The APOTHEOSES of LINJI: Part One.

[This is published chiefly for the consumption of Robert Pesta, who has made recurring, insistent appearances in my recent dreams at the Old Fabric Store, as a coworker in Poway, and whose first name makes a premature cameo herein, as though foretold prior to our meeting in this Lifetime.]

Dm.A.A.

[Click this link for the Soundtrack.]

BOOK ONE:                                  THE END TIMES.

Dream Journal Three: PROBLEMS AT THE BEGINNING. (Water over Thunder.)

Dream Journal #3: Athens Marketplace.

I came to this morning with a doubt as to whether I was awake or asleep. Psychologically, I was still in the mindset that the contents and situation of the Dream were Real. Too soon I escaped into the comfort of daytime, forgetting that they were.

            My last wish was to begin lucid dreaming. I think that might have been what awoke me, and briefly I wondered if this conscious world were a continuation of my dream.

                        Maybe it is.

            I must have dreamt that I was in a supermarket, yet it was akin in feeling to the staircase ascending into the battleground with the enormous trolls in ‘God of War’.

            Maybe this was, in fact, the Japanese market I visited with Kresten and Andrew. Maybe they were the trolls.

            Maybe the thought ‘Athens Marketplace’ prompted this merging. Was I not attacked outside it by Albert’s aunt, accused of pomp I did not possess?

            I can take a hit, though. It doesn’t matter if others find me pompous so long as I am motivated. Maybe Albert’s aunt identifies Shakespeare with pomp. I do not. I identify with his genius. I know that I possess that talent.

2. I feel that my conflicts with K. and A. arise from the childish conviction that any disagreement between us is an attack upon my way of doing things. Hence the Kafkaesque courtroom-like dynamic of being (cornered?) in some of the underground passages in yesterday’s dream.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Sixteen: ENTHUSIASM. (Thunder over Earth.)

All that I remember is that I had been waiting on a saviour of some sort who wouldn't show. A lot of travel as well—perchance the Sprinter, again?

dm.A.A.

Dream Journal One: THE CREATIVE. (Heaven over Heaven.)

Dream Journal

My dream was set in Joann’s. This is not the first time. Perhaps as a comment upon the remodel, the store took on the character of an arena in mood, although geometrically it felt even smaller than it normally does.

(In waking life,) I am confused. My atonement with Jean and the rest of the overnight crew makes me feel hung over. I do not want to identify with this vile, wretched, uninspired energy.

Towards the end of the dream, Amanda was at the register.

Ironically, the dream feels positive.

Part of it was a computer game.

The metaphor of the arena suggests a noble fight: I must, having seen the depths of Jean’s depraved neuroses, and the raw nerve of that woman to attribute an ‘undisputable’ objectivity to her skewed perceptions, take my stance and fight the good fight to surmount this evil within myself.

Dream Journal Seventeen: FOLLOWING. (Lake over Thunder.)

1.                  Last night’s dream is equally hazy in memory as the previous dream. All I recall are Oleg and Andrew,There was some sort of absurd challenge that I was failing,akin to  a high school test,so the pervasive mood was angsty anxiety.

2.                  I can only guess that it represented College, as well as maybe scholastic education in general.

3.                  There was some sort of a jungle gym or other such array.It was night-time,and I was either charged with orself-appointed the task of finding and caring)or at least keeping a close watch on) for a mentally handicapped person.*

* This may have been inspired by Kresten’s job, in Actual Life, babysittingand escorting an Autistic boy.

The setting was especially Dark,and parts of the dream must have taken on qualities of a video game.

4.                        As I look about my Actual room now, some what horny and possessed of an adolescent ponderance,I am caught by a box of untouched Sudoku cards standing upright with the back, with its price tag, facing me. I am reminded, with

stark vividness, of my SAR Prep cards.

All of my books, in their stacks upon the floor, reflect now not my own Wisdom, suggestingthe author’s own humanity,but the sterility of scholastic knowledgibility, as the cards represent the temptations to pretension, sexually charged at the expense of being emotionally stifled.

      Yet in describing it,the books and cards return to their intimate selves, the eeriness of the pre monition not lost to me nonetheless.

5.                  Parts of the dream had beenset in Palomar College. Buildings—artificicial, sterile, blocky—dominated the twilit scene.

The Sprinter train was there.I kept missing appointments.**

            ** Again, falling short of expectations.

What had set this dream apart particularly  had been the apocalyptic feel  of parts of it.

I  kept going to  a small pizza parlour to buy  pizza, a theme from a younger dream.The pervasive mood was of being Hunted, constantly,  by some domineering, totalitariaentity.

At timesIwould wander about the city with a band of young hoodlums.

The secret wish for the elusive  Modest Mouse record appeared yet again in the midst of all of this. I wanted only to hear the song, but I couldn’t find it.                          dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Two: THE RECEPTIVE. (Earth over Earth.)

Dream Journal #Two.

1.                  Prior to this dream, I had made a conscious effort to work an entire shift in Extraverted Feeling, flipping my strongest faculty outwards. It was a draining experience, and one that others did not take kindly to, apparently.

2.                  In the dream, a plethora of things happened which all seem meshed in a thick stew in my mind. The emotional quality of it was consistent to the point of stagnation, thus reflecting the ‘charged(stressful) apathy’ that I had allowed my conscious ego to subjugate myself to throughout the day.

The two noteworthy instances involved two people I have not seen in a long time: Jason Yoo and Luke Shaw. Jason kept trying to castrate me, and if that was not also Luke’s intent, he did have something also sinister in mind, apathetic to my please for mercy.

If Jason and Luke are, as I suspect, ENTP and ISFJ(respectively), this would suggest that they both Extravert Feeling.

My attempts to understand this function are emasculating me, rendering me more dependent than independent.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Nineteen: APPROACH. (Earth over Lake.)

I dreamt an immensely Elaborate dream, the details of which predominantly escape me. It seemed to deal with my recent flirtation, again, with facebook, and the decision I had made to abandon the website again.

Most of the dream evades memory. What stands is the fact that it was markedly different from my other recent dreams, as though it had been elevated to a more complex state of consciousness.

There had been a Slavic woman on a reality television show. She was asked to describe either a dream or a fantasy that she had had, as were several similarly innocent contestants.

The woman had had blonde hair and the wrinkly skin of a middle-aged woman.

She described four rooms,each identical. Either this had been her description or her story evoked this image in mind, which immediately became physical within the dream.

As she recounted the story, I tried to rearrange the four rooms to see how her description might have worked. Following her description, each room was supposed to be – as I can describe now, using, a Waking simile – barely wider than a king-size bed. Each room contained two pieces of furniture, a window into the next room, and a portal from whence one could enter the room from the window in the previous room. Together, the four identical rooms presumably made a closed loop.

She was also trying– she had been too shallow to merit saying ‘struggling’–to recall a message that some dream had imparted upon her.

Eventually,over the course of the dream, she remembered the message. It had been something to the effect of the world revolving about her.

Towards the end of the dream, either prior to this revelation or following, I had added Lisa Pradhan, successfully, on facebook. Her profile, not unlike my dreams’ portrayals of Alexandra’s socially bustling profile, was otherwise,on the dimension of photographs and her personal comments, a testament to her Gothic, tortured but impervious persona.

What had caught my eye was the end of one of her comments, presumably the last under a photograph or forum post.

It read, with disdain, that she did not enjoy Elliott Smith’s music and that she was frustrated with Dmitry giving that impression.

I tried clicking to read the entire comment.I may have clicked the wrong one, for I might have not seen that comment about Elliott again.

Instead, I saw a behemoth post, the length of a blog entry, with line breaks between the paragraphs, outlining not so much her qualms with Society as with very particular, presumably unpardonable behaviours that she had observed in other people.

As I perused her photographs in pursuit of the comment that had originally caught my attention, I had to make a demanding effort to avoid looking at the first photograph in the last row of a major photo album.The picture displayedan array of luminous gears and mechanisms, like clockwork,set against the predominantly deep blue backdrop of a nebula.

The caption within the photograph had been a testament to the potential of the human mind. I avoided it with the fear of becoming hypnotized into a form of schizophrenia that would spell the doom of not only me but others, if not Humanity in general.

Dream Journal Four: YOUTHFUL FOLLY. (Mountain over Water.)

Dream Journal #4

Mood: 4th chakra, shadow.

I dreamt that I met Aisha in a terminal of sorts. Playing my cards right, and we began to date. I began to imagine what people on facebook would think when they saw ‘Aisha is in a relationship’ come up, and how Dennis would give it away to Usman by her saying to Dennis, ‘you don’t even to talk to him anyway’, as I walked through a public restroom, searching for a stall. Aisha was seated in one of the stalls and she began to sit on my lap, as I withheld defecation out of courtesy. I pondered whether or not we would ever have a child, admitting (to myself) that I did not feel guilty about the prospect of sex with her.

Later, we were in bed with a laminated pamphlet of some sort that listed a series of sex moves on one side and oral sex moves on the other, and in the lefthand column of the chart, beside a series of symbols that must have occupied the middle column, there was a list of spiritual phrases for what each move was meant to accomplish.

I did not surmise what I was looking at until I saw something to the effect of ‘mouth work’ or ‘mouth love’ as the title for the backside.

At one point, in one of the locked chambers to of the restroom, either before or after this scene (probably after) I felt as though I were about to be attacked by two young, grinning hoodlums who wanted to enter the chamber as well, but then saw that I was in there. Perhaps they represented, at once, both the pair that are Debbie and Jean, who walked in on me in the employee restroom chamber one time(the only day I recall Jean apologising for a mistake), and that of Andrew and Kresten, my new bandmates, whom I had felt ‘attacked’ by when they merely wanted either a place in my life* or just a place for theirs.

*feels more comforting, if it may appear childish.

2. Towards the end of the dream, it was nightfall at the foot of the slope at the top of which CVS overlooks the beginning of Paseo Lucido. Washed in the amber light of the lamp in of the parking lot, darkly contrasting the deep, nebulous blue sky in a manner akin to the looming, impersonal gentleness (though not, in this case, the hauntingness, which was absent)of Jak II, a mood like the pacification of drunkenness from beer*-- I constructed, from wooden planks, a small playhouse that was also a jungle gym. A friend of mine, either a cameo by or an homage to Cameron (Bahl?) the Raver and Drummer, approached from the CVS side, commending my vision with a skater’s unmitigated sense of camaraderie, ready to help. At a loss for what to do, precisely identical to my realisation in making life that Kresten and Andrew did not requiore my creative control in order for a band to grow, I chose simply to slide down the wooden slide onto the concrete sidewalk, prompting a characteristic chuckle from Cameron but no sense of rapture from me.

*The dream was markedly less Inspired and Ecstatic than my waking life, so I hope that I do its blandness justice here.

3. The remainder of the dream was spent wandering about in the hungover dark, thinking to write a punk rock song along the lines of ‘Fuck America with all its laws…’, simply because I could not stage a play and have one of the last songs be a cover of ‘On My Own’ from ‘Les Miserables’, by virtue of licensing laws for theatrical productions.

4. When I arrived outside of the apartment that my parents and I were staying in, one akin entrance to Kresten’s condominium except that it was tucked into a corner as though it were on of the apartments in Bernardo Point that I had never paid visit to, I was flying about, literally, waiting, upon ringing the doorbell, in mid-air, suspecended bouncingly be repeatedly kicking off each wall, as though I were back in our apartment in Baltimore, delighting mother and father one night by climbing up the

white, lamplit ceiling of the kitchen by climbing up the inside of the doorway.

Two sides of the entrance to the kitchen as though I could touch the white lamps on the ceiling were it not that I would fall.

Dream Journal Twenty-three: SPLITTING APART. (Mountain over Earth.)

1.      I dreamt that I was in Marching Band again.The stipulation of my obligationtotheRoyal Regiment was hazy. Where,in actual life,the commitment would have been almost militaristic, I had felt at ease—almost – with skipping two sessions, although, judging by the background anxiety pervasive throughout the dream, my absences appeared justified to my mind. The mind-numbing shame of having submitted to social pressure  and surrendered my wits to the illusion of social anxiety–or, otherwise, the carefully masked Reality of this predicament as I had seen it  appear in the other patrons  and even moreso the employees of Denny’s the previous night– would not cease to torment me, like the archetypal subtle bully wearing a clown’s mask, throughout the early stages of the dream, as I found myself in high school again, both in terms of setting and emotional mood.This became particularly present when I set foot in the Band Room and was met with gently antagonistic,tribal stares from Shawn  and Conner ( if I am not misyaken in memory) that served to mask a deep anxiety, an act of hazing that leant another explanation for why my vision throughout the dream was ‘hazy’.

2.      I had justified my absence from rehearsal by calling in sick,I think, although whether or not my message had been received( if my memory serves me well in telling me that I had called) remains Kafkaesque. I eventually realized that,since I was a graduate, I was not bound by the limitations of high school, and that fact relieved my stress, though the tortured, absurd mood pervading the background of the dream still buzzed about. Mr. Horimoto had been present on the marching field,despite the presumption that I had had that the Royal Regiment was under new management,as it would be in the actual present day.
Regardless, Gary Horimoto was the opposite of his usual self: Lenient, frivolous as a lad at a pep rally with a letter painted on his chest, youthful in temperament as our Marching instructor from Senior year had been, and retaining only the gently unnerving tinge of Japanese sarcasm that made his character appropriate to the Kafkaesque scene.

3.      I had ended up skipping three Rehearsals in a row, using sickness as my excuse,* and I wondered if I was cutting it a bit close. Ultimately, I went to  a physical education class, possibly as a

                              had
* An homage to the fact that I had ^ two days off from work, a fact I honored although my conscious certainty of the fact had been short of 100%, and my mother had felt that Iwas cutting it close by waiting until the morning of to check when I had work today.

substitute for the missed rehearsal on the third day. The main activity that I had occupied my time with was weightlifting. I was left(more or less) Alone in the weight room by a somewhat thin, jockly man that one would expect a young, aspiring gym teacher to look like. I felt very self-conscious as I picked up first a small pair of dumbells that would have appeared childish even in the third grade, measuring fewer than the                              by my standards ^
eight punds that my mother had introduced me to then. I then moved to an even smaller, softer pair of green dumbbells [which I had only touched gently]. I then found a heavier dumbbell at the foot of a bench, but I dismissed it after a very brief consideration that immediately struck me as naïve.

4.      Eventually, a group of girls from the same gym program, came into the weight room. It had all been according to schedule. I sat on the floor, hunched over in a kind of self-righteous shyness not unlike that of Shawn and Conner. One girl, a fairly built but essentially pudgy girl with square features and green make-up,* placed her foot,manicured and with green nail polish,on my left leg.I would look over  my shoulder at her, as though to indicate the obviousness of the hint, and managed to get three tactfully delivered phrases in before lapsing into futility.

*Almost definitely a reference to the Denny’s waitress from last night that had somehow gotten the impression, either rightfully or wrongly, that I was attracted to her. The negative Anima,without a doubt.

5.      The final stage of the dream had me checking into a mental hospital. It is important to note that the structure of the dream was so consistent in mood throughout that the entire dream seemed to flow from event to event seamlessly,  as though everything were going according to plan.

The mental hospital cell was small and exposed toentry from at leasttwo opposite  sides.

Some fanatic wanted to free me.He protested to the hospital nurse, but I implored that he leave me to the solace of my cell.

Dream Journal Twenty-eight: THE PREPONDERANCE OF THE GREAT.

(Lake over Wind.)

I may have to stop journaling for some time, for last night’s dream, for all its angst, does not surface in memory.                     dm.A.A.

I can only recall riding the Sprinter and spending money at various locations, including the pizza parlour.            

Dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Seventy-seven: CROWN OF CROWNS.

(The Crown Chakra.)

The night prior to that dream, I dreamt a dramatic b ut unnerving and Kafkaesque adventure. The dream culminated on this street: Avenida Rorras.

The episodes leading up to this scene are muddled in memory. I recall fleeing from a place that must have been at once the island on which the girl was hunted and the Beach, at least in feeling.

Ultimately, I was fleeing someone in the midst of an invasion. The Jnited States government had declared tyranny upon the People. I had hitherto been at the high school, where a rally by my peers was silenced.

As I ran home, I encountered my father and sister. I began to climb up the wall of a white factory building that was architecturally almost identical to the stores that surrounded the Graziano’s plaza.

This building was at the peak of the slope that descends from the street of Avenida Venusto to the apartment complex whereinLiz,in Actual Life, lives. I airbendedto run up the side, as I had always wanted to defy gravity. My father, however, began to shout for me to get down.His shouting interrupted my  ascent by throwing off my concentration.I had to fight to ignore it, and regained my footing on the roof.

From the roof, I could see the street. My sister was on the sidewalk.She was glaring ragefully and yelling. She wanted me to get down. I found her attitude unjust.

I entered Avenida Rorras from around the bend where it intersects with Venusto.I had voluntered for one of the houses on this street to be burnt down in protest: My house. I must have been surprised to find that it was my house, and only so.

It was late afternoon. The National Guard had arrived on my street. The had a scooter ready to set fire to the house. This scooter looked like something of thekind of technology one would find in the Legend of Korra.

It rode close to the ground. Its wheels were further apart than one’s legs  would be. One would sit within it and steer it by pushing one’s thumbs into the circular,red mandala-shaped radar screen it had in place of a handlebar.

The cops,who were also men of the Guard, dared me to ride in the unattended scooter. In fact, they masked their own insecurity with their sardonic teasing. I sat down in it anyway.The controls intimidated me at first. I triumphed,however.I got the machine to work.As though I were in Halo or Ratchet and Clank, I glided about the street in the hovercraft.The wheels had been(or became) hoverpads. I approached the cop cars and fired.Red gelatin,harmless in appearance, covered the vehicles.

BOOK TWO: THE JOURNEY.                                                                        Dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Forty-four: COMING TO MEET. (Heaven over Wind.)

            I dreamt that Rob Thomascame into Joann Fabric.He was very modest and down-to-earth.He even reminded meofa fellow that I had helped over the counter onetime.

            The setting wasevening andan evening light grazed the wall to my right.

I spoke with Rob asthough he had not been a celebrity. He was happy to consort with me, There was a slight sadness in his eyes that nonetheless seemed not to disrupt his wholeness of mind.

            As he left, I decided to follow him out. In the parking lot,I called after him.

                        ‘Rob!’

                        He turned about with a celebrity’s resolved apprehension.

                        ‘How is the next Matchbox Twenty album coming along?’

He replied that it was going well, and then he rushed to get away, embarrassed.

           

            dm.A.A.

 THE TRIAL BY FIRE:

Dream Journal Fifty-six: THE WANDERER. (Fire over Mountain.)

Something short of a procession of people and old friends appeared in last night’s dream. Dana Mohammad-Zadeh was the most obvious cameo. She did not appear nearly as amiable as I would have liked. The mood of the dream must have felt how Palomar College would feel, especially in my first year, whenever I would allow its endemic bleakness to obscure novel opportunities in a haze of teenage angst. I can even imagine, now, the poignant,tugging prospect of seeing her, however jaded, at my side at the entrance to the Snack Shack,  yet there is a doubt in my mind, by virtue, surely, of an excessive dependency on conventional memory, as to whether this episode appeared, formally, in the dream or not. Regard-less,the emotion stands.

Memories of the dream are vague.I recall, with certainty, that Dylan was there. Jeff Carter was in the dream as well. Parts of it seemed to cast me back to  the freewheeling complications of Childhood with the tender zeal of a young child Running into its Mother’s Arms. I recall, now,the dream wherein I saw Captain LeChuck and wasa prisoner upon  his boat. It may be impossible or impractical to say whether or not the dream last night had me revisit  the same episode.What stands, again incontrovertibly, is the Feeling. There was, likewise, the feeling of making an escape from the Space Station again. The Shopping mall in space Definitely had reappeared.

Dream Journal Thirty-eight: OPPOSITION. (Fire over Lake.)

Last night’s dream had me waking to find my teeth clenching involuntarily and repeatedly. The setting was this neighbourhood, yet I felt as though I had been cast into a replica of childhood that evoked strongly the mood of Snowy Mountain, one of Maria’s favourite levels in Jakand Daxter.It felt as though I were a young child again, welcome to explore the lawns and porches of my neighbours, yet the invitation seemed almost to be extended, by virtue of my adulthood, to the insides oftheir homes and the subtleties,glorious and haunting, as though made by their vividness, of their private lives.

At one point nearing the climax of the dream, my grandmother from my mother’s side of the family came to visit us.Her name wasalso Maria.

It was understoodthat she would probably die soon.At one point,as [my father,I think, drove us  home,and as ] our car pulledonto the driveway, it became clear that Maria would soon be dead aswell.

Emerging onto the lawn in front of the house to our right (facing the houses across the street), I felt as though I could be an adolescent forever.I began  immediately to obsess overwhether or not  I did,in fact, prefer Slumly  to Spike.

My sister, accompanied promptly by her bestfriend Nina, disappeared into our house as I stood there, obsessing.                                 dm.A.A.

Dream Journal Fourteen: ABUNDANCE. (Fire over Heaven.)

I had just dreamt of Mr. Rowan. I had gone to a graduation of sorts on the field of a campus I had never seen, presumably somewhere in the vicinity of Balboa Park. Feeling anomie as usual, I redeemed myself by directing everyone’s attention to Mr. Rowan, walking nonchalantly and with uncharacteristic detachment in a summer gardening hat along the sideline of the field.

He greeted everyone with confidence and delivered a lecture. Meanwhile, though, I withdrew.

Eventually, I followed him to the outside of a café that was almost like Disneyland* in terms of ridiculously overdone kitsch aesthetics. I listened in, maybe in plain view, though he ignored my consistently, on a conversation he was having with a man who looked like a Hindu yogi2 with a bald head and a brownrobe. They were disputing something of tremendous importance to the human condition.

At one point, Mr. Rowan mentioned Five Hindrances, citing a Buddhist teaching. He possibly even wrote them down.

He said that there were 5 words that one was never Supposed to use because they created the illusion of Division. I remember the last three:

‘I’.

Anything referring to a ‘thing’.

Anything alluding to an ‘event’. *

2 An introvert?

* Walt Disney: ENFP.

*This is Watts’ philosophy.

Watts= ENFP.

Rowan=ENFP.

Kresten=ENFP.

I tried following him through a series of buildings, asking for clarification, but he would not even look behind him as he passed through corridors, alleys*, and sliding doors.

* Ally?

Finally, I had to amble home. Passing the back field by the student parking lot of RBHS, there was still a very vivid air of charged celebration*in the atmosphere, the likes of which I had not dreamt of since the first year after Ally broke up with me.

*Extraversion.

Walking up Avenida Venusto on the left side, the hill to the left of the side-walk I was on had been replaced with an extremely steep forest incline, the likes of which my mother repeatedly admonished me against in childhood, claiming that I could fall off the edge of the World. As I repeated Rowan’s words dogmatically in my mind, I kept feeling a pull in the direction of the incline, as though I were losing balance on a tightrope, until I had to get on my knees and crawl so as not to fall off.

Dm.A.A.

THE TRIAL BY WATER:

Dream Journal Five: WAITING, NOURISHMENT. (Water over Heaven.)

Dream Journal # 5.

The memories of last night’s dream are locked away as though behind a safe, every second like a grain of sand from the sand clock, falling atop the casket.

Who was there? Some re-union had befallen. My mind is cast inexplicably to the big-haired girl whose name I should recall from Biology class in freshman year. Christine?

It must have been Spencer Breidenbach – the undigested memories from our chance meeting, obscured by extraversion and anger.

Where did I go in the dream? It must have been like a video game – very dramatic, like a post-apocalyptic survival game, but with less terror. What could it mean?

I look bout my plank room for a clue.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix lies open on a fresh floor of wooden planks, almost ivory in hue. My room is getting remodeled, joining Joann’s, Starbucks, and ElPollo Loco. Everything is changing, and I am unready for it.

Do things inevitably get worse over time?

My dream was definitely sexual in character. My memory can only recall fragments of past dreams similar in mood: A lust for power, perhaps?

2.                  I was on a train. That is certain. I was riding some especially hopeless-looking version, of the Sprinter to and fro, missing appointments – an obvious homage to Jean’s overbearing influence.

The dream is clearer now. Does this mean I must quit my job? Is work actually usurping the throne of my dreams?

Is there a middle road?

There must have been. I tried to escape.

Consciously, I am reminded of Andrew saying that Kresten and [I] are both doing ‘what we want,’ and that others envy us.

My memory produces an image of me playing Magic the Gathering opposite a logical friend( maybe either Andrew, Tyler, John, or – stimulatingly – Aisha) as the train passes over a lush but unforgiving marsh.

Change is strange.

3.                  There was a theatrical production that I was a part of. The cast were the night crew at Joann’s.

4.                  The injustice of Andrew’s attacks crawls up the side of my neck to my left lobe like the addictive sexual stimulation of seeing woman’s legs. It is the envy of the introvert for the extravert, and vice versa. Kresten has it, too.

Who were they in the dream?Will they choose to understand me? Does It Matter?

5.                  I must go beyond them. That is my escape: My train home. I must be careful not to miss it. Life is not perfect.

What lies beyond? A paradise of fantasy and drama.

Should I rejoin the Palomar theatre program? No.

I am strong. I am heroic. I will not blame. I will tolerate.

Yet I feel a pang of guilt. Is it for my prior foolishness, like an addiction to recurrent mistakes?

Maybe. Or perhaps it is that, like Harry, I want so badly for Ron to join me in my quest.

6.                  Harry Potter. The only people who find it childish are those who themselves are. Myth is a mirror for the ego.

I envy Kresten as I have revered Joseph Campbell. He is more, however, than a need to me. He knows that.

Was Ally in my dream?

Dream Journal Sixty: LIMITATION. (Water over Lake.)

At one point of the dream, I was sitting at the corner of a thin sidewalk that ran out onto the street. Where, in actual life, such a side-road running along the right side of my house would be directly perpendicular to the main street, this path was parallel, and it culminated in a corner only around which I could access the main road by a thin gap. Several of my friends were playing a game of some sort outside. Tyler was definitely a part of this group, as well as Amanda and Aaron. Scott may have been present, although I have my doubts.

I wanted to put a box on my head. It seemed incredibly important that I do so. I found, within a few moments, a tiny cardboard box, as though it were the parcel of a small package that had arrived by post, the size of the basket from King’s Quest VII, whose interior was besotten with the remains of rotten berries and twigs that had been probably constructed as a nest by bugs.

I put the box over my head, delighting despite an uninhibited anxiety regarding my mother, which was promptly justified. Within seconds, she ran up to me and, panicking and angry in her usual demeanour, removed the box from my head and forbid me to wear it again, suggesting, if not explicitly, that I was an idiot. I became exceptionally agitated. I felt that it was a desperate necessity that they see me with the box on my head.

At one point, I was in my bedroom. It was near noon, and the Autumn weather, soft and portending, was very much akin to this weather.

Dana had, by this point, all ready appeared as a recurrent figure.

I watched her walk up the street, diligently but with a certain nervous naïvete,as though she were Mrs. Wookey* about to get the mail.

A man in flambouyant clothing of orange interspersed with gray, if not green interspersed with magenta, approached her and began to ‘bother’ her.

Upset and yet not unfrightened-ed, I shouted down to him for him to stop. He looked up , and I was all ready feeling embarrassed and second – guessing myself. Dana assured me that I need not get involved.

Thankfully, within moments, an amiable and friendly young gentleman with a noteworthy, chivalrous demeanour suggesting a genuinely masculine fortitude a dramatic juxtaposition to the other man’s boyish machismo, approached from down the street. He lived in the house that had been inhabited by the Hager family throughout the greater part of my childhood years.

He began to speak with the man in neon clothing. His tone was nonchalant yet authoritative – the ideal balance, wherein it couldn’t possibly be the one and not the other.

The other man was related to Spencer and Connor. It was also revealed, or suggested, that he and Dana were dating. She accompanied him then to his home. On a strictly formal, polite level, it had been as though nothing dramatic had befallen.

I withdrew from the window, relieved. The dream promptly segued. I receded, as though diagonally, into a multicoloured chasm of stark vividness. Like the screenshot of the tavern from the Curse of Monkey Island, it evoked the memory of that island like a room full of bronze pottery illumined by a candle in the midst of a resolute, authoritative Indigo with terrifying tenacity.

It felt like the interior of a shop for old relics, yet it was probably most akin to a trip by train to College. It was almost certainly some great source of Authority commenting upon facebook and its folly.

I met with Dana, this time in a chamber.

Dm.A.A.

THE FINAL TRIAL:

Dream Journal Sixty-two: THE PREPONDERENCE OF THE SMALL.

(Thunder over Mountain.)

I dreamt that Maria and I had gotten a pet rabbit. There was a terrifying instance near midday, made more terrifying by how subtly and with what stifled atmosphere it happened, wherein I must have let Pumpkin into the side-yard irresponsibly and promptly watched him sprint towards the row of bushes in the back that,sure enough, retained the gaping hope in the bushes that we had, in Actual Life, blockaded.

My sister frantically prompted me to catch him,and so, with a calm,Stoic and almost Phillistine external demeanour that served to mask an obvious Terror that was Tempered only by the degree to which it merged like a seamless gradient with Dejection, I hopped the fence and ran down a hill that the Dream had elongated to twofold its Actual length, watching him, as I was about halfway down this hill in a descent like a downward flight, as he had already begun to chase the rabbit that had prompted this sprint across the first of two narrow streets separated by a thin strip of elevated grass.

I felt a hopeless doom, numbed by my helplessness but portending a great turmoil (‘travail?’)as I watched cars approach from the left.

Pumpkin might have become frightened and turned about, but this may br just my imagination taking artistic liberties.

At either rate, I caught him by a red collar from which a small golden amulet withan inscription that evades memory and may have evaded recognition hung.

I brought Pumpkin home, but it was obvious now that our pet rabbit was not safe.We were faced with the impending tragedy of having to return the rabbit to the wild.

Someone – probably my father – pointed out that ‘Rabbits and dogs are not natural allies’.We ultimately set him (the Rabbit)free, if memory serves.

Dream Forty-three: BREAKTHROUGH. (Lake over Heaven.)

Another change of setting. I felt empowered.

Parts of the dream were a re-visitation of Video games and Palomar College.

Towards the end of the dream, I approached Mike Daniels’ mansion.I was about to pass throughthe gate when I heard his Mother’s voice.

            I looked up to the window overlooking the entrance to my left. Mike’s Mother was staring at me.

            Mike then appeared in the window, looking thoroughly disempowered and displeased.

            ‘Sorry, man,’ he said.

            I tried, regardless.

            ‘I was just wonderingif  you wanted to accompany me to the (concert,I think).’

            I knew that it wouldn’t work.

            Mike’s mother shook her head, Mike said:

            ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

            I may have. I still don’t recall.

I took my phone from my pocket. What new messages I might have received I did not see. I was in the process of typing my invitation for him by phone. I was still of a mind to send him the text, which was addressed not only to him but to Kresten as well. The display,as on facebook, showed both of their faces in little rectangular icons.

Mike came to the gate. His mother accompanied him.

Whatever he had done, if I am to believe both of them, had been  really bad in his mother’s eyes.I might have had to mask my guilt of the same thing. Mike’s mother was harsh.

Dream Journal Thirteen: FELLOWSHIP. (Heaven over Fire.)

Last night's dream was set in a computer game akin in design to the Monkey Island games. Maria was there, and she shocked me by her impaccable ability to complete all three stages of the game within one attempt.
            I recall a Guybrush protagonist, perhaps Guybrush Threepwood precisely, standing upon a bridge in the second segment. He had to infiltrate a ship out at sea, and the time of the setting suggested that being detected would be not dire but still a tragically Pathetic set back.

            The sea beneath him must have been green. Was LeChuck there as well?
            His absence seemed almost ominous. dm.A.

[The mood of the dream was this kind of passive anxiety.]

Dm.A.A.

THE RETURN HOME.

Dream Journal Thirty: BRILLIANCE. (Fire over Fire.)

            I had decided to skip one night before journaling again.

I wish the dream this time were more mystical in temperament,but it appeared unusually straightforward in mood, if convoluted in happenings. The details largely escape me, in the absence of a unifying device or visible theme.

I remember distinctly the setting of a city, with nothing looming or strange to set it apart from Actual cities. I recall visiting a pizza parlour, yet again.

The motif of the Sprinter train must have recurred several nights in a row by now. There had been agirl that I was traveling with.At one point, I had to change compartments, as though to flee from someone akin to a  terrorist.

The dream really appears tobea cornucopia of recurring motifsfrom prior dreams. The playground,at least in spirit, reappeared. The feeling of being in a video game persisted.

There was one noteworthy detail, however: Prior to waking, I had a fantasy that both of my parents were dressed as superheroes, lounging about on the couch in blue tights with plates of armour  like Christopher Nolan’s  Batman.

Dm.A.A.