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Aug. 3rd, 2005 02:41 pmI remembered my dream from last night; I may have woken in the middle of it. It was the same kind of setting as a few other dreams I've had, like Greek mythology, like a swamp, like a Big Brother-esque mansion that ends up similar to my own house. It started as a kind of game, like a computer game that I had played and beaten before, but had to struggle to remember exactly what to do and in which order I should do it. There were brambles, bubbling goo, rope and staves and a small monster. When I had this dream-setting before, it was more like a castle on a bay, and there was a flying, impossible dragon to defeat, and there was drama, and it was terribly exciting.
This time though, I had finished and won and was gathering my friends to leave. But there was a girl, to whom my dream gave a name even though my waking mind realizes she isn't, who I admired and loved even though I didn't understand her, and she was hurt. Not injured, but in a hurt state, paralyzed by everything harsh that was in the world and that most people could ignore to deal with, but she was aware of it, painfully aware, and it just got to her, all the awful things that could happen because the world wasn't properly ordered, and all she could do was stand at the railing with her hat pulled low over her face and retreat to somewhere deep inside of herself, because her strength was imagining and creating, and it only aggravated all the fears of the world. And I wanted her to feel better, and wanted to take her home with me because she would be safe there.
Then professional people came, and worried over her in an efficient way, and said that the only way to make her feel better was a small surgery that she wouldn't feel. And they cut open the back of her head and removed her imagination. She was too locked up inside herself to stop them, and I wasn't sure whether this wasn't better.
When it was over, though, I knew something terrible had been done. She was blank, and unhappy. So we took her inside the house that was slowly becoming more like my house, maybe because my dream didn't have the energy to make it something else, and dusk came, and night fell. And a doctor arrived, who I knew had been commissioned by the surgeon and who I was so sure was only going to make things worse, part of a selfish organization to steal her imagination and lock her away forever and use the imagination for themselves. So I tricked him, lured him down to the garage and locked him outside before he could look at her, and then ran back upstairs because a second car had pulled up, a new silver-tan sedan, and I knew this was the second doctor, a good ethical one, even though we hadn't called him for help. So I let him in quickly and took him to her. He looked better than the first doctor, more clean and professional and without messy hair or glasses. Then once he was set up examining her, I ran back out to scare away the first doctor.
Except I had made a terrible mistake, and the first doctor only wanted to help, and the second wasn't a doctor at all, only a con artist who had gotten lucky because I had conned myself for him. And things fell apart, and I woke up.
It wasn't a scary dream, just full.
Then today I looked at the plum tree in our front yard, because there had been at least 20 plums ripening on it three days ago. Today the reddish leaves were depressed and withered, and although I spent ten minutes looking, I could only find a spidersweb, a single torn plum, and an ant crawling on the plum. I threw the ant away and ate the plum, left the spider, and it was sweeter because there was only one. The tree grows, by the way, red plums, not yellow ones.
And I decided that djionnaise must be the most perfect example of ridiculous American consumerism imaginable. What kind of culture requires a precise mix of mustard and mayonnaise to be on hand at all times, simply for the purpose of making sandwiches? It is undesirable, apparently, to merely have mustard and mayonnaise in different jars, to be mixed at need. It's sad, because mustard can be used for everything from hot dogs to ham to sauses, and mayonnaise goes with all kinds of things like artichokes and salad dressings, but djionnaise can be used for only one thing: sandwiches.
Yet people still buy it. Product specialization has reached new heights of ridiculousness.
This time though, I had finished and won and was gathering my friends to leave. But there was a girl, to whom my dream gave a name even though my waking mind realizes she isn't, who I admired and loved even though I didn't understand her, and she was hurt. Not injured, but in a hurt state, paralyzed by everything harsh that was in the world and that most people could ignore to deal with, but she was aware of it, painfully aware, and it just got to her, all the awful things that could happen because the world wasn't properly ordered, and all she could do was stand at the railing with her hat pulled low over her face and retreat to somewhere deep inside of herself, because her strength was imagining and creating, and it only aggravated all the fears of the world. And I wanted her to feel better, and wanted to take her home with me because she would be safe there.
Then professional people came, and worried over her in an efficient way, and said that the only way to make her feel better was a small surgery that she wouldn't feel. And they cut open the back of her head and removed her imagination. She was too locked up inside herself to stop them, and I wasn't sure whether this wasn't better.
When it was over, though, I knew something terrible had been done. She was blank, and unhappy. So we took her inside the house that was slowly becoming more like my house, maybe because my dream didn't have the energy to make it something else, and dusk came, and night fell. And a doctor arrived, who I knew had been commissioned by the surgeon and who I was so sure was only going to make things worse, part of a selfish organization to steal her imagination and lock her away forever and use the imagination for themselves. So I tricked him, lured him down to the garage and locked him outside before he could look at her, and then ran back upstairs because a second car had pulled up, a new silver-tan sedan, and I knew this was the second doctor, a good ethical one, even though we hadn't called him for help. So I let him in quickly and took him to her. He looked better than the first doctor, more clean and professional and without messy hair or glasses. Then once he was set up examining her, I ran back out to scare away the first doctor.
Except I had made a terrible mistake, and the first doctor only wanted to help, and the second wasn't a doctor at all, only a con artist who had gotten lucky because I had conned myself for him. And things fell apart, and I woke up.
It wasn't a scary dream, just full.
Then today I looked at the plum tree in our front yard, because there had been at least 20 plums ripening on it three days ago. Today the reddish leaves were depressed and withered, and although I spent ten minutes looking, I could only find a spidersweb, a single torn plum, and an ant crawling on the plum. I threw the ant away and ate the plum, left the spider, and it was sweeter because there was only one. The tree grows, by the way, red plums, not yellow ones.
And I decided that djionnaise must be the most perfect example of ridiculous American consumerism imaginable. What kind of culture requires a precise mix of mustard and mayonnaise to be on hand at all times, simply for the purpose of making sandwiches? It is undesirable, apparently, to merely have mustard and mayonnaise in different jars, to be mixed at need. It's sad, because mustard can be used for everything from hot dogs to ham to sauses, and mayonnaise goes with all kinds of things like artichokes and salad dressings, but djionnaise can be used for only one thing: sandwiches.
Yet people still buy it. Product specialization has reached new heights of ridiculousness.