So I had the white wedding dream this morning.

I’ve written about this elsewhere, but it’s one of those odd family things. My mom’s Yankee Baptist side, for all it’s religiosity, has it’s superstitions, handed down through the generations. Many of which Good Yankee Baptists are Not supposed to entertain. Mom’s dad came from Mennonite stock. River Brethren they called themselves. Her mother was pure bitter Yankee Baptist (not all Yankee Baptists are as unpleasant as she was. I know of a bunch of really good people in those pews) Not sure how far back some of these superstitions go, but a few seem very old.

One of them is the dream that is a premonition of death. Not yours, but of someone close to you. And it’s not that they die. In the dream, they’re getting married.

I can hear the snickers, but this is really creepy. It’s a big wedding usually. The bride, or the groom, are someone you know personally. You never see who they’re getting married too. And it’s usually, but not always, attended by people that you don’t know. And here’s the thing: the more white you notice in the dream…like in how people are dressed or in the place settings…the closer the death is.

I’ve googled this and it seems it is a thing. I can’t pin the history and origins of it down because there is so much argle bargle in the results, but apparently it goes way way back.

I’ve never had this dream. Until this morning. And it didn’t quite follow the usual script.

In my dream, I am a photographer working at a huge catering business. They have a massive building with a lot of big well decorated rooms to hold weddings and receptions. I actually have my own apartment on an upper floor. It’s a nice one. Apparently the cat I once had, Claudia, lives there with me.

I’m walking around the premises, checking on this and that, to make sure everything is ready for today’s guests. Nobody has arrived yet, but I know it will be busy later and I am on duty.

Then a huge wedding party arrives. They seem to be Indians, all dressed in traditional Indian garb for a wedding reception. There’s a Lot of them and I despair thinking there’s so many everyone else won’t be able to use their rooms. But the new party uses the lovely outdoor courtyard instead and I am relieved. There’s plenty of space there and it’s a beautiful setting for a wedding reception.

I watch them enter. The courtyard has a lovely colorful tiled floor, white marble columns with green hanging plants, white statuary, and big wooden intricately carved tables for the guests. I see the bride and groom at one end of the space. Dancers line up and begin some sort of traditional dance for everyone.

It’s bright and sunny outside this morning, and everyone is wearing white, bright, bright white, which makes the scene even brighter. It is so bright it begins to hurt my eyes and I have to leave and go back inside. And anyway, it’s time for me to get ready for the other guests.

I go back to my apartment and take a shower. As I’m drying myself off Claudia comes into the bathroom and hops up onto the sink to get a drink. As I’m walking to my room I hear a voice I recognize from downstairs, asking me if he and his bride to be can come up so he can show her my photography. I have it all over the walls of my apartment. I call back down, yes, but let me get dressed first please, I have nothing on.

With just a towel wrapped around me I run around my living room quickly, irritably picking up some crumpled up paper bags that were left on the floor by friends I had over the previous night. People need to pick up after themselves I think. Then I wake up.

I wake up in a very disturbed state. The voice I heard downstairs of the groom to be was a very dear friend. As close to me as anyone ever got. He’s getting married. I didn’t see the bride. And the wedding outside was so white it hurt my eyes. But…I tell myself desperately, that wasn’t His wedding. I don’t even know those other people.

I try to be rational. I try to avoid superstition. I’m an atheist for god’s sake (ha ha). But when you’ve got the imagination I do that’s very hard. The collision between my left and right brains (I know…that’s a myth too…but it’s a useful metaphor) that I’ve represented in A Coming Out Story, is the central struggle of my life. More so even than dealing with my sexual orientation. And deep down inside I’ve always been afraid of this dream.

Having a bout of vivid strange dreams here in the Golden State…

A couple nights ago (early morning actually…it’s when I usually have my most vivid dreams) I dreamt I was a student again, this time in a small private college. There was just one large, long, oldish red brick building with tall windows and a huge grassy courtyard in front. 

I was taking some sort of business accounting course, and failing miserably at it. My usual approach to class time was to hide the fact that I just wasn’t absorbing the material by parroting what the professor, who was also the college headmaster, said in his lectures. But I understood none of it and I was sure that was going to catch up with me soon. I was feeling intensely guilty the whole time for faking it and I finally just admitted to the professor that I was out of my depth and I wasn’t going to continue with it anymore because I hated myself for faking it.

And instead of working on the problems we’d been assigned, I began to draw. The professor came over to my desk, looked at my drawings, said I should keep doing that instead of the business course I was in, and assigned me some art projects. Then he said his college needed to offer art classes and wondered why he hadn’t done that long ago.

That dream ended with my feeling intensely happy about the change in direction.

This morning I dreamt I was producing a crime/mystery movie for Alfred Hitchcock with Cary Grant in it. I’d assembled something like a pre pre pre production proof of concept around the script but instead of doing a bunch of storyboards I used clips from other movies and voice overs to give a sense of what a film based on that script might look like. It was just to get approval from Hitchcock to spend the money to continue with it.

In the movie, Grant is supposed to play an investigator with a major power company, assigned to investigate what appears to be a huge theft of power and money from the company. But it gets dicy. The powers that be think this guy can be duped into believing the whole thing is just a big mistake and there is no theft, when in fact it’s a huge cover up of missing millions and power being diverted for secret organized crime activity and the board of directors is party to all it it in exchange for kickbacks. But the FBI is getting suspicious and they need this guy to give them a clean bill of health to maintain the cover up. Unfortunately he won’t, and the pressure on him gets…dangerous. 

Hitchcock comes into his office, obviously dog tired from exercise. I come in and I can see he’s already busy on the phone and I apologise profusely but tell him I’ve finished with the movie. He misunderstands…it’s only that proof of concept I’ve finished…and tells me to get a screening ready for the investors.

I leave the office appalled, pretty sure that we didn’t want to be showing this proof of concept to the investors. And we didn’t actually have Grant on board yet. But I’m told yes, that’s exactly what Hitchcock wants, and I need to get Grant on board.

The dream ends as I’m describing the script to Grant, and he’s saying no, it’s just like North by Northwest again and he’s been there done that, and I’m telling him no, it’s not really like that because he’s not playing someone dragged into it by mistaken identity, he’s deliberately involving himself because it’s his job, but he’s playing someone who is determined to get to the bottom of things, because that’s his job after all, against a lot of very powerful people, some of whom are his bosses, just as determined to stop him from doing that but without alerting the feds that there really is a big crime going on.

I wake up while carefully going over the differences between our script and North by Northwest with Grant, who remains skeptical.

I have several ongoing or recurring dreams. Most are just me wandering around places in Rockville around the time I was growing up there. Those were pretty important times in my life so it’s not unusual to be having dreams about them. Often they get mixed up with places and things happening to me now. I’m my dreams I’ve wandered around apartment complexes containing elements of every place I’ve ever lived. So much so obvious. And those dreams are usually kinda fun. I’m old enough now that when the dreams get unpleasant I just shrug it off when I wake up. But there is one dream I started having a few years ago that I wish would stop.

I had it again this morning. It’s the dream where I’ve sold or traded in the Mercedes for another car. Sometimes it’s a basic economy car like a Corolla, and sometimes it’s a small sports car. Once it was a 70s Ford Mustang. But I always end up becoming unsatisfied with the car I have, and always end up kicking myself all through the dream for giving up the Mercedes, and knowing that I will never be able to afford another one. By dream’s end I am miserable. Why did I do that I keep asking myself. Over and over. Why did I do that. There was no reason for me to do that. Now I’ll never own another one.

Sometimes the dream follows the path I took to Mercedes ownership. First I have the little white C class. Then I trade that in for the E class diesel. But then I give up the E class, trading it for a less expensive car, or some sort of sports car, and the dream goes downhill from there. I wish I knew what this dream was telling me. I am Never getting off my E class diesel. At least not willingly. That car is my dream come true car. It’s the car I want to drive to the end of the road with. 

Last month I spent the holidays in California visiting my brother. I took the train because it was just a visit over the holidays and I didn’t want to be driving through snow and ice if the weather turned bad. I got a good rental car for the duration, a new Hyundai Elantra. It was a fine car, well built, and it had some features I wish my 2012 Mercedes did. But I spent the entire time I was out there missing my E class (I’ve named it Spirit). The instant I got back home I took it for a drive, allegedly to give it a quick run after it sat in front of the house for a month, but more like I just missed it so much.

I am never willingly getting off that car. If the worst happens and it gets wrecked somehow, I’ll go looking for a used (sorry…Previously Owned) Mercedes, count on it. Probably a W204 C class like the first one I bought because they’re actually affordable to someone on retirement income like me. But if I could find a restored or at least rust free 240D with a stick that would be ideal. Those cars are legendary for their rock solid build. So it isn’t like I can’t ever have another one like I’m telling myself in this dream.

I wish I knew why this dream keeps bothering me. It’s not about the car…it’s about something else I’m fussing over deep in my subconscious. But what? I’ve no idea. I wish it would just stop. It wakes me up in a very disturbed state and it takes me the rest of the day to let go of it.

I had a dream about my high school early this morning. It was very painful. Not to start with though…

In this dream I am a young adult. I’m bicycling around the old neighborhoods. I find myself in front of the main entrance of my high school, Woodward, across the service road where the school buses park. There is some sort of event going on…lots of people of all ages going inside, tables and banners and colorful flags out in front of the doors and the auditorium.

I have an urge to go inside and look around, but I feel as though I’m not allowed inside and everyone would know that. But I want to look around, and maybe take a few reference photos for A Coming Out Story. So I walk my bike across the street to a nearby bike rack.

I realize I don’t have a bicycle lock on me. But then I notice there is one, in a holder in the bike frame. It’s an odd type I’ve never seen or experienced before but in the dream it all makes sense. It’s just a small chrome plated block of metal that rests in a holder in the frame. There is a key lock at one end and I pull a key for it out of my pocket, and remove it from its holder. It fits into a slot in the front wheel yoke when the wheel is turned all the way to the left, and blocks the front wheel from turning. The theory seems to be that a thief can’t ride off with the bike if the front wheel is stuck to the hard left. Of course one could always just throw the bike in the back of a car or truck, but in this dream I don’t think about that. I’m in a hurry to get inside.

My dreams often geek out like this.

I figure if I just act like I belong there nobody will notice me. It’s behavior that has served me well as a photographer. I walk inside and see that people are gathering in the cafeteria. There are also a lot of people walking around in the hallway leading to the cafeteria. Just like outside, there are tables inside, colorful flags and banners. It looks like the tables are selling or giving away souvenirs and keepsakes for whatever event is happening today. There is no text on any of the banners, just splashes of color everywhere. Everyone is happy. Everyone is having a good time. Smiles and happy conversation all around.

Inside the cafeteria it looks like a catering company is providing the food, as the kitchen area is empty. There are tables of food and various juice and soft drinks. It’s all high quality stuff. I’ve done wedding photography where it was like this at the reception. The dress code today seems to be everyday casual, so it’s not a very formal event whatever it is. People are sitting at the tables or standing or milling around. Everyone is chatting amicably with someone near them. This is a happy crowd.

The hallway outside, I notice, is much Much bigger than I remembered. Wider and taller. It’s become a grand hallway, but still keeping that 60s modernist flavor. I will always love that architecture. I step out into it, and walk toward the classrooms. I want to see the art rooms again. Every hallway, every staircase, has been greatly enlarged, made grand, but here there are no people and all is quiet. As I go up the stairs I can see sunlight from outside shining in and creating huge spaces of beautiful light and shadow. I reach for my cellphone to take some photos, and realize I left it back in my car.

Yes, somehow, and dreams do this to me all the time, the bicycle has become a car. My little green Geo Prism specifically this time. I’ve no idea why that car specifically, but it might have some dream connection with the fact that it was my first new bought car when I started making good money as a contract software developer, and I could live on my own for the first time in my life, and not in anyone’s basement. The Prism (I named it Aya) is a touchstone, a marker at point where my life took a turn for the massively better. The life I have now is nothing like the life I was expecting to have. I run out to the car, see the cell phone on the passenger seat, grab it, and run back inside.

But now all those grand spaces around the classrooms are full of people wandering about. The event, whatever it is that’s happening here, has grown in size.

I begin snapping some shots of the grand spaces inside. Like downstairs the hallways have tables and colorful banners and flags and people either selling or giving out keepsakes. I don’t look closely at what they are, I am focused on getting my shots.

I wander into the art rooms. Inside instead of all the art tables and stools, there is a big merchandise counter with friendly looking youngsters selling or giving out I can’t say which, more keepsakes and souvenirs. There are people of all ages looking the stuff over, and also milling about enjoying themselves.

I take a few shots and mutter to myself, “Well I guess that’s enough.”

An older man nearby gives me an odd look (I’m still a young adult in this dream). I suppose without context what I just said is strange, so I explain. “I just wanted to get some reference photos for a cartoon I’m working on…”

…and then I realize.

“…because this place doesn’t exist anymore. They tore it down.”

Now the man is looking at me like I’m crazy. But a younger man standing next to me speaks up.

“He’s right. They tore this place down. It’s not here anymore.”

And then it all fades away around me, and I’m standing in the middle of a field of wrecking ball art. Concrete blocks and bricks and twisted steel beams scattered all around me, none of it recognizable as having been anything in particular.

And I begin to cry. And cry. And cry. Like my heart is breaking.

And I wake up. It always surprises me when I wake up from dreams that do that to me, that my eyes are perfectly dry. I’m breathing pretty heavily though.

…wish I could tell anyone about it. 

I was having an odd dream about Woodward, my old high school, last night. I was in a Greenbelt hotel staging myself close to Goddard Space Flight Center because I had to be there bright eyed and bushy tailed first thing the following morning to get my fingers printed for a security clearance level change. The significance of that being that I wasn’t in my usual bed in my little Baltimore rowhouse, and that not being where my sleeping body expects to be often provokes strange, vivid dreams.

I actually have pretty regular dreams about Woodward and they’re always pleasant, as opposed to the dreams about my Jr High Schools. But even the high school dreams can drift into strange territory, particularly if I’m dreaming that I’m a teenager again. That strangeness will manifest itself in how images of the life I have now as an adult merge…weirdly…with memories of the past. For example: bits a pieces of the neighborhood I’m living in now, or places I’ve visited since high school, showing up in the neighborhood around the school. At this stage of my life I often have dreams where I’m back at the apartment complex I lived in during high school, but it has bits and pieces of every other apartment complex I’ve ever lived in added to it. While you’re in the dream this does not seem strange, but then you wake up and it’s a bit mind bending. 

Last night was like that. I was wandering around the hallways, and it seemed as if Woodward was being emptied of everything inside of it. But it was also full of elementary school kids and their teachers who seemed to be having some sort of community event in the old school building. It made me sad to see almost all the furniture gone, as if the building was about to be torn down, which was very odd in retrospect because news from Rockville lately is they want/need to expand Woodward, not close it, because of enrollment figures that the larger school down the street, Walt Whitman can’t handle. Further adding to the effect was the floor tiles seemed to have been taken up and I was walking over old wooden planks. The dream was so vivid I could feel the old wooden plank creaking a bit under my feet as I stepped on them.

Okay…I know where that one came from. I moved out of a storage unit I’d rented for the summer and that building, cobbled together from one very old city warehouse and a newer more modern building attached to it, had those exact same old wooden floors.This is how my vivid dreams weirdly mix and match details from out of my memories. So Woodward got the floors from my storage room. The part about how it was full of kids and teachers celebrating something I’m still thinking over. There were also all kinds of artwork on the walls of the sort you see in elementary school hallways…paintings paper mache art, paper collages. It was all bright and cheerful but set against a dark background of a place I dearly loved being vacated.

In my dream I wandered about the hallways, slightly afraid that one of the adults there would challenge my presence. What are you doing here? Whenever I passed someone in the hall I just acted like I belonged there, that I had some purpose I was attending to, and nobody bothered me. Eventually I passed a classroom where a certain someone used to sit at the end of a day, during the tail end of my junior year. If I passed by and he was still there I’d peek apprehensively in as I walked by. If you’ve ever watched that wonderful little animated short In A Heartbeat…I was Sherwin…

…beguiled, utterly clueless, unsure and more than a little afraid to acknowledge what I was feeling then…only that the sight of him made me smile, made the sun shine brighter, made the stresses of my day rest lighter on me…

Now the classroom was mostly empty. I walked in to stand where the desk he sat at was. Inside were a few objects of the kind you get at the very end of moving out…little odds and ends that for one reason or another didn’t make it into a box or the moving van until the very end. The last remnants of what was once there. If the heart is a house… A few small boxes sat in corner, next to a board leaning up against a wall that might have been part of a bookshelf. I wanted to see what he saw out the window while he sat there…for some reason in the dream that seemed important. So I looked and what I saw was a stunning view of one of the tall narrow rock walls in Arches National Park…I’d once hiked to a spot where they were visible…again, something out of my past. But it wasn’t in Arches, it was here just outside of Woodward, and surrounded by a lush forest around its base and flowering bushes. The sun was low on the horizon hitting it, casting it in a lovely reddish glow.

My jaw dropped. It was stunningly beautiful. And…because in dreams your mind isn’t quite all there…I thought to myself, Is that Sugarloaf Mountain? No…can’t be…that’s all the way out in Comus…

…and then I woke up, and I was in Greenbelt, and it was nearly morning and I had to go get my fingers printed…

Some weeks ago I brought a new cat into the house.   Her name is Isis.   She’s an eleven year old black domestic short hair I adopted from the Maryland SPCA.   More about that later.

I’m down in the art room working on the computer. Isis comes in and sits in my lap for a while, then hops off and lays down on a cat bed I’ve given her for down here. I keep working and after a while I hear a little sound, like a little cat snore. I’ve heard her snore occasionally since I brought her here and usually it stops after a moment or two. This time it gets louder. Then it gets really loud.

Alarmed, thinking she’s in distress, I get up and go check her. She’s laying curled up in the cat bed, and seems sound asleep. But she’s growling. It’s the same noise she makes when she’s at the front window and sees another of the neighborhood cats. You’ve probably all heard that set your teeth on edge slow drawn-out growl that’s the prelude to an all out cat fight. This was the sound she was making. But she was sound asleep, eyes closed, paws twitching slightly. I figured she was having a bad dream. I remembered a passage from Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley when Charley, his dog, was having a nightmare after seeing his first Yellowstone bear:

In the night I heard him whining and yapping, and when I turned the lights on his feet were making running gestures and his body jerked and his eyes were wide open, but it was only a night bear. I awakened him and gave him some water. This time he went to sleep and didn’t stir all night. In the morning he was still tired. I wonder why we think the thoughts and emotions of animals are simple.
– John Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley”.

So I place a hand on my cat and for a moment it’s as if she doesn’t feel it at all. Then she startles awake, head up, eyes blinking. (What…what???) I give her some friendly pets and chin scratches and stay there while the dream leaves. She gets up and sits in my lap for a while and I keep petting the bad dream away. Eventually she wanders upstairs to the food dishes. I suppose cats do comfort eating too.

I wonder sometimes what animals that dream think of their dreams. Do they understand the dream wasn’t real? They must have some grasp of it. How else does a cat reconcile waking up from a dream of, oh say, stalking some tasty birds and then suddenly they’re in their cat bed inside the house. Or do they just casually accept that reality is like that? Not linear from past to present, but bouncing here and there like hot water on a griddle.

Silly human…the whole world is unstuck in time, you just don’t notice. Which of course means…because clearly I’m better at noticing these random time warps than you are…that it’s breakfast time whenever I say it is…

Nap dreams are the weirdest ones.

I live on a dead end street. There is an access road that goes to the alley behind my block of rowhouses, but on the maps and as far as the city is concerned Redfern Avenue ends a few feet from my front door. But in my dreams it goes on forever. I walk down it often, though sometimes I also drive. Every car I have ever owned is parked on the gravel shoulders, and every place I have ever lived, and every school I ever went to is somewhere further on. Some nights I walk past them and keep going, just to see what’s there. If you go far enough it is always different then the last time you walked there. Time is like that the further away you get from the world we live in while awake. Just before you reach the beginning of time (or the end, I can never tell), you pass the house of the oldest handyman in the world.

He lives in a little stucco house on the side of a hill. Inside against all the walls are all the tools that ever were, going back to the age of flint, and in the basement and the attic are every spare part that ever had a catalog number. He greets you at the door with a friendly smile and you can’t help but smile back. His face is aged and full of lines and his hair is white as snow. He wears overalls that were once green but now faded and gray. His cap is wrinkled and worn because he often uses it as a handle, and the visor casts a shadow over his eyes, making them hard to look back into; but you never should because if you do you’ll wake up and forget your dream. There is a name patch sown on his shirt, but in my sleep I can never read it.

He can rewire a 1948 GE toaster, make a 1953 Muntz TV work again by passing a small fork made of pure silver over its vacuum tubes until he finds the bad one. He can straighten a crooked door frame by shaking a carpenter square at it. He can fix a Kaiser Manhattan’s seized inline six by tapping its spark plugs lightly with his fingers and humming a tune I can never recall when awake. Once he fixed a broken electrical transformer by calling down the lightning, and directing it through the winds with a magnet he keeps in his pocket.

In this dream I see my first car, a 1973 Ford Pinto, beside the road and decide I want to take a drive in it. But as I get in I notice the paint on it is fading. So I go back home and look online, only to discover that nobody sells that color anymore. A boy always has a fondness for his first car, even if it was mean to him and refused to start sometimes because it was being cranky that day,   so I take a walk to see the Handyman. He is there at the door waiting for me when I arrive, and he invites me inside. I tell him about my car and scratches his chin and then pulls a straight edge razor with a white handle out of his pocket. He tells me to scrape the old sunlight off the hood of my car with it and bring it to him. Paint he tells me, only shows color by trapping other colors out of the sunlight. The reason paint fades he says, is because of all that trapped sunlight wanting to get back out. If I could bring him all the color the paint had trapped, he could make me an exact match of the original factory color. So I walk back to the Pinto and began to scrap the old sunlight off it. It takes weeks.

Eventually I have a small bar of trapped sunlight, dirty orange in color and the consistency of wet clay. I bring it to the Handyman and he puts it into a can of white paint. The paint he tells me, will free the sunlight, taking its color with it out of the white, leaving behind only the color my car was when it left the factory. He pokes a finger into the paint and begins to stir it and it turns a bright blue, exactly like my car was before.

I stare into the blue and it gets brighter and brighter…and I wake up.

Nap dreams are the weirdest ones.

The evening of my abrupt trip back home from Walt Disney World I had a dream. I’d made the trip back from Orlando in a haze of deep depression; the kind I usually endure over the winter, around February, around Valentine’s Day.

Before sleep, as I lay in my motel bed and read my Facebook stream, I saw Wil Wheaton fretting about not wanting to go to sleep for fear of having night terrors. He has very bravely and publicly talked about his struggles with depression and I assume that the night terrors are a part of that. The deep depression I feel now as I turn in for the night isn’t of the clinical sort, or at any rate I don’t think it is. The evening before I had given a small gift of gourmet chocolates to a certain someone for his birthday, and he handed them back to me. The lonely ache I am feeling this night is almost like a second home to me now, and it is not night terrors I am worried about. Some dreams scare the steaming shit out of you but then you wake up and it’s just a dream. But some dreams, not terrifying, play with your emotions like a dog plays with a stuffed rabbit.

I’m in a coffee house somewhere I don’t recognize, chatting with a handsome guy who I’ve never seen before but I somehow recognize in this particular dream as an old boyfriend from many years. We chat casually about this and that and then out of the blue it seems, he asks me to marry him. Overjoyed, I tell him yes, yes I will.

Then we are in in our tuxedos standing together at the altar. The church is old, but more of a simple meeting house kind of church than the Baptist churches I grew up in. Its old wooden pews seem relaxed and comfortable, not stiff and unyielding. There are tall windows of unstained glass through which pure golden sunlight shines through, free and clear. Oddly, I see rows of old wooden bookshelves tucked between the windows, full of books. In my dream the thought of a church chapel doubling as its library delights me. It speaks to me that my boyfriend, now my spouse-to-be, brought me to this place to be married. I am overwhelmed with joy.

We make our vows and the minister pronounces us married. Oddly, he holds up the marriage license for us and everyone there to see and says that “Now it’s official”. I can’t read what the document says but that’s not unusual. I’ve written before about how for some reason I can almost never read anything in my dreams.

Everyone adjourns to a room next to the chapel where a reception is taking place. I suddenly realize there was no marriage kiss at the altar, so I walk over to my spouse and embrace him happily, give him a delighted kiss on the mouth, and tell him how much I love him and how happy I am to be married to him. As I do this I am thinking how sure I was this day would never happen for me, and it did after all. I am overwhelmed with joy.

He pulls gently away, smiling, but I can see he is very embarrassed about something. So are the people standing nearby. I step back and my spouse and our guests begin talking among themselves, as if to ignore what just happened. Something seems very wrong all of a sudden, but I don’t know what.

I step outside, confused. Didn’t I just get married? Didn’t he ask me to marry him? Then I realize there was no exchange of rings either. I am walking though an old part of town where the church is situated; a smallish main street with shops, all closed I am assuming because it is Sunday and here they still don’t open things on Sunday. As I walk I can see my reflection in the little shop windows, in my tux, walking alone down an empty main street. I begin to realize that this wasn’t a wedding after all, it was a rehearsal, and I was not the one getting married to my old boyfriend, he had merely asked me to stand in for someone else, who could not be there for that rehearsal.

But this theory is confusing too.   Didn’t he ask me to marry him?   Didn’t we have a marriage license? But I could not read the names on it.   I glance at myself in the shop windows again, and oddly, for some reason, start practicing skipping down the sidewalk, like I used to do when I was a kid.

Still not sure that was what happened, I go back to the reception trying to think of a way of asking my boyfriend if he was satisfied with how things went without admitting that I don’t actually know what is going on and getting an answer from him that will tell me. The ersatz reception has moved outside now and everyone is enjoying themselves. I walk up to my boyfriend but before I can say anything his spouse-to-be drives up in their car, towing a small hardware trailer full of gardening things.   Now I know.   The Spouse-To-Be was out buying things for their house and could not be there, so I was asked to stand in for him for the rehearsal.

They embrace and he asks my boyfriend how the rehearsal went and I wake up.

A dim morning light filters through the motel curtains. I check the clock. It’s a little after 6am. I get up to pack the car and finish the drive home, alone.

Thing about most dreams is once awake you recall how limited your mental bandwidth was (for lack of a better term) while you were in it. It’s the thing that telegraphs to you instantly that you are really awake: your mind is all there.   In most dreams (at least my own) I have no memories of prior events, no sensation of thinking really.   I don’t feel my body or even notice it much.   There are none of the usual sensations of motion or my environment.   I don’t feel temperature, don’t feel the air around me, don’t feel the sensation of gravity on my body. My consciousness is entirely on the surface of things. I am an automaton strolling through the dream.

But some dreams are so vivid I find myself remembering things, including past dream events I’d forgotten.   I have conversations with the people in my dreams and think in depth about what is being said to me while talking to them. I can feel my environment, feel hot or cold, feel the wind, feel gravity tug at me while doing things like running or climbing.   I sit quietly and ponder something and I am thinking in depth, just as if I was wide awake.   And lately I’ve noticed myself even daydreaming in my dreams.

What is it when you’re daydreaming within a dream? I was doing that last night.

Our minds…our human consciousness…it is such an amazing, intricate, constantly surprising thing…

The free association in dreams can be a really fascinating thing to examine when you get a hook on it.   This morning I woke up from a dream where I was trying with no success to photograph a gay pride parade.   In the typical way of dreams that want to frustrate you, the digital SLR I was carrying absolutely refused to take the shots I was trying to take.   But what stuck in my mind after I woke up, was the enchanting use of two commonplace words.

I was standing at one end of the main street of some small city: a mashup as these dream locals usually are of several city neighborhoods I’ve lived in over the course of my life.   The parade was coming toward me in the distance and I was facing down a street with a grade that casually dipped down and then rose back up again in the distance to a point slightly higher then where I was standing.   Both sides of the street were packed with old brick buildings, like oversized row houses.   Most were shops with large glass display windows.   Narrow sidewalks lined both sides of the street, which was empty of cars for the parade.   People lined the street, watching the parade in the distance as it came toward us.

I had a good digital SLR around my neck and a camera bag with various items hanging from one shoulder.   As I tried to snap off a few shots of the people watching, and also of the parade in the distance, the camera kept failing to take the shot.   Interestingly, the camera gave me tactile feedback that the shot had failed, by way of the shutter release.   Instead of a short sharp throw and clean release, the button became heavy and mushy and then would not move.   As soon as I felt it I knew something had gone wrong.   I glanced at the digital display on the back of the camera, only to see a shot I’d taken some weeks before, still on the memory card.

Ah…thinks I…the memory card is full.   I tried erasing what was on it, not caring at that point if I’d saved the images off somewhere because I had a job to do, which was cover the pride parade.   But the card would not erase.   It was that kind of dream.   I tried reformatting it and that didn’t work.   So I ejected that one and rummaged around in my camera bag for another. But all I could find were old, low capacity cards.   I knew I couldn’t get many shots on those, but now I was getting desperate, the parade was coming closer, so I popped one in.   When I tried to take a shot with it, the camera ejected it.

I was on a main street, full of little shops.   I wondered if one of those sold memory cards.   Here’s where it got interesting.   I walked over to one of the bystanders and asked them if there was a place nearby that sold glass.   “Glass” in this dream world, apparently being the word people used for memory cards.   The guy I asked knew right away what I meant, and pointed me to a shop just a couple doors down.   I thanked my good fortune and ran over to it and ducked inside.

Inside was like an old candy store, except instead of chocolate bars there were dozens and dozens of different kinds of memory cards, all laid out in rows of trays.   There was no packaging, just the cards, by type and brand.   Most were of types I’d never seen before.   It was almost like looking a trays of loose nuts and bolts except the cards were all laid out neatly in rows.   As I looked over a particular row of cards, the proprietor of the shop, a friendly looking older guy who was standing behind the counter, told me that the glass in that particular section were all product fancy.   It was a term I immediately understood to mean second hand.

It’s interesting how the mind works.   “Product fancy” in that dream world, was when someone buys something and they take it home and it turns out it wasn’t the right size or something after all, so they bring it back and exchange it for something else that is right.   So it was merchandise returned almost immediately either without having been used or only used once.   A higher grade of second hand merchandise in other words.   “Like new”.   The term “product fancy” probably came from some dream state free conflation in my mind of two senses of the word “fancy”: something you desire, and something illusory.     I thought that was the right size but it wasn’t…

The use of “glass” for “memory card” probably came from that dream state free association of memory chips and silicon, which is what chips are made from, and silica which is the oxide of silicon glass is made from.

The dream ended as I was looking through the trays for a memory card so I don’t know if I ever found one and got the parade shots I wanted, but when it ended I was confidant they were there, that shop seemed to sell nothing but memory cards and they had hundreds of different types all laid out like candy bars in a candy store, so I probably did eventually get my shots.   That was a kinda neat world though.   Some mornings I wake up wishing I lived in the world I was just dreaming about.

So I’m walking to class in one of my old Junior High Schools (they call them Middle Schools these days…).  The bad one.  The one I got bullied in so much I actually skipped out some days.  I had a hideout in the corner of one of the apartment building basements where the tenants could store things.  I’d found a storage bin that wasn’t being used and set up a bunch of big old cardboard boxes and some carpet and a flashlight in it, and brought in some books to read and on days when it was really bad I went and hid there until after school let out.  That was the only time in my life I ever skipped school, but some days it was just too much.  Surprisingly, nobody at the school ever questioned my occasional unexcused absences either.  In retrospect, it was of a piece with the administration’s lackadaisical attitude toward discipline.  Bullies at that school essentially had free reign.  Nobody was ever punished for picking on the smaller kids.  And sometimes I saw the smaller ones dragged into the principle’s office for fighting back.

Anyway…  So I’m walking to class in this Junior High School.  At least…I think it’s that one.  Something about it is different.  Odd.  The halls seem the same, and yet different somehow.  And then I realize I’m naked.  

You’ve all had this dream…right?  You’re in school and you’re naked and suddenly you realize that fact and you spend the rest of the dream dying of embarrassment.  I’m walking to class and I realize I’ve forgotten, somehow, to put my clothes on (maybe I’d just left gym class and forgot to dress after showering or something…) and now I’m trying hard to find my locker so I can put something on and then maybe…I dunno…flee the school or something.

But then I realize I’m dreaming and it gets odder.  Somehow I know that I’m dreaming and I’m walking in the geek wing of the school…where all the geek kids go.  And what is more, it’s the geek wing in a school where everyone goes when they’re dreaming about being back in school.  So I’m walking down the hall without a stitch on and trying not to make eye contact with anyone, and I see another kid walk past me the other way also trying not to make eye contact, and he’s only wearing his pajamas, and I’m thinking Okay…that kid’s having an "I’m in school in my pajamas" dream.  Then along comes another kid with her hair a really gross shade of green and I’m thinking She’s having her Bad Hair Day In School dream.  Another kid is struggling with his locker door and I think He’s having a Can’t Remember My Locker Combination And I Have A Final In Two Minutes dream…

Eventually I get to the door to my classroom and I see a rack of towels beside it with a sign that says Naked Dream – Self Serve, and I grab one and wrap it around my waist, walk inside and sit down to take a test.  Nobody pays me the slightest attention as I walk to my desk.  After I woke up I couldn’t recall what the test was about.

My dreams get like this sometimes.  Really.  In some Twilight Zone dream school there is a wing where all the geek kids go to have their tormented dreams about school.  But the administration provides towels.  So maybe it’s where uncaring school principles and teachers are sent to try and make amends. 

A few snapshots of the times we live in…followed by a dream…

Click…

Tom Tomorrow:

Crazy Glenn Beck

If I had my way, that would be his name, as far as any rational person was concerned. (As in: “I was in my car listening to Crazy Glenn Beck …”) Because Crazy Glenn Beck has carved out his own niche in the talk radio/Fox News spectrum, and it is the Crazy niche. And these aren’t exactly venues known for their non-craziness to begin with.

Glenn Greenwald has a rundown of Crazy Glenn Beck’s latest lunacy — “war gaming” the, uh, coming civil war.

Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air blog links to Crazy Glenn Beck’s discussion of the coming civil war, but even there, the writer feels compelled to note:

There’s something “off” about Beck in a way that’s not true of other chat-show hosts, although that’s not necessarily a criticism: O’Reilly and Hannity can be tiresome in more than small doses but this guy I find watchable even at a stretch. Partly it’s the sheer bravado of the performance, partly it’s the challenge of trying to figure out what’s going on in his head to make him the way he is.

When a right winger is so crazy that one of Michelle Malkin’s bloggers finds it necessary to post a disclaimer, however mild — that’s some serious crazy!

Crazy Glenn Beck had a health incident a couple of Christmasses ago — somehow things went awry with his health care provider and he had at least one incredibly rough night, which he later described to his listeners as consisting of terrible visions, such as — I’m not making this up but I am paraphrasing from memory — children’s faces being chewed off by dogs.

I was listening that morning and I remember thinking, “Wow! Discussing visions of children’s faces being chewed off by dogs on a nationally syndicated morning radio program? That’s crazy, even for Crazy Glenn Beck!”

So to answer the Hot Air blogger’s question, I’ll tell you what’s going on in Crazy Glenn Beck’s head: he’s trying not to react to the invisible people shouting at him, the ones that only he can see and hear, because he knows he’s on camera and he has to hold it together. He’s trying not to let the demons crawl right out of his skin while he’s in front of the microphone, because his livelihood depends on walking up to the crazy line but not crossing over, and mostly he succeeds, but clearly the strain is taking its toll. Bill O’Reilly used to be my leading candidate for right wing blowhard most likely to have an on air meltdown, but since Fox gave him a live tv show, Crazy Glenn Beck has pulled way into the lead.

(Crazy Glenn Beck’s bizarre post-surgery YouTube video is here. And here — at about the fifty second mark — Crazy Glenn Beck “jokes” about specific and graphic ways he would like to kill Michael Moore. Ha ha ha.)

Click…

Fox News "war games" the coming civil war

Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement":  hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors.  Those theater groups — the cultural precursor to George Bush’s prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day — spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, pseudo-revolutionary, play-acting tough guys.

What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that — with some isolated and principled exceptions — it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory.  Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional — limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending — they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.  

They’re the same people who embraced and justified full-scale, impenetrable federal government secrecy and comprehensive domestic spying databases conducted in the dark and against the law when perpetrated by a Republican President — but have spent the last week flamboyantly pretending to be scandalized and outraged by the snooping which Bill Moyers did 45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration.  They’re the people who relentlessly opposed and impugned Clinton’s military deployments and then turned around and insisted that only those who are anti-American would question or oppose Bush’s decision to start wars. 

They’re the same people who believed that Bill Clinton’s use of the FISA court to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on Americans was a grave threat to liberty, but believed that George Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law was a profound defense of freedom.  In sum, they dressed up in warrior clothing to fight against Bill Clinton’s supposed tyranny, and then underwent a major costume change on January 20, 2001, thereafter dressing up in cheerleader costumes to glorify George Bush’s far more extreme acquisitions of federal power.

In doing so, they revealed themselves as motivated by no ideological principles or political values of any kind.  It was a purely tribalistic movement motivated by fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy.  In that sense — the only sense that mattered — George Bush was one of them, even though, with his actions, he did everything they long claimed to fear and despise.  Nonetheless, his mere occupancy of the White House was sufficient to pacify them and convert them almost overnight from limited-government militants into foot soldiers supporting the endless expansion of federal government power.

But now, only four weeks into the presidency of Barack Obama, they are back — angrier and more chest-beating than ever.  Actually, the mere threat of an Obama presidency was enough to revitalize them from their eight-year slumber, awaken them from their camouflaged, well-armed suburban caves.  The disturbingly ugly atmosphere that marked virtually every Sarah Palin rally had its roots in this cultural resentment, which is why her fear-mongering cultural warnings about Obama’s exotic, threatening otherness — he’s a Muslim-loving, Terrorist-embracing, Rev.-Wright-following Marxist:  who is the real Barack Obama? — resonated so stingingly with the rabid lynch mobs that cheered her on.

With Obama now actually in the Oval Office — and a financial crisis in full force that is generating the exact type of widespread, intense anxiety that typically inflames these cultural resentments — their mask is dropping, has dropped, and they’ve suddenly re-discovered their righteous "principles."  The week-long CNBC Revolt of the Traders led by McCain voter Rick Santelli and the fledgling little Tea Party movement promoted by the Michelle Malkins of the world are obvious outgrowths of this 1990s mentality, now fortified by the most powerful fuel:  deep economic fear.  But as feisty and fire-breathing as those outbursts are, nothing can match — for pure, illustrative derangement — the discussion below from Glenn Beck’s new Fox show this week, in which he and an array of ex-military and CIA guests ponder (and plot and plan) "war games" for the coming Civil War against Obama-led tyranny.  It really has to be seen to be believed.

…

That’s the context for this Glenn Beck "War Games" show on Fox News this week — one promoted, with some mild and obligatory caveats, by Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air.  In the segment below, he convened a panel that includes former CIA officer Michael Scheuer and Ret. U.S. Army Sgt. Major Tim Strong.  They discuss a coming "civil war" led by American "Bubba" militias — Beck says he "believes we’re on this road" — and they contemplate whether the U.S. military would follow the President’s orders to subdue civil unrest or would instead join with "the people" in defense of their Constitutional rights against the Government (they agree that the U.S. military would be with "the people")…

Click…

Buttars: Gays ‘greatest threat to America’

He called the gay-rights movement "probably the greatest threat to America," likened gay activists to Muslim radicals and dubbed same-sex relationships "abominations." 

…

Buttars’ latest remarks come from an interview with documentary filmmaker Reed Cowan that aired on ABC 4 this week. Buttars told Cowan the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community doesn’t want "equality, they want superiority."

"It’s the beginning of the end," the West Jordan Republican said. "Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide

Click…

Gay rights group slams Renfroe for comparing homosexuality to murder

The state Senate passed SB 88 — sponsored by the Legislature’s two openly gay members, Sen. Jennifer Veiga and Rep. Mark Ferrandino, both Denver Democrats — on a voice vote after Renfroe spoke, and then gave final approval to the bill Tuesday morning by a margin of 22-12, with Republican Sens. Ken Kester and Al White joining Democrats voting in favor. The bill moves on to the House for consideration.

The bill, which also came under fire from Focus on the Family in an advertising campaign last week, roused Renfroe to pull out a Bible and thump it during debate Monday. After first establishing that God created Eve to be Adam’s “helper,” Renfroe explained why he opposed extending health care benefits to gay and lesbian partners of state employees:

Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural, created order and it is an offense to God, the Creator, who created men and women, male and female, for procreation.

Then came some passages from the Bible:

Leviticus 18:22 says, “You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a female, it is an abomination.”

and

Leviticus 20:13 says, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act and they shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them.”

And I still can’t get this dream out of my head…

In this dream I’m driving to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to visit some gay friends. 

From Baltimore, Gettysburg is not all that far away. This is a day trip I’m taking, and I have three gay friends with me…a full car.  We chat easily as I drive with the windows down and the moon roof open through some very lovely Maryland, and then Pennsylvania countryside.  It is a beautiful day.  Perfect actually.  Not too hot, not too cold.  The air smells sweet and crisp and clear.  The sky is a perfect blue, with just a few fluffy clouds in it here and there…just enough to make it beautiful, but not so many as to block the sun.  A perfect day.  My companions and I are feeling as sunny and cheerful as the weather.  Peace and contentment and companionship.  A perfect day.

Eventually we get to a small and cozy old cottage house in Gettysburg.  Somehow I know it is not far from the battlefield nearby…somewhere over the rolling hills of grass and trees.  But the sight of such a charming little house puts all thoughts of that terrible war out of my mind.  It is so cozy and peaceful to look at.  Like something out of a Currier and Ives print.  There is a large plot of land around it, with a very nice stone walled garden on one side of the house.  Inside we meet more friends,  There is a table of lovely snacks and wine.  Delicious.  I chat with a few of the folks inside, get a few snacks from the table and a small crystal glass of wine, and walk out into the garden…back out into the perfect day.

I don’t recognize any of these people.  But somehow in my dream I know that they are all gay friends of mine.  We chat about this and that in the beautiful garden. The couple who owns the house has clearly done years of careful loving work on both house and garden.  The garden is surrounded by a low stone walls that I think must date back hundreds of years. Inside the wall are so many beautiful bushes and flowers it just takes your breath away.  A little paradise. 

It is a very peaceful, tranquil setting, and I feel a warm, serene ease being there, and being in the company of these other gay folks.  I don’t know any of them, yet I feel that we are all compatriots…comrades somehow.  Kindred.  I am sitting on one of the low stone walls.  A guy about my age is sitting beside me on my right.  Several other guys are standing in front of me.  We are chatting easily about this and that. 

As we chat, about a dozen bright yellow birds, American Goldfinches, land on the wall near us.  We watch as they fly a short distance to one of the garden’s Azalea bushes, now in full rosy bloom. Yellow birds hopping around in a rose red bush, looking for some food I suppose. The sight is lovely.  One of my companions remarks on how colorful they are, and I agree.

The goldfinches fly off, and almost immediately about a dozen or so starlings land on the stone wall a short distance away from us. My companions ignore them. Some people don’t like starlings, they’re not very pretty birds, but I like and even admire them in some ways. They can find homes in the most amazing of places in and around humankind’s structures. Their flocks make these spectacular air formations, that weave and turn and undulate in the sky as if the entire flock had a single mind. I’m told it’s behavior they evolved over time in their European homelands, to confuse and evade hawks and other air predators. And starlings make this cheerful, goofy song that sounds to my ear like the squeaky wheel noise of the old fax signals I used to hear on my shortwave radio when I was a kid. No other bird makes a song quite like a starling’s. It’s bizarre and goofy and cheerful and just brings a smile to my face whenever I hear it. But starlings are not welcome in most places because their flocks can get Huge and they make a lot of mess.

My companions ignore the small flock of starlings.  As I watch it, one of the birds starts walking awkwardly over to me.

As it gets closer, I can see its feathers are unkempt…ruffled…disordered.  Some look broken.  It’s little pointy yellow beak is broken and bent in the middle.  It comes closer, awkwardly waddling on little stubby bird legs.  I can see eyes are just two black holes in its head…empty sockets in its little bird skull.

It walks over the stones to me, then it stops, fixes those empty socket eyes on mine, and in a little dry, gravelly voice, begins singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic to me.

Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
 

…and then I wake up.

I’ve woken up from vivid dreams where I was doing a lot of things, but never laughing so hard I was in tears.  But that’s what happened a few moments ago.  I guess my internal state of mind must be pretty good.

I was dreaming I was with two friends in one of the music rooms at my old high school.  One was the old friend from my grade school days who I just visited last week.  The other is a newer, younger, mostly online friend who I met on MySpace some years ago, through the Love In Action protests.  They are both Uber geeks and fun to be with, but they have never met each other.  In the dream we all ended up together at my old high school and got to giggling over the kind of arcane pop culture in-joke that only techno geeks would get and we were all laughing ourselves silly and I woke up.

I don’t think I’ve ever woken up from laughing in my dreams before.  Something’s changed inside of me.  I wonder what.

I just finished up the task I set for myself today…basically catching up on a lot of home office filing I hadn’t done in ages, and cycling old files I don’t need to keep in the office into storage containers I’ll put under the basement stairs later.  Paid bills, records and notifications, purchase slips and other miscellaneous paperwork that you need to keep track of in adult life.  My pack rat gene serves me well in this one regard: I keep everything when it comes to all that stuff and I keep it well organized.  Well…mostly.  I had a pile of almost a year of it I hadn’t gotten around to filing.  This holiday break is time I set aside to catch up on all that stuff…and move some things off into storage so I can have room again in the front office.

Anyway…I finished up the task I set for myself today, which was reducing the pile of unfiled paper to nothing and moving some old files off into storage.  So I sat down for a moment and let my mind wander a bit.  I find when I’ve spent hours concentrating intensely on something I just have to do that.  I just sat for a while with the iPod plugged in and flitted around on the web looking at this and that while my mind wandered.  My thoughts drifted back to that recurring dream house I mentioned in the post a few back, and I started pondering it for a bit, and this time the pieces all clicked into place and it finally hit me what the significance of the house is. 

Anyone who knows me personally reading this…think about it for a second.  A little house…a rowhouse…yet an unattached one.  Solid but needs some TLC.  Almost completely empty, except for an unused kitchen a basement full of random parts, a rickety but well used workshop that’s not really part of the house, but sort of tacked on as an afterthought, and a private den off the basement that doesn’t even seem to really be part of the rest of the house, where someone seems to have spent the better part of a life doing nothing except watching TV and snacking.  There’s even a phone next to the comfy chair.  And the rest of the house is empty.  Empty.  Even the floors are bare.  And the second floor makes me apprehensive.  And I’m not even really living in it.  I know I bought it…I know I need to move in at some point…and yet I haven’t.  I just keep checking on it from time to time, wandering though it occasionally, and wondering about the person who left that stuff in the workshop and the den, and avoiding the second floor like death waiting to jump out at me up there.  If you know me…think about it.  It’s all there.

Dreams are amazing things.  If the conscious mind is the waves on the surface, then dreams are the shadows dancing around in the water below.  I’m surprised now that it took me so long to get what that house represents.  I wonder if it’ll stop appearing in my dreams now.