Grace ponders human mortality.

This dream is from about a week ago, before I had my hernia surgery. That may or may not have had something to do with the subject matter.

I was standing in a hospital hallway with my younger sister who was somehow also my twin. (And was also an accident, according to my mom.) She looked like a rather skeletal Mayim Bialik. We had just been brought to the hospital because we were both getting faint and having dizzy spells, and we had just found out that we both had a life-threatening pulmonary condition. I left the hospital with the strong sense that one of us was inevitably going to die.

We were at an indoor public pool later in the week when my sister suddenly collapsed. I caught her body and tried to stand her back up or support her but it looked like her head was lolling so far back that I couldn't see it. I shifted her around, trying to find her head so I could see her face, until I suddenly realized that her was no longer attached to her body. I looked around for her head while still clinging onto her body, and finally spotted it at the very bottom of the pool next to us. It was leaking a growing cloud of bright red blood into the pool water.

I started yelling for people to help us, astonished that they hadn't notice the decapitation taking place right next to them. At first no one heard me, and when someone finally did, they didn't take me seriously and just kind of casually walked over before finally realizing it was an emergency situation. It was obviously too late for my sister, her headless body was already dead in my arms, and there was nothing I or any of the others could do to save her.

It turns out she died because she had sex directly after eating. (We had weirdly specific physical and dietary restrictions due to our heart condition.) She was like thirteen years old and I'm a nineteen year-old virgin so I kind of said a little "thank you" to the gods and I'm pretty sure my mother did too because she was upset but not SUPER upset that the twin had died because as she told me very bluntly, my sister had been an accident and I had much more promise anyway. We took her body but left her head, hidden in the cloud of blood, at the bottom of the pool for someone else to retrieve and clean up because that would be too disturbing for us to do.

Later on I'm in a band or orchestra class, in a flute section with Jake and Irene. (The picture is an old photo and Irene and I at a real orchestra rehearsal.) At every rehearsal they would give each other a look, then get up to "go to the bathroom" at intervals so they could hang out in the hallway. I would occasionally participate, but on this instance I really had to use the bathroom (and it was either the same day or the day after my sister died so I kind of got a free pass) and I asked after Jake and Irene had both left, and the teacher said I could go but I had to text someone from the bathroom so she knew I was okay because she was afraid I'd be upset and suicidal.

On the way there I ran into the other two flutists and we strolled down the hallway a little ways, chatting and laughing which made me feel better. We passed Jake's locker which had a sign I had made for him with his name and big hemp glasses frames on the door, and next to it was his friend who had committed suicide's locker, which had lots of pictures and letters taped to it in his memory, and it made me awkward and quiet for a moment as we passed it. I woke up shortly after arriving in what I'm pretty sure was the girl's bathroom from my old middle school.

The weird thing is that my old flute buddy Jake died earlier this year, in March. It took me a while after waking up to remember that it wasn't a friend of his who had killed himself. I really enjoyed seeing him again, even if it was in a dream. He was a good guy.

Eyebrows, Guns, and the art of being intertwined.

I brought Red Leader to some kind of extended family thing to meet everyone. It included my dad's whole side of the family with the exception of my cousins Beksahn and Megan, my maternal grandparents, and my mom's brother, Uncle Bob.

All of my dream cousins were completely psycho and some of them were not real. For example; there was this trio of pyromaniac cousins, my cousin Gil being the only one that I knew among them, who I'm pretty sure were trying to kill me with a Bunsen Burner and some fireworks. There was an evil version of Tom Hanks who was a cousin too, he tried to cut off my left eyebrow with a knife to prove that I was a man. He was being crazy and cutting facial hair off of my other cousins to try and prove their gender, because everybody knows that only a man can get his left eyebrow sliced off. Anyway he was being pretty scary and at one point I put my foot down, resisted his threats, (called his bluff) and brought my younger cousins downstairs so they’d be safe. We had a discussion in our office with my parents and Aunt Janet who was sitting in the blue rocking chair about how Tom Hanks’ violence was becoming a real issue for the family.

After that fiasco we had a family dinner. We were eating something like salad and chicken, and they didn't really have a vegetarian option for me. (Vegetarian Problems.) I was sitting to the right of my Uncle Bob and somewhere to my left was my grandpa. I believe we were at my G'ma Leta's dinner table, I was facing the giant wall of windows. Partway through the meal I noticed that there were the words "Fuck You" carved into the side of one of the wooden bowls holding salad, which I pointed out to my parents, except it was "Fuck You," and then a name that started with "D." So I asked my mom who the person with the name starting with "D" was and she said it wasn't a person, it was an underwater gun that was used in WWI. And then she used some metaphor to describe what people turn into when this underwater gun shoots them, it was some very graphic food metaphor like "salsa" or something equally chunky, red, and liquified. Her metaphor was in Zoe from Firefly's voice, kind of like when Zoe was describing why she and Mal both sliced their apples. I kind of gnawed on a crouton for a little while after that and then left the table before the meal was over with Red Leader in tow.

We went up some wooden stairs and passed a girl who apparently goes to college with Red Leader (because we were suddenly in a hallway of dorms) and he had previously talked about how awful she was, (and had referred to her as a "despicable cunt," a phrase he reserves for the few women he can't stand) and I was like, "Hey, is that the despicable cunt?" And he said, yeah. She's a huge dick to everyone. And I asked him what specifically does she do to you, and he said that whenever she's walking behind him or he walks into a room, she sarcastically yells loud sexual innuendos to imply that he's obviously gay and she's being ironic. (Like "OH HOT DAMN, HOPE YOU BROUGHT A CONDOM" or "UH-OH, IT’S MY MAAAAN.” or shit like that in a sarcastic voice.)

I thought that was really funny and just endeared Red Leader to me more, so I hugged him very tightly for a long time and it was really vivid, we were just standing in a dorm hallway in front of a whiteboard that was in between a couple doorways and just hugging each other so tightly that every part of our bodies were touching and my arms felt like they were wrapped around him at least three times and I remember he was wearing his Green Lantern shirt because when I opened my eyes, my face was buried in his neck and I could see the light green collar against his skin.

Then I drew a cartoon of Tom Hanks cutting off my eyebrow on the whiteboard and shortly afterwards discovered that my awesome cousin Beksahn (pictured here being awesome) was in the bedroom right in front of us, lying on his stomach on a double bed, reading. I ran in and jumped on top of him (I do that sort of thing with him) and he groaned and laughed and swatted me because that's what we do. Then I looked at the book he was reading and about 1/3 of it was Chinese symbols (he speaks Chinese) and the rest was in English - the English was the normal text and the Chinese was the dialogue. At first I saw the name "Harry" and a few other familiar phrases and thought he was reading Harry Potter in Chinese. But then I saw a few Lord of the Rings references and got confused, and finally decided that it was some random book that I had never read before.

I remembered that Red Leader was still standing in the hallway and I called him over to meet Beksahn and get up onto the bed with us to talk, but unfortunately the dream ended shortly after so I have no clue what we talked about. Whatever it was, it was interesting and hilarious because the three of us were involved.




At the very tail end of the dream, I was getting changed for work in my high school friend Miles’ house, and the bathroom door did not lock. (One of my least favorite situations in the world.) I was trying to put on this v-neck soccer-jersey-looking long-sleeve shirt that was black and orange, and directly over the breast pocket had the word "PUBES" written in bright orange. I never managed to successfully dress myself in the "PUBES" shirt, but at one point I had six or seven layers of clothing on my body and Miles walked in and commented on how big my clothing was. I guess it was supposed to be a compliment.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

My dream last night featured the cast of Community. The real question here: Sad or Meta?

I distinctly remember seeing every character from the study group except for Shirley. Which I'm pretty okay with, she isn't my favorite. Also check out this crazy awesome fan art that I found on Google images.

So I was kind of just thrown into this ridiculous adventure with almost no introduction or explanation, but as events unfolded I began to grasp the concept of what was going on.

The cast of community were all just hanging out and being normal, little did they know that their lives were actually being used to power the earth, Matrix-style. Since my dreams tend not to be as well-thought-out as the Matrix, there were two of each character - one who lived and functioned normally, and one that was kept in a facility that drew out it's life energy over time and used it to power everyday things, specifically to my dream, a zoo. (Do zoos need that much electricity? Probably. I've never worked at one, how can I judge.)

While in The Matrix, there is only one physical body and the mind lives in the Matrix, in my dream there were two physical bodies, as previously mentioned. The dream was taking place in a sort of split-screen, jumping back and forth to following the real study group and following the drugged-looking-crusty-zombie versions of the characters, who were in the middle of attempting an escape from the power facility.

They were not doing very well. Crusty Abed, Pierce, and Troy had a plan to paint human-colored makeup over their weird yellow-y faces to try and pass for normal and walk out of the facility casually.

Abed was really unconvincing, Troy painted his face bright blue, and they did a bit where Chevy Chase actually looked more lively as a crusty zombie than as a normal human.

The way they finally ended up escaping was that the normal study group realized that their crusty yellow counterparts were attempting an escape. With some prompting from Abed, they decided to intervene. Abed and Britta got jobs at the power facility pretended they were helping the people who worked there re-capture the loose Crusties. As Abed ran through the main gate in (supposed pursuit) of a Crusty, he unlatched and then re-latched the gate, although what the audience (me) and Abed both knew was that Abed had only pretended to re-latch the gate. It stayed cracked a millimeter or two.

The Crusties didn't have much time, and they began trying to escape. It was going well until Jeff and Annie began to freeze, legitimate icicles began forming on them, and they spent the rest of the dream, (which wasn't much) falling over each other and trying to ram their stiff, frozen bodies through the gate to freedom.


ALSO


Throughout the entire dream, I had "The Most Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" stuck in my head. (Probably because last time I was at Red Leader's house, he sang it while going down the stairs and it was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen.)


Anyway,

Six seasons and a movie!

Eternal Wandering of the Unconscious Mind

The dream opened on myself and a young, bald guy sitting in chairs next to each other, across from what was very obviously some sort of shrink or psychiatrist. The bald guy looked like his head had been colored in with pencil. The therapist was talking about how the memory wipe that was apparently being performed on the young man was nearly complete. I recalled that the memory wipe was to erase the recollection of the tragic death of our mother and sister - this guy was apparently my brother. Also, I knew that I had already had the procedure done as I could neither conjure up an image of the mother and sister or their untimely deaths.

It seemed that after having the memory wipe done on myself, I was suddenly adamantly against my brother having the procedure finished. I barely had a chance to express my opinion before, apparently, the wipe was complete.

We sat there for a couple more minutes, me stewing in my defeat, my brother staring off into space with a general look of confusion, and the therapist being annoying and therapist-y, until without warning, my brother suddenly freaked the hell out.

Something had gone wrong with the memory wipe and all of the gruesome/painful memories had come crashing back into his head at once. He leaped to his feet and in a fit of crazed emotion, sprinted out of the room.

I followed him outside, where it was in the depths of winter. My brother was decked out in skiing garb and skis and holding ski poles in his hands. As soon as I got a good look at the situation, he turned and took off down a snowy, sparsely wooded hill. I took off after him on my own set of skis.

We shot down the hill and I managed to overtake him with the intention of stopping both of us so I could reason with him or at least calm him down. However, we found ourselves skidding across a frozen lake at the bottom of the hill instead. I was keeping my balance out of pure luck, and I even thought for a moment that I might make it across the lake in one piece.

Of course, that would be far too boring.

As I sped across the ice, I looked up and saw, directly in front of me, a polar bear. Out of self-preservation more than anything, I swerved as hard as I could to the right and my skis cut into the ice and created a hole in the lake. I just managed to maintain enough momentum to keep from falling into the hole. Unfortunately, my brother was still right behind me, and I turned around just in time to see him drop into the freezing lake in a spray of ice and snow.

I threw down my ski poles reflexively and began grasping for my brother's hands to rescue him. As we tried to reach out to each other, we both began freezing into giant, immobile blocks of rock and ice. My hand became a giant, frozen chunk of ice, and I could barely move. My brother was slowly being encased in a thick layer of ice too, and I could see his lips moving - he was speaking to me as he froze and sank into the water. I strained desperately with every muscle in my body to reach his giant chunk-of-ice-hand, but all I could do was watch helplessly while he moved slower and slower until he stopped moving altogether. Shortly after that, I lost consciousness.

When I woke up, my ice had melted and I was completely alone, leaning against a stone wall. Neither the lake nor my brother's body were anywhere in sight. I was a disgusting, bloody mess, very aware that I was seriously injured but running on enough adrenaline and shock that the pain hadn't hit me yet.

I looked down and saw that I was in a hot pink pantsuit and I was holding a trumpet. In a weird sort of hazy delirium, I took the trumpet and ran down the nearest street until I stumbled across a jazz club. I burst inside and invited myself up onto the stage with the combo that was playing and took the opportunity to play a long, squealing, ridiculous trumpet solo, at the end of which everyone just kind of stared at me with their mouths hanging open. Not quite sure if their shock was a horrified shock or an impressed shock, I didn't wait around to find out but instead ran back out of the club.

That's when I woke up.


Also, side note, only because I mentioned it in the last post, Red Leader has been rescued from the Empire's clutches. Long live the Rebel Alliance.

Unfortunate Hernia Premonition

The night before last I had this horrible dream. Red Leader and I had had a tense moment before I went to bed and he was acting strangely.

In the dream, I was being prepped for my upcoming hernia surgery and Red Leader was the surgical intern who was scrubbing in with Dr. Schroeder. He was acting weird in the dream, too, and I was really concerned. I kept asking him what was wrong and he kept saying it "wasn't a good time to talk about it," which was pretty true because I was lying on an operating table. But I couldn't take the suspense and I finally demanded him to tell me what was going on. Just as I was losing consciousness, he leaned over and told me that he was breaking up with me.

I spent the rest of the dream watching Dr. Schroeder cut through layers of my forearm for no apparent reason, since my hernia is inguinal.

Regardless of Red Leader's not-so-reassuring reassurance that he was "not going to break up with me right before my hernia surgery," his x-wing was unfortunately shot down by an imperial star destroyer roughly 12 hours after the premonition. That's all I'd like to say about the matter.

Red Leader makes a second appearance.

This dream began with several people, including my friend Andrew whom I haven't seen in a very long time, walking in on me while I was in the bath. Fortunately for me, I was also wearing underwear whilst in the bath. Unfortunately for me, both articles of underwear were white so they were pretty much pointless.

Andrew and my other friends (including Anna, I believe) all waved amicably and didn't seem too uncomfortable about me being wet and mostly nude. While the interruption was rather surprising, I decided to go with it and got out of the tub, put on clothes, and started hanging out with the bathroom intruders.

What started out as three or four friends quickly escalated into a full-blown party, which then eventually changed venues to somewhere far cooler than my house - some sort of party venue that from what I could see at this point included a couch/sitting area with weird decorations and a small roller coaster that went around the whole place and pretty much defied the laws of physics the entire way.

Once we made the transition from my house to the party venue, I wandered over to the sitting area and engaged in conversation with a random chick I went to high school with (and talked to about twice total) named Portia. Not only was I never even acquaintances with Portia in high school, at first glance I would not choose to talk to her. (She's one of those women who take five hours to "put on their face" every morning. I would personally go for the most interesting looking person in the area.) Nevertheless, we ended up in close proximity as I was watching the decorations around the couch. Credit to Books of Adam (www.booksofadam.com) for the Facebook Girls cartoon.

The decorations were a bunch of random shit hanging from the ceiling, including some tiki heads and a Buddha-looking guy and other things you might find at a flea market. Then there were these colored disco lights shining on the hanging things and they were moving around like a mobile.

I said something like, "This would be so cool to look at when you're high." Which is what got Portia's attention, and she said something about the best place to get good weed nearby, to which I just nodded and pretended I knew what the hell she was talking about because let's be honest here, I've never even seen weed.

After that completely faked conversation (on my end, at least) I ventured over to the roller-coaster and got on. The cars looked like wooden park benches. The ride started and, though very confusing, was disappointingly tame. Apparently Portia had followed me on because I once again began talking to her about pot, stating that all I really want to do is spike someone's food with it and watch the hilarious aftermath.

The strange part here is that I then turned around to see Red Leader* in the seat behind me, and he told me that in retaliation to my marijuana-food-spiking, he would "slip a tiny ring into my food so that someday when I have his child, it will be born wearing a monocle."

I'm not making this up. It was so specific.

Then I answered with something really extreme and graphic like, "I think I'd shoot myself in the stomach" (I have that aversion to pregnancy) and then went on to continue digging a hole of crazy for myself by pondering the effectiveness of stomach-shooting as a form of suicide, which turned into contemplating suicide aloud which is generally frowned upon, although Dream Grace DID make a good point in that shooting yourself in the stomach a) Could end up not killing you and b) Would be very messy either way.

Then we all got off the ride and went to play laser tag. But I woke up before we got there, which was disappointing because I really wanted to play laser tag.

Anyway, moral of the story, my sub-conscious dealt with so very many issues last night including (but not limited to) my own naked body, illegal drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, insecurities about a new relationship, suicide-slash-contemplating-suicide, and along with that, the shame associated with admitting that I struggle with those things. All in all a busy night for my brain.

*Red Leader is the previously mentioned love interest with whom I was not sure things were going to work out, but they actually turned out great and I'm pretty damn happy. I mentioned the boyfriend-blog-nickname-dilemma to him and since we're both die-hard Star Wars nerds and he likes to pretend his car is an x-wing, he dubbed himself Red Leader, which is way better than anything I would have come up with.