Dream Log: October 16, 2000

I feel like my life is moving incredibly quickly, and that I'm living in the future. Thus, a dreamlog entry for the future.

I'm in a huge playroom carpeted with a very thin cheap rug. Every thirty feet or so stands a floor-to-ceiling square pillar about two feet on a side, painted blue halfway to the ceiling. They're metal, and have photograph magnets sticking to them. Me and a gaggle of small children are going around scooping the magnets off the pillars and into a plastic bag, because we've been told that the king is having his coronation on the following day, and it wouldn't do to have the photos up. It seems that the servants said they didn't have to clean up after animals, so we have to make sure there's no trace of them. Apparently there were monkeys.

Zoom out.

The playroom was located in a massive stone castle. I'm in the audience for the coronation, and someone is handing out tiny plastic nuggets, about the size of the last joint on your thumb. Inside the clear plastic are two burnished metal hoops which are spinning at an incredible rate. Apparently, these nuggets are portable cameras, and all the guests are supposed to use them (kind of like people give out disposable cameras at weddings). Virgil is up on stage speaking in verse. Then he comes down the aisles and explains how to use the cameras.

I'm chasing someone around the roof. There are sliding glass doors which lock, and each time I reach one I manage to lock it just before my prey escapes me. A loud gong sounds and the coronation is under way and tri-D cameras are everywhere. I walk in front of the king sprinkling bits of metal like rose petals. There are votive candles everywhere which keep getting blown out; I must relight them with a torch.

It was winter, and I was part of a group in second world war.. We had set small explosives around a large boulder next to railway. We were already leaving the area when I remembered that one tall man of the group had done something suspicious, so I told we should go back. Everyone thought I was just paranoid, but I managed to convince them that it wont be too much work to go back and see if I'm right. When we skied to the boulder, I pointed them that explosive sockets were all empty. They didnt know what to do, but I saw the train already approaching. It was a bright red steam engine with one red railway car behind it. Others tried to push the boulder to the track, but I knew it would be too late so I took a grapling hook from my backpack and turned my skies to the direction the train was going. I spun the hook, and when the train came close enough, I threw the hook between some bars at the end of the car. I held tightly from the rope, but because the train was going so fast, my speed increased slowly while my gloves smouldered from the friction of the rope zipping through them. I had taken some speed, and when the knot at the end of the rope struck my hands, nearly tripping me over, I reached the speed of the train. I started pulling myself closer to the train, and when I got to the grapling hook at the end of the rope I pulled someway away from the train and rammed back against it, throwing myself on the level behind the door. My right ski hit the ground and breaked off my shoe with loud crack, quickly left behind. I took off my left ski as well, and kicked the door open.

Inside the car there were lines of seats with people those were scared by my appearing, and the tall man that had betrayed us stood up from the opposite end of the car. He showed his teeth as he walked towards me, wielded a knife and when he suddenly rushed at me, I rushed back against him. He tried to hit me, but I ducked and struck him into stomach with full speed, throwing him over me and on his back to the floor. He grunted and reached for his knife that had fallen someway from him, but I jumped over his leg and kicked him into armpit, making him pull his disabled arm back in pain. The train was going towards soviet union, so I grabbed the knife and rushed through the car to the train. Strangely, there were no one in the train, so I tried to find the brake switch as soon as possible. While looking for it, the tall man suprised me from behind and strangled me against the controls of the train, but I hit him on the arm I had kicked. He shouted in pain, but only got angrier about it, so I switched the knife to my right hand and struck that on his side. He shouted again and his grip got loose enough for me to slip away. I held the knife with both hands and thrusted it into his stomach, and while he grabbed the knife to pull it away, I tackled him. He fell on the floor, his head in the opening between train and the car, and I pushed my foot against his chest, sliding him further down towards the track. He begged for me while trying to grab something, but I got him under the train, chrushing him by the wheels of the car. I got the train to stop, and woke up.

I'm in Pathmark, rummaging through the freezer bins. The shelves on top are filled with miniature plants, tiny replicas of the ones I know. I start moving them around, reaching to the back, trying to find one like my German Ivy. The pots are tiny, the size of shot glasses, the leaves miniscule perfection.

Now I am sorting through the bin, I have about a dozen pens arrayed in my hands. Instead of an eraser, each on sports a miniature Barbie sort of head, painted and with long tresses. I am trying to get a pleasant variety. My favorite is the one with pink hair in spikes, the pencil is dressed in black leather and metal. There are 3 Nicole Kidman pencils for every other one.

I am going to take the plants and pencils home, I will set up the pencils in a miniature trough of sand, leaving only the heads showing. I can't wait.

The bitch comes over and tries to take Nicky out of my hand.
That one's mine,I yelp.
She tugs and I tug.
There are other ones, see?
I show her the bin, she rolls her eyes.

I find myself on a podium, explaining to a crowd of sympathetic women that the pencils are for my cousin, she lives in Israel. She has a dog named after Nicole Kidman. She has had her long, dark hair shaved off.
I hold up the pencil as proof. The nubby pink eraser is covered with uneven black prickles, stubble on my cousin's head.

My cousin Avi is not a pencil.
Her hair is long and soft.

I wake up.

Life Time And The Cosmic Joke

• I am in elementary school, running across the playground with my friends, tumbling in the grass and laughing uncontrollably.

• I am an adolescent, joking with friends and hanging out in the schoolyard.

• I am an adult, working at the elementary school, taking care of scraped knees and hurt feelings. I'm standing with my little fan club when a boy walks up and stands next to a little Indian girl. Suddenly, she cries out and the boy is off running. He goosed her in an uncomfortable way. The chase is on and I run across the playground, through the grass, and at last catch up and find him hiding in an abandoned classroom. He's upset himself. I talk consolingly to him. "Why'd you pinch her?" He felt bad about the way he looked because one of his eyebrows was overgrown and it made him look "like a werewolf". I convinced him that it was nothing to worry about since everybody has funny body parts. It's what makes us interesting. I befriend the boy and we talk every day about strange ideas about life and the universe. He's brilliant and comes to me with amazing thoughts for a little kid.

• Who knows there the years go? Days that are the same all become the same day until you find you didn't notice getting old.

• Still at the school, I return to my classroom and discover it is completely bare, with cobwebs filling the corners. I turn and there are the kids I helped raise into thinkers, questioners, doers. They have gray hair; and they tell me that my young friend passed away last year.

  I am overcome with grief. Misery descends around me like a black cloak as I kneel there in the empty room. I weep for my friend. I weep for the old children. But mostly I weep for myself, lost in time. Pulled inextricably away from those I care about for we all enter death alone.

  I open my eyes to discover that everyone is gone. The playground is empty and the setting sun colors the grass in golden swathes. I stand and walk past the jungle gym, the teeter totter, the swing set. There is not a breath of wind and no sounds of birds or cars reach my ears. There is only the sun, sinking every-so-swiftly towards the horizon. Almost like a glass dish falling, it is moving so fast.

  As it slips behind the mountain, my eyes close. The light of a thousand suns blooms behind my lids and a laugh escapes my lips when I finally understand time, life and the universe. The light grows infinitely more bright.

Red / Blue

• 12:00 Nap Dream - Me, Chris, and Nando are sitting in my kitchen. It's very clean. I have the package that has been sitting on my desk for the past 3 weeks -- a DVD. I know what movie it is, but since I already have that movie, I haven't opened it. But someone points out that the box says Batman on it, so I open it, and it's suddenly Batman. Only it's not Batman, but the making of some special about Batman, or something close to that. The important thing is that it's a four-part series. Of course, I don't remember buying this, so I try to cancel this new subscription. However, included with the DVD is a puzzle of papers, advertisements, and stickers. I have to put the right stickers on the right papers and advertisements to successfully unsubscribe, which seems to be a task more difficult than disarming a bomb.
  
  
• 12:00 Nap Dream - Someone is insisting to me that my name is Jeff. After showing him my driver's license, which is made of candy, I give up. Suddenly my name is legally changed to Jeff, and everyone starts calling me as such. I don't get to eat my driver's license.