Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Strange dreams (versus the goddamn clock)

Certain elements of the dream remain in my mind - still half-asleep as I sit here - but the overall structure, the narrative arc, are obscure. Perhaps I only remember the last few minutes before I woke up. I was in a room, large, sparsely furnished, and unfamiliar. I think I noted at one point in the dream that it was not a room I'd ever been in before, contra my usual dream-pattern of locating myself in the room I had in childhood. There was a video game console and a Mario Brothers-like game where certain characters reminded me of friends I have lost in circumstances where I was rejected: objects in the dream reminded me of them, including a chair named for someone I knew in my elementary school and high school days, whom I have not seen for some 20 years; I think the idea was that he used to play the game with me, and named certain objects for his character. A more recent lost friend left a bigger hole, and I'd needed to go into the game and delete certain things so as not to be reminded. Something on the soundtrack reminded me of Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak, but I don't recall what (I have cause in the dream to hum "I turn around - and it's fear; I turn around again... and it's love," or something like that; can't say those are the actual lyrics). I am playing the game with a new friend, whose identity remains obscure. There is also some grand task I am working on, perhaps related to another game, involving building a Tower of Protection, and another structure, whose use I don't remember. I am building them in opposite corners of the room, but they would be better close by each other. Someone comes to help me - someone I know who has suffered a loss recently, not exactly a close friend but someone I have spoken to on many occasions. He wanders about the area, trying his hand at the videogame, and I wonder if I should explain anything about it to him. But we set to at building the structure. (My waking mind has no idea what its purpose could be). I am worried - there is someone ELSE in the room, another friend whose identity is now unclear, and I am concerned he will say something insensitive in regard to death and dying, since this "new arrival" might be a bit raw - I wonder if I should take the guy who was there previously aside and let him know - hey, this new guy, he's suffered a loss recently, so tread lightly. However, there is a distraction - I pause to show this new arrival the area across the room where I'm supposed to have built my Tower of Protection, when people come in the room. They are Chinese people; a woman and her little girl. There is also a "host," an older Asian woman who speaks both Japanese and Chinese. Some conversation takes place, and I try to offer the little girl a snack - based on an odd Filipino or Malaysian treat I tried awhile ago, something like a fig bar but filled with purple yams or sweet potatoes or such. In offering the child the candy I am reminded of my father (who died a little over a year ago, Nov. 27 2009). The mother doesn't want the little girl to eat it. I try to engage the mother - who speaks only Chinese - in conversation, but I can speak only Japanese, and that badly. She smirks at my efforts, and the woman who speaks Japanese and Chinese translates a bit of what I say. I say, in broken Japanese, "Japanese is difficult. Chinese is impossible" (chuugokugo wa dame desu - my recall of Japanese in the dream is better than my recall in real life!). I end on one word I hope she will recognise - "sumimasen," or "excuse me." To my surprise, she warms up to me a bit, and starts to say something. In Chinese, which I don't understand at all.

That's when my alarm goes off. Which has nothing on last night, where my alarm went off as I was embracing a naked woman in a parking lot - she had just taken off all her clothes, prior to entering the compound of some cult I'd just left, and somehow I'd convinced her - naked and far too beautiful for one such as myself - to embrace me. My fingers were grazing the crack of her ass and I was wondering if I was going to have dream sex, when the goddamn clock commenced beeping...

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