with two routes: one, in blue, makes a U-shaped series of stops with a shallow bowl of a shape from the general K-zoo area of Michigan, down south to around, I'd say, Virginia, and back up to near New York City. I say this because the start and end is very clear in my memory but the stops and dipping south part is fuzzy. The purple route, in contrast, went much farther south, and I remember thinking I preferred it.

So, like I said, this whole time my mom is really laying it on thick and she's starting to piss me off and then she makes a turn in her line of interrogation that culminates in something like, "what have you been doing? wasting all your opportunity here?" Which I don't know now implied either the opportunity of where I was or that where I was wasting the innate opportunities within me prior.

This makes me flip out. I throw the make-shift go-stop deck across the table, into the couch beside my brother, and with the golden smothered light still oozing into the room, I jump over the table and get myself wrapped in the spatial area normally reserved for the existence of the couch. Twisting in it in fury (I remember the twisting very clearly) I push the couch over, sending my brother flying back (and injuring him), while I jump free and blurt out the pathetic excuse: "I'm scared." I'm leaning against the wall of the of the living room, angry, pathetic, looking at my injured brother, wanting to go over and help him, but (and this is the really embarrassing part) not wanting to compromise the integrity of my expressionistic outburst, when it hits me.

Sometimes with dreams I think there is a delayed action lucidity, as if it isn't just after you have the moment of lucidity that you start remembering. Rather I think it is like a zone, a non-linear, non-temporal, region of impact that extends its effects on both sides, because I wouldn't say that after this point in the dream (and believe me, there's more...) I carried with me the full knowledge of dreamhood to what I experienced. No, it was just this shining moment as I was wrapped in a type of confusion that extends beyond conceptual uncertainty that I felt I was looking into an alternate reality. I was watching something only possible, and it was like I could go back and do it again if I wanted - go back and change my part to play in this ugly scene - go back and change myself. And I did.

Everything came back and again I was on the couch listening to the crazy crap coming from my mother, looking at the mutilated go-stop cards pulling sticky brown shit from each other as I plied them apart, everything the same - except for maybe the light. It's golden hue didn't really drench me anymore, didn't suffocate me in a golden jello of splendor - it was brilliant and crisp, happy-eyed and dancing. I shrugged off the room, telling my mother I had to be somewhere and as I walked out the door into the light in as casually a manner as you like:

SCENE CHANGE

Time has passed. Something has happened, some event, I'm not sure. No one talks about it explicitly, but I know it had to have happened because we're all there in this museum themed for something really goofy, maybe theater related, I don't know, but it's like an after-party sort of function. Everyone's there - there are a couple of you who will come up directly, but I do remember that everywhere I looked were people I knew.

It wasn't hazy when I woke up but it's hazy now - I was wandering around, this woman slightly older then me who I was acquaintances with somehow was having fun playing around with me in that sort of non-commital flirting sort of way. I've never seen her face before, but in the dream I knew it to be a familiar one. I was looking at displays with friends, and just taking in the party groove in general. It was atmospheric - just assumed - everyone was enjoying it - a good vibe.

This goes on for a while, with some episodes that I forget when at some point I was being shown this ancient set of carvings out of jade or marble or something. The last one I am checking out is a miniature picture flip book from some hoary culture, when this older woman person taps me on the shoulder and says "Look at this!" and punches me mockingly in the face with a taped up fist and this crazy printed eye-patch of a crazy multicolored eye on it. Apparently this gesture coupled with her costume was reminiscent of some familiar (anime perhaps?) character and between the joke and the surprise at her (actually sorta) punching me we tumble over each other laughing. She's hanging off my arm (maybe drunk?) and we stumble over into the next room smiling and giggling past Perleros and Shelton who are sitting on the floor by a wall filming everyone. Ben says something like, "Now there's a real smile. There goes a genuinely happy man."

The wall behind them is the wall that borders the bathroom, but for whatever reason, after we've passed Nik and Ben, I see Jason and Davey sitting in the bathroom as if it were a window (or I have X-ray powers). I wave and they, clearly the epitome of silliness, wave back. I motion that I will be joining them shortly and walk around into the bathroom which has this dark red lighting situation and looks kinda like a spa or sauna.

Jason and Davey are sitting on a wooden bench next to a row of urinals in jogging shorts and t-shirts, with big silly faces; I mean they are clearly full of it. We greet each other in a subdued fashion but it is clear. I look from Jason to Davey and ask, "Are you guys...high?" and Davey makes this huge silent body gesture of mock-freak-out. Jason just smiles wider and turns his head away. We sit on the bench again and just chill, while Davey steps over past a tiled barrier to piss. Jason and I start talking crazy silly talk when Davey nonchalantly turns around the barrier slightly and pees a little bit on Jason's shorts who is right next to the short wall that separates the urinal from the bench. Jason is like, "what the fuck?" but with an amused expression of this-is-the-most-absurd-shit-ever and with a restrained giggling Davey turns to pee some more on Jason when something strange happens.

I should mention at this point that for some totally irrational reason that still confounds me now, Davey has a black penis. Davey isn't black in his face or visible arms or anything, he just has a black man's wang - it isn't even terribly large! Just black. And his black penis head has been like sucked into the shaft or something like its stuck, when all of a sudden it pops out, sprays piss all over Jason's shorts, and I wake up.

Don't ask me what this means, and please, certainly do not take it as a metaphorical representation of my new blossoming life in K-zoo. (well, maybe there's some of that there) I just thought that instead of boring shit about negotiating a life with the financial aid office, being a homeless bum for a bit, and finding out about the fascinating world of self-reduction for the sake of a career, I would start off with something a bit more interesting and...colorful. I will say this though, it was nice to party with you again, even if it was only in the astral realm.

More as it happens.

Your lover from afar,

tim