THE PIRATE DREAM.

The Pirate Dream:

The majority of the Dream was spent in an intermediate state, almost as though it were the "womb" of the Dream. Yet then it took form. After the events of Actual Life from yesterday night I took a long shower, contented that I'd not only stood up to my parents but that I had established with finality my ability to bear responsibility.

When I emerged I saw my father creeping around downstairs with a white flashlight, probably from his phone. He did not speak to me directly, but made his sarcasm known by implication.

It was not long before I knew wherefore he was so sardonic. It became clear soon that my bedroom had become host to a party. Micaiah had apparently invited a few friends and four of the Coyotes from Coyote Ugly. They were all hanging out in my room, acting all but as though they'd not seen my father, and to the same degree they acknowledged either his existence or mine they only acted wilder, as though to wrap up their debauchery more quickly before any one could shut them down. I tried to calm them, using this (both their presence and my own calming presence) as an opportunity to get some action. I began to lean against the shoulder of Jackie Virgo, as though ready to spoon or cuddle. She simply reacted with distaste and disapproval, asking what the hell I was doing.

If that was not enough to dissuade me, what proved sufficient was the appearance of Micaiah's roommates. These were manipulative bullies. They had followed us from the womb, which I have now begun to remember. In the "womb" of the Dream, which clearly represents the Fourth House, of childhood (and which was triggered by the matriarchal tendencies of Jean back in 2013, when I started this Dream Record) every thing is a mind game of some sort. Life not yet lived becomes a sick and twisted mess of complexes with no definite resolution or purpose. It begins briefly to resemble Reality before the moment of Immersion passes and it becomes again an elaborate two-dimensional side-scroller that dazzles with its colours but no more than it nauseates with its arbitrary redundancy.

And in the midst of this game emerge the Bullies. These enemies follow the protagonist through the level even after he has first bested them, at least by his own standards.

These followed us. And they were none other than Micaiah's room-mates. They barged in in alpha fashion, quickly winning the approval of our women. Lounging on my bed they were no more than mere hipsters, going on like nerds about the works of Tolkien. Any attempt I made to establish my own respect and self-respect as an intellectual was shot down and one-upped by something to the effect of "this guy is making a short film just about the Black Gate". And they asked me if I could recite the plot of that chapter, about which they would geek out collectively and with macho bravado, praising Tolkien's brilliance. And the guy in question, lying on my bed with his head facing the end closest to me, was about to recite the plot, but I urged him not to, insisting (with desperate conviction and seeming futility) that I had only recently re-read the trilogy.

Then I noticed something: The window of my bedroom that faced my neighbour's house. In Actual Life it simply opens out into a patio that is likewise overlooked by an other window from my parents' bedroom. In THIS dream, however, the two windows are united by a steady-looking, comforting balcony of grass. The partition that would in Actuality segregate the patio from the front yard, stopping short of the next lodging by a drop of several feet, like a tooth in an giant parapet, did not stop short; it continued and combined with the next lodging in the form of a neat bridge. I wondered if all ways it had been so. In the back of my mind I must have known that I was dreaming. But why grovel before sheer fact, especially if the Reality was so remote at this moment? The theme is transparent: why dwell on the illusory nature of Samsara when Nirvana is so far away? If Maya allows one to merge with one's fellows, why not celebrate that Tantric connection that only appears in Dreams?! Is Spirituality not all so a form of naive realism (in addition to all the other things that Spirituality is, as well as in addition to all the other forms of naive realism) if it becomes so ascetic that it isolates us to our separate egoes? (Which are, of course, what is represented by the houses.)

This part of the Dream serves as a reminder not to let either Yogic convictions nor Scientific cynicism (which eerily lend themselves to one an other quite frequently, as Jung had pointed out in his analysis of the religious neurotic living in the modern age) to stopper the expression of Love. The Will to Truth is truly a passion that burns to its own destruction, and it takes Opportunity along with it in the process.

Hence my phone confrontation with my Father in Actual Life last night was not the mere culmination of neuroticism on my part, but its transcendence. My father's own influence over my life was that of the truth-seeking scientist who had become dogmatic in his prideful convictions. It was not as though he had not found a use for his knowledge, though it is not the usefulness of the knowledge that is the arbiter. (and here I depart from an other father-figure of mine: Friedrich Nietzsche.)
It is of course in part [as one finds upon second thought] the arbiter, but not in his favour; the very Utilitarian conviction that compelled him to call me in the middle of the night was what triggered my final break with the Life of Thought. He had ostensibly good intentions, but his attitude was one that was both patronizing and threatening. My thoughts were not simply interrupted by the call; they found their natural consummation in it. I told him, as considerately as was possible, to fuck off. And by so doing I shut up not only him but some part of myself that he had imbibed in me: the need for life to make sense on MY terms, rather than on ITS terms. And what did I find? On its OWN terms, Life had all ways sided with me! It was only when I resisted, out of shame or just Pavlovian conditioning, that its Richness of Opportunity was obscured to me.

Every thing my father represents is the Life of Thought. My Mother, in turn, represents its natural corollary: the Mind Game. When I emerge from the shower my Father is DOWNSTAIRS, feeling about in the dark with only his cellular phone for light, not unlike a bottom-dwelling bioluminescent fish. It is from these same depths that the Bullies emerge. I would not be surprised to find, should I choose to investigate, that a trip downstairs would have produced a passage back into the Virtual Reality that had first produced these Bullies.

It is thereby exquisite to note that by the morning, when I looked out of my window and found a dawnlit stretch of paradise connecting me with my neighbors, I noticed that my Father had all but disappeared, his memory the only imminent detail. It is even more beautiful and Beatific to consider that paradise lay BETWIXT ME AND MY NEIGHBOURS, no longer isolated to my own ego.

Of course my Father's presence on the phone I.A.L. felt like a Bullying, oppressive force. He was the man who had supplied my enemies with their weapons against me. And probably unwittingly, as pure research men do! (The only reason I ever hated Cat's Cradle must have been that Vonnegut's message was too obvious and close-to-home for my tastes.)

What follows woke me up with a smile, if not on my face then in my Heart:

The window was no longer a window but a Door with a window in its upper half. This door, with morning's light streaming through it, however feebly, caught my attention. I looked through the window and found the aforementioned bridge and balcony. I wondered, as aforementioned, if it had all ways been there.

It is of course glorious to note as well that the balcony connected me to my PARENTS' ROOM. Sure: the same stretch (but of space, in Actuality) connects me to the same window in Actual Life, but the fact the Dream not only RETAINS this fact (not substituting my sister's room, for instance) but ADORNS it indicates the potency of the symbol.

What is good about dogma? Why is it important to discern "pseudo-science" from "real science"? It is the Nietzschean appeal: Utility. Yet this Utilitarianism on Nietzsche's part (despite his hatred of the Utilitarians) was what produced the Nazis. And it all so produced Big Pharma and all the scars I have from That Stint. At this moment I remember that a lot of the earlier stages of the Dream were set in the complex combining Aurora and Palomar, as though they were Athens and Jerusalem, [it's not pretentious to name-drop if it gets the point across, however Utilitarian that very statement might be.:-] most probably (and thereby definitely) transitioning seamlessly into my parents' old laboratories in Baltimore and then merging again with the Great Mind Game (post-structural philosophy) that one had to use for Escape. (Hence hyper-rational photo-Fascist Mike Daniels called games "an escape". They are, but not from Reality so much as Naive Realism, which Mike was then slave to and might yet be.)

Mike was a Libra. So was Aisha. So is my sister. And my boss.

All of them have discouraged me from going too deeply into these existential matters. Mike felt like I was driving him insane. Aisha warned me not to drive my SELF insane, and she spoke from her own experience more so than from my reputation. (As a Scorpio would.) my sister simply told me that she decided not to study her dreams because she was afraid of them, implying quietism by example. And Katelyn simply laughs nervously at every Zen curve-ball that I inadvertently toss her way.

And who could forget the pothead sitting outside Starbucks who drugged himself dumb just to stop the carnival of thoughts, telling me to get a job because I was going insane because of my passion for the Truth?

Even Nietzsche, the Great Libra intellectual, seemingly devised the concept of the Ascetic Ideal to put his own evil genius to rest, joking in half-seriousness and total sincerity that a philosopher's Will to Truth is proportional to his failures with women!!

At the root of it is a Libra's impotence. Venus wants to Know, but only enough to serve Her Purposes. She can have knowledge, but only for her own sake; she dares not cross into the realm of Knowledge for its Own Sake.

But Neptune can transcend himself. Hence Einstein was a Pisces. And so was Schopenhauer, whose greatness of mind did not reflect on the form of Popularity.

I opened the door.

I knew that it might lock behind me, so I propped it open with a Pumpkin. I moved into the morning light just enough to see what was going on.

The place was crawling with pirates!!

I ran back, just as the Bullies and the girls, who had now returned, were beginning to crowd at the doorway. I yelled to Micaiah, repeatedly, to keep it propped open: to watch the Pumpkin. It was obvious to me that this was my one way back into the House; I would Lose Myself otherwise. (And not like the Eminem song, though he too is a Libra.) the doorway to my parents' room has all ready been reached by the hostile agents (bullies) as I could see through its window.

What follows is hazy, and that is probably because I missed a great deal of it. Venturing forth once more I allowed much to happen behind my back.

The Pumpkin served this secret purpose of connecting me to my House. It is not unlike my dog, whose name is Pumpkin and whose role is that he gives me an excuse to live here I.A.L. as his primary caretaker.

I was afraid the Bullies would learn this and remove the Pumpkin, shutting the door that he propped open for me.

But then an altercation transpired with the pirates. I don't deny that I am making this up as I go, but is that any different from remembering a dream? Shannon was wrong; dreams come from the same place as Art. And I felt no less dazzled upon waking than I do now.

The Leader of the Bullies was killed. His talk of the Pumpkin, which he had sought with futility to destroy, had left an ironical impression upon his wife. The dogmatic patriarch could only get others to do his work FOR him; he was in that sense the perfect character foil for ME, in that I required my friends to have my back. The villain wants to hero to self-identify with him, but by agreeing to this the hero turns on Life. Life would show the hero that in fact he is more different from the villain than he is alike. The villain delegates because he wants Power; the hero delegates because he requires Freedom.

Trusting Micaiah helped. The Pumpkin kept the door open. Now only three people remained who knew of its significance. Two had run off to fight the pirates. One had come back; he might have forgot its significance. Last of the three was the Deceased Bully's wife. She stood in the doorway, bewailing her husband's passing. She was not the vengeful type. She wanted nothing to do with any sort of Pumpkin whatsoever, all because they all reminded her of her dead husband. So she stood right next to our Pumpkin at the doorway, all most as an Usher or a Hostess.

The bully who had returned remembered then the Pumpkin. But he wanted no more to do with his deceased boss's agenda. Then the other bully returned. He asked: what's a Pumpkin? No one has the heart to tell him. Laughing with hysterical relief, I awoke.

Dm.A.A.