Here is my next recurring dream.
RECURRING DREAM #CT02
I dream a lot about tornadoes. They are always approaching on the horizon, sometimes as many as 6-10 at once. They are coming for me and I must hide. Often these dreams wake me up in the middle of the night, generally during rainstorms, and I make my wife run downstairs and hide in a closet with the cats. In general, I am too terrified to speak coherently when I wake up, which in turn terrifies my wife because I can only bark out commands like "Get downstairs. Now. Go. Go. Get in the closet." She becomes convinced, while in that muddled just woken up mode, that there are robbers and we are hiding from them.
Which reminds me.
I knew this girl in high school whose house got robbed in the middle of the night while she was in it. The thievers crept through her bedroom window to enter the house. She remembers waking up and seeing them and being scared, but then she convinced herself it was a dream and went back to sleep.
GO
I had a weird one last night. I was in San Francisco with my grad student and we were driving around town in a brand new 1987 Grand Am (the dream appeared to be taking place in present day however, I didn’t have a grad student in 1987 for example). We ended up on this massive pile of dirt and grass. My student decides he wants to go buy some shark steaks because he has never had shark. So after almost driving off this cliff-like pile of dirt backwards, we head out to find shark. We end up at a place called West Coast Seafoods, which ends up being a 500 lb guy selling seafood out of an apartment. We head in and there are about 5-6 kids from ages 5-12 or so that appear to be this guy’s children, no wife. The guy brings out a couple of shark steaks and says it will be $23.99 per pound. I take out some money and he holds it up to the light and laughs and says “I only take bills made from oriented polyester. What you think foreigners don’t know how to counterfeit our money?” I have no idea what he’s talking about so I ask him where to get bills made from oriented polyester. He tells me that the only place he knows of is a bank in Sunnyvale, CA. At this point I’m pretty much convinced the dude is crazy and just want to get the hell out of there, so I turn to my grad student, who has somehow turned into one of my sons, and tell him to come with me and then tell the guy we’ll be back. The alarm in the car starts going off so we head out of the door, hoping the car is OK so we can get out of there. Woke up at that point, unfortunately (or fortunately since the dude has a huge knife and did not look happy).
ReplyDeleteI like the sound of oriented polyester. But Sunnyvale sounds dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI'm amused by going back to sleep during the robbery. But now that I've read that story, I'm bound to have another sleep paralysis episode. Those suck.
Thank you for your erudite post, WalkerHeel. We are forever endeavoring to increase the erudity of this site.
ReplyDeleteRight, so your quest for fulfillment in San Francisco hearkens back to your roots as a believer in Timothy Leary and other members of the 1849 gold rush. In your case, you have represented gold in your dream as "shark meat," and your efforts to secure it are riddled by poor claimstakes and ripoff artists, just like happened to you in 1849 (note: efforts in 1849 may have involved a previous incarnation of yourself and/or Timothy Leary). The ripoff artist in your serves a double role, also representing your mother, who appears to have severe issues with your wife, who is represented in this tale by your son. Fortunately, your wife/son is quite erudite in her/his own right, which adds to the erudity of this contribution to our site.
In sum, I think the overall thingy to take from this is that San Francisco music is largely bollocks, clear from goldrush-era SF bands like The Grateful Dead, The Doobie Brothers, and Allison Chains.
The bit with the car I think is totally different; a different issue entirely! Probably related to an intense desire for goat cheese but an inability to find/pay for the same. Your stomach's sudden turn from goated desire to a yearning for orange marmalade is what sets off the alarms, a piece of technology that actually did not exist prior to 1910 and therefore is something you probably just made up to make your dream more impressive. It just doesn't fit.
the giant pile of dirt has got to mean something. I think my grad student morphed into my son because the shark seller became a threat, and everyone knows you throw your grad student under the bus if things turn ugly, but of course not your own son. It's sort of like an allegory, only not quite.
ReplyDeleteThe giant pile of dirt obviously represents your physical dependence on anabolic steroids (I thought that went without saying but apparently not--I am very sensitive and aware of this issue after the Javy Lopez situation and sometimes forget that others aren't always looking for it). You drove your so-called "bus" (your word) over this pile of steroids in order to bolster your muscle strength.
ReplyDeleteYou may recall that in high school health class the PE teacher told us that steroids do not actually make you stronger, they just puff up your muscles to make you look bigger. In retrospect this rationalization/fear tactic (well, fear is a bit strong of a word) is really, really stupid but for some reason I fell for it and that is why I have pigeon breast.
Thankfully, you have your grad son to pull you through and make you see the error of your ways before God strikes you down with a bolt of tomato juice. And possibly goat cheese, as mentioned previously. Admittedly that seems unlikely.