Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Tropical Quest for the Infinite Light Inside Golden Crocadiles...or... The Escape from the Lying Wrestler Barber

Last night I watched a Sundance Film Channel Japanese anime cartoon called "Gunslinger Girls" about cybernetically engineered little girls that assassinate people. After that I watched Bryan Gumble's "Real Sports" on HBO where he interviewed the Olympic 100m and 200m sprint Gold medalist from Jamaica on the island and toured around the tropical scenery. As I fell asleep listening to Dhivan's talk from Cambridge earlier this year on "What Do We Really Know About the Buddha?" on podcast I entered deep into a drawn out dream full of bizarre plot lines and even more incredible settings.

For the most part the dream took place in a tropical world much like a mixture of where I lived in Australia and my trip to Hawaii this summer with parts of the Bryan Gumbel show thrown in with aqua marine water and overgrown vegetation. I was on a quest for these seemingly unimportant objects that could unlock the next phase of my journey. I had a sidekick that traveled with me that reminds me now of the young Michael Douglas in "Romancing the Stone." I don't remember all of the objects that I had to find but one was a small anchor I found in a dead choral reef. I was swimming in the dream and the uncomfortable feelings I had when snorkeling this summer weren't there, it was effortless and focused. When I pulled the anchor out of the water it disintegrated into my hands and out of it shot small microfibres of light that penetrated into my forehead and warmed my body with yellow heat. Each time I found another object it became easier to see where the next one could be located. A stair rail, a pineapple, a porch swing, a lily pad. After obtaining several objects and absorbing their bright light I was able to foresee small glimpses into the future, a very helpful skill as I pulled my sidekick out of a swamp nearly missing the jaws of a golden crocodile. The crocodile itself then started to glow and as I grabbed its snout forcefully it too dissolved into light and entered me. I don't know why but I also remember an intense sense of urgency of the mission. I just had to get these objects or something major would happen.

I don't remember all of the dream just the over all parts, and I remember the more objects I absorbed the faster everything became an absorbable object around me until everything I looked at started to disintegrate around me and then into me until I was the light and everything was gone. I just hovered and spun in the middle of open yellow space.

My alarm went off this morning at 6:15. Usually I frequently hit the snooze button and pass in and out of subconscious states and dreams often mixing the two a result I suspect coming from the fact that I stay up late and am probably just hitting a REM cycle just about the time I need to get up. This little bizarre drama gets acted out every morning and I often wake turn off my alarm and reenter my dreams exactly where I left off. But this morning while hopscotching through conscious states my dream morphed out of the light world into the top floor of a tropical barber shop (Watched Sweeney Todd the day before). The barber reminded me of someone I knew but I couldn't tell exactly (kind of like the guys I watched fight on UFC earlier that day). All I remember is that as a result of my mission for objects I was left with a ridiculous hair cut much like ones I used to get when I first entered high school and that I had grown 10 years younger.

The barber was bald and muscular and forced me down in the chair and even though he said he knew what to do to fix my problem, he shaved my beard off with an old school shaving razor. I thought he might kill me if I tried to stop him. Afterwards I realized that I had to go and teach a college class but a terrible wave of fear came over me as I looked in the mirror and saw a man who was not me. How could I show up at work not as myself? I freaked out and paced around the barber shop yelling at the large bald barber mixed martial arts wrestler guy and I was so distraught that it caused me to wake up just before my 6:45 am back up alarm. I usually wake up from my dreams when they start to get shitty like this and don't usually go back to them when I realize I'm no longer asleep.

Now awake fully, I felt my face and hair and realized I was still me, then I also realized that I wasn't in the tropics which was kind of disappointing. Although the entire experience was vivid and bizarre, these are just like the dreams I always have. Set in lush or colorful or vivid locations always with some sort of ludicrous plot line that I must overcome and solve. I never dream about happy peaceful things, or fun times or flying, always just missions, tasks, journeys with seemingly no point other than to end with me waking up because they piss me off.

The creepy thing is that the dreams seem to be a conglomerate of things I watch, hear, see and have done in the past. The other startling part of this is that I also have deja vu's A LOT, and I always have (weekly usually). And, when these said deja vu's are happening, I often remember the exact dream where I had already lived that exact moment. So having dreams where I save people from crocadiles, absorb light from pineapples, and have my beard shaved off by a wrestler make me realize that my future is going to be one hell of an adventure and that I might possibly have to save the world.

That'd be a helluva mission now wouldn't it?

If you enjoyed this very honest synopsis of my dream last night let me know and I can share them as they happen, if it was boring and you'd rather I stick to my usual lamenting about the woes of teaching in bush Alaska I can do that too but I think that logging my dreams might be of some interest. I sleep with my computer right next to me as it holds my music (no iPod) and they say that if you are going to record your dreams you have to do it as soon as you wake, the more you move, the more parts of the dream you forget. So let me know if you want to hear more of these little adventures of my brain and I'll do it again real soon.

3 comments:

Brett Ortgiesen said...

Kale,
Love the dreams they sort of reminded me of the High Lander, there can be only one. I also just got a kick out of your student complaints, teachers should really be given those goat tasers to show em we meen business. Just got internet back get intuch with part to of the fishing trip. Peace

Syd said...

I think documenting your dreams here is brilliant. I have a really hard time remembering exactly what happened and in what order in my dreams. Most mornings I'm jerked from my alternate universe by Buffalo Soldier (in attempt to make it an easy transition from one world to another) and hope to retain the basic idea of the dream[s] so I’m not so bewildered when I’m left with the vaguest of residual mental pictures(which is more often than not). I love hearing people’s dreams!
Dream on Kale! :)

hdt said...

It is nice to know that I am not alone in the whole deja vu thing. I get that A LOT too. I used to think something was wrong with my brain cause it happened so often.

I think the retelling of the dreams is wonderful. Shows you are a great storyteller and also is very interesting to juxtapose with what else goes on with your life.


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