Dreams

From the Bachelor archives, circa '97 or so:
"A man was angry at a friend of mine, and since this friend wasn't around, wanted to beat me up in their stead. I ended up debating this with him, and persuaded him that this was not the best course of action. He just couldn't understand why I thought he was crazy for his wishes in this matter.
"Trying to deflect further shit, I say, 'Nice house you got here,' which of course causes him to say, 'Oh what? You don' like my houuuuuse?', and wanted to fight some more.
"I end up dissuading him, but he parts by saying, 'I'm really mad at Bill Clinton, too...', and ends up hinting that this too might be worthwhile cause to beat me up..."

Haw haw! Those goofy '90's! Anyway...This one is listed in my notebook as early January, 1998:
"I'm in some strange children's movie. There have been many arguments, mostly started by this little girl who is always there. She and my mom are yelling over each other; I forget what about. I finally step in and tell them that hey are both being piggish.
"'You'll just sit there and defend her the rest of your life, won't you?', the girl snarls at me.
"The music begins. It is like the white pop band music that accompanies a Dr. Seuss feature. Two figures in grey sweatshirts, 'gramma and grampa', who have been there, disappear and just become empty sweatshirts, twirling around amidst the cartoon foliage and singing a little song:
"'What of all this mat-ters?
"'No-thing...
"'What of this will remain?
"'No-thing...
"The twirling sweatshirts scatter into dust. The rest of the song concerns the fact that even what you leave behind will cease to be, in time. How everything dies, no matter how special, and will ultimately be forgotten.
"There is an image of Bill Clinton and I, marching side by side into the darkness, yelling, protesting, 'I CAN WHISTLE! I CAN WHISTLE!'
"I can see the shadowy figures in the street and flee back to my backyard (of the home I grew up in, natch). I half expect someone to call my name and be with me in the dark, or someone to leap upon me and tear me to shreds.
"I finally lay down in the darkness, alone and afraid, waiting for something to happen, someone to come. Nothing ever does."
Heh heh. Funny thing was, I awakened from that one, and my girlfriend was choking, unable to breathe. She had pleurisy, and we rushed her to the hospital. She's alive now, as far as I know.

And waiddaminnute! Why's Clinton there again?
12-4-96:
"I was talking with my other self; what I would have been if I had taken a very different road long ago. Me in another universe; my shadow self.
"Now, in the dream, it wasn't me I was speaking with. Actually, I think his name was Eric. Crew sut, blonde hair, glasses, suit. Running a newspaper at age 25.
"All throughout the dream, we had been antagonizing each other. Finally, backing him up against the door that led out onto the patio (of the house I grew up in, natch), I proceeded to really do battle with him.
"Debating with him the varied benefits of our respective paths. I told him that 50% of him seemed like a really nice guy, but the other 50 was so rigid and horrible that it easily negated the rest. His response, unfortunately, is lost."

Yes yes folks, 'unfortunately', yes. I simply cannot think of a more tear jerking, predictable-as-hell family of origin sort of dream that we could include here. Surely there's something else in these here dusty ol' notebooks...
2-2-97:
"Some of my slightly older friends were involved in a secret and highly dangerous project-the first public crowning of the True King.
"At the moment though, I was the king. The Hidden King, even the Dark King (or the Shadow King; I heard myself once referred to as the 'Blindfolded King'). I had to just live my life though, as if I wasn't king. Just had to go about my business as if I were just yer average Joe.
"In fact, I was still in high school, and still had to deal with the basic sniping, cavilling and bullshit that attends teen-agedness.
"All of the action took place around me (what good is it to be a king if you don't get to act like one?), and I just lived my life-aware of all the excitement, but only peripherally taking part in it.
"My memory grows fuzzy. I recall having to sneak a girl out of her house (was the True King actually a Queen?) to a high place with lots of people milling around.
"As far as I remember, after much travail, we managed to publicly coronate the True (Monarch?) of the World, and I was no longer King. I would be remembered for my contribution only by some."

Hm. Emerging Theme Alert here. On one hand, one could see this as an allegory for what we as all humans do-can't really be all you are in public because that would freak everybody out, but you might just be the person that everybody needs to hear, with the truths that must be spoken...
And, no other hand, really. I'm just God in this universe, surprise surprise. After all, these are the movies the mind shows in the basement when it's bored.
5-25-97:
"I am one of a large group of armed people in a town. There is much plotting and set up, which involves a rare creature who is kind of (my baby mama), kind of (my girlfriend at the time). When something 'real' was happening, it was (girlfriend). When it was just me smoothing tangles out of this catlike creature's hair, it was (baby mama).
"We all knew that the person designated to die would be arriving on a certain plane, so an almost comical (even festive) procession of potential hit-people wound their way to the airport. The plane had already landed when I found my way there.
"Something had gone wrong though. As the newly introduced voice-over narrarated, 'The people in blue run from the airplane, being mown down by unseen gunmen still aboard...'
"It is true that they were all in blue, and none of them were the guy (gal?) that Needed Killed. A firefight was rapidly breaking out in the streets, and I was viewing it from the vantage point of this recessed wall.
"I crept forward to a parking lot up near the plane. A friend of mine of indeterminate gender was up there, crouched low. I warned he/she/it that it wasn't safe there, and that it should retreat back to the relative safety of the recessed wall.
"'Oh what? So you can take credit for the hit?', it said."

The fact that a voice-over occurred in that dream is no fluke. My dreams often become cartoon, I often read in them (almost never in English), hear songs in them, and once determined that the dropping of the rational mind (an actual weight) could cause one to hover.
I could go on and on here. I've been writing down my dreams for years. I'm gonna cut it off now, with a brief anecdote from one I had in early 2001:
I'm at a party, and everybody is behaving in a highly irresponsible manner. As they do the things they do, they continuously drop items here and there, which I go around and gather.
By the time the party decides to move to a nearby playground, I'm pretty much carrying everybody's stuff. As we approach the fence of the playground, I drop a pencil.
A little boy says, "That's the ugliest goddamn pencil I've ever seen."
I say, "You little son of a bitch," give him a hug, and start laughing.
The imagery is pretty clear.