Dream Log: May 29, 2002

Two boys are on holiday on a small island, surfing. The island is really nothing more than a sand bar. There are no waves. The sea has been totally flat for days. Then the sea starts receeding and the weather becomes very rough. The father of one of the boys gets a call at the Center telling him where his son is. He sends out a helicopter, which arrives just in time to save them. The pilot tells the ship anchored by the island that the island won't even exist by the end of the day and that he should find somewhere safer as there's a gigantic storm coming. I realise this has all been a simulation and that the son is a lead researcher on the project.

A large organisation has been tracking storms all over the world, waiting for signs of a tidal wave. When the signs finally appear and the start of a tidal wave is found a large team of men is dispatched to disrupt it with explosives.

My friend Chris and I were making a pump out of a long black pvc tube, maybe 2.5" diameter. We'd decided we needed baby fat to seal the plunger part. There was a baby there with us, playing happily in a sandbox. I was not happy with the idea that we needed its fat, but I knew the baby would be fine, and that there were other babies around we could swipe some from as well.

It starts with me wandering around my apartment, alone. My roommate has gone out. The air around me is just milky enough to indicate I'm dreaming, but as always, I don't realize that it's any different than normal. I walk through the rooms, dragging my fingertips over things as I go. Things feel solid and real.

After a time I find myself in the bathroom and it's nighttime. I start brushing my teeth but stop abruptly when I realize that something is wrong. I scrape my tongue over my top teeth, and then my bottom teeth. They feel all wrong. Looking in the mirror, I see that my teeth are cracked and pitted. The bottom teeth have a groove running through them, like a canal. I close my eyes and run my tongue over them again, thinking that maybe I was only imagining it. I wait, feeling my teeth crumble.

And then everything changes. . .

I'm in a forest clearing, surrounded by trees. Sunlight is streaking through breaks in the canopy of leaves overhead. I'm sitting on the ground and a man in front of me (my mentor) is instructing me in the use of a sword. I'm only half paying attention to him, and he stops his lesson to snap at me.

"Don't you realize how important this is," he says.

I watch him some more, but the warmth of the air and the woods is making me sleepy. He stops, shrugs, and beckons to me to follow him. I stand up, and then we're on horseback, fully armed, riding around Central Park. I am curious that no one seems to notice our strange outfits and the fact that we are loaded with archaic weaponry. My mentor, riding next to me, sighs.

"How many times do I have to explain this?" he asks.

And then we're attacked by goblins, with pointy noses and mouths of sharp teeth. They grin as they surround us, and I unsheathe my sword. We battle, and I am bitten. In the end, we win, but the fight itself is not much more than images and blurs and noises.

Apparently, goblin bites are poisonous, and we go to a free clinic, where the nurse tells me I'll have to have blood-work done. She and my mentor run through the whole 'this won't hurt a bit' scam, but I'm having none of it. Even my mother comes, and I put my arms around her while they pierce me and I cry into her neck.

That done, we ride our horses back to Central Park, and we see the king walking with another knight. We follow them at a lazy pace, and then the knight turns to us, but he's not a knight at all. He's another grinning goblin.

"Does the king know he's walking with an enemy?" I ask.

"Can you keep a thought in your head? Ok. Again. No one sees this. They see two people walking though the park following two other people walking through the park. There are levels. To the people around there is no king. To the king, there is no goblin. We can see both, and they can't see either. That's what the knights are. The ones born without tunnel-vision."

He prepares for battle and I do the same, and then the goblins rush out onto the path. And then I woke up.

So I freak out for some reason and start frantically trying to pick up the pieces.

Perhaps this wasn't just any old pint glass, perhaps this glass was really special, the most special I have ever sipped from, ever. And now my heart feels like it too is broken, and I want to pick up the pieces.

Moments pass and Dob is gone and it is just Scruff and I, standing there in the back of the pub, alone. No music, no bartender, no one.

I look down at my arms and they are covered in scrapes and cuts from the glass, and I mean covered. I am a mess. I don't know what to do and I am afraid. I am bleeding all over the fucking red cedar floor of the fucking pub and he is just standing there! For some reason, I am unable to speak, so maybe that is why he doesn't realize what has happened. But that doesn't make sense to me because I am right there, and I have a look on my face like a lost child, like a helpless, lost child in the dark, and, I am bleeding! Helpless, confused, in pain, and completely invisible to the one person who has been able to dig inside the parts of my soul that no one has ever dared to go.

And that is when I woke up. Shaken, troubled, sweating like crazy. I slowly began to cry, because I knew that this dream, the first I have actually remembered in a while, this dream was so highly representative of how I feel, it hurt.

Background info: Scruffis the kid I was seeing for a while, you can read my recent daylogs for that saga. Anyway, the reason I am telling you this is because it is just a little ironic that I was standing there helpless, pleading with him to show me some sign that he recognized my suffering, my pain. But he didn't, he just stood there watching me bleed, incapable of doing anything to stop it, and not wanting to either from the look he had in his eyes. Incredibly ironic in terms of recent events as well. Because now, more than ever, I feel helpless, and I am in pain, and he continues to just stand there, unwilling to accept that he never should have whispered sweet nothing's into my ears.

Because that is all they were, sweet, sweet, NOTHING'S.