Somehow I slept through an epic rainstorm. This generated a dream about a television series that doesn't exist.
The conceit of this series was this - the first season was explicitly written as the dream of a writer - one where the spaces, moods and behaviors of the characters reflected the ever changing dreamscape.
The events of the first season operated in a very Lynchian way: Actors purposefully became other characters while maintaining the same appearance, but the 'threat' of the initial season was revealed as the end of the dream - a conclusion to a fictional dreamworld.
The second 'season', as described to me by my father in-dream was equally fantastic:
The events of the first exist in the second as a detached outline. In this second series, the writers dream is made into a series that loosely takes events from the prior season, and fills in the gaps with new fictions. Character relationships shift and meld, often overwritten in a way that the characters themselves are constantly remembering events of their previous lives.
In this shifting narrative, the only hints that the entire series is a multi-layered metafiction are strange objects or writing that appears in the series set design: News paper clippings pinned to a wall, paintings of a man at a typewriter, etc. The whole concept reminds me now of John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" - a film where the protagonist gradually realizes he's a scripted character in his own movie, controlled by a horror writer with Cthulhuian ambitions.
In the end, the small black/white television in my dream revealed to me that the writer dreaming the TV series was in actuality a product of my own dreams - I dreamt the writer. Circles within circles, layers within layers.
I feel like my entire dream-fiction television show was actually a distorted, meta-fictional version of Twin Peaks - but there was no backward speaking, dancing midgets. There was however, a character who looked like Tom Cruise who hid in air vents shooting people with barbed arrows.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
After being x-rayed on a tilting science table at the hospital today, I walked down the road to my old Elementary school where my father now works.
The schoolyard was empty, so I went around behind the school, past the basketball nets and over the aged concrete. This place has so much memory and dreams wrapped up in it for me - somehow, all rolled into one, taller than life, and longer than the lunchtime recess.
I have reoccurring dreams in two particular places at this school - the back yard concrete area, and the schools stage area/gym. Some defy description, while others are full of fun and wonder - colourful Chinese dragons rippling through the air of a darkened gymnasium like water, or the time when I was Spider-Man, but hooked up to a series of pulleys that allowed me to jump and cling to walls.
None of these images are real in any physical sense, but they're bound up with the glowing experiences I had in this place - the times I put aside my fear and doubt by going on stage in annual lip-synchs (or 'air-bands' I've heard them called), my first kiss on the tall hill at recess, my first real friendship, or countless other memories.
I went into the school and signed in with the office, letting them know I was Mr. Scott's son and I was waiting for him. I was directed to sit on the bench outside the office to wait. Over the next 15 minuets, each and every teacher or educational assistant who walked by made a point of coming over to me, and with no sense of kindness or warmth demanded "Who are you?" or simply "What are you doing here?" After the fifth person to address me like I was selling crank to their children, I just felt crushed. The welcoming atmosphere I remembered for both visitors and students was non-existent.
When I approached the school, it was with the same sense of awe I had as a child. I wanted so badly to stand in the darkened gym and remember. Instead, like an unsettling dream, there were walls where there was none before - the hallway murals of children's characters were painted over with beige - and all the playground equipment was gone. No longer did the images drawn inside my head of places, people or how I was treated match up with the world around me. Sitting outside the office, I wished to have never visited - if only so I could still cling to my dreamscapes.
While the dreams and shining memories of my childhood remained static, the rest of the world moves on.
The schoolyard was empty, so I went around behind the school, past the basketball nets and over the aged concrete. This place has so much memory and dreams wrapped up in it for me - somehow, all rolled into one, taller than life, and longer than the lunchtime recess.
___
I have reoccurring dreams in two particular places at this school - the back yard concrete area, and the schools stage area/gym. Some defy description, while others are full of fun and wonder - colourful Chinese dragons rippling through the air of a darkened gymnasium like water, or the time when I was Spider-Man, but hooked up to a series of pulleys that allowed me to jump and cling to walls.
___
None of these images are real in any physical sense, but they're bound up with the glowing experiences I had in this place - the times I put aside my fear and doubt by going on stage in annual lip-synchs (or 'air-bands' I've heard them called), my first kiss on the tall hill at recess, my first real friendship, or countless other memories.
I went into the school and signed in with the office, letting them know I was Mr. Scott's son and I was waiting for him. I was directed to sit on the bench outside the office to wait. Over the next 15 minuets, each and every teacher or educational assistant who walked by made a point of coming over to me, and with no sense of kindness or warmth demanded "Who are you?" or simply "What are you doing here?" After the fifth person to address me like I was selling crank to their children, I just felt crushed. The welcoming atmosphere I remembered for both visitors and students was non-existent.
When I approached the school, it was with the same sense of awe I had as a child. I wanted so badly to stand in the darkened gym and remember. Instead, like an unsettling dream, there were walls where there was none before - the hallway murals of children's characters were painted over with beige - and all the playground equipment was gone. No longer did the images drawn inside my head of places, people or how I was treated match up with the world around me. Sitting outside the office, I wished to have never visited - if only so I could still cling to my dreamscapes.
While the dreams and shining memories of my childhood remained static, the rest of the world moves on.
Monday, February 4, 2008
I stood on a cobblestone path at twilight, around me was a sparse Forrest. I remembered it reminded me of something from an old fairy tale. I walked, but flickers of motion that would abruptly vanish distracted me.
A deep sound that began above 20hz, but quickly fell below, and crippled me. Like an air raid siren you feel, but don't hear, the assault continued as the world shifted. I stood through the same Forrest, but I was surrounded by plague victims - blackened and dying, the ran towards wooden steps that led up the hillside. Pursuing them were armed men in hazard suits and frighteningly anonymous gas masks.
I wrapped my blue wool coat tightly around myself, and ran up the stairs. At the top was a ridge and the sky filled with stars. A ship unlike any I'd ever seen stood docked to the stairwell. It was
constructed from many copper pipes, canvas and other materials.
Looking vaugley like a creation of Jules Verne, it was suspended in the air by two vast, oblong balloons. Through the scuffed glass of a nearby window, a man wearing a long brown coat and tousled hair screamed at me. I turned toward him as he pounded on the window and screamed again "It's a Time Crash! Get out! Run! -"
Another wave of deep bass descended, shuttering the outline of the ship. A great pressure built up behind my eyes, and I stumbled. Time and perception fractured, showing me the events of 50, or perhaps 70 years from now, jumbled with the present. The hazard teams, the quiet gray Forrest, the diseased people fleeing, the empty cobblestone path - the conflicting epochs shuttered and froze, fracturing and skipping into an indistinct haze.
I laid in a large freight elevator, slumped against the wall. The lift came to a stop, and opened on to a boardwalk lit by a deep red sunset. I searched for the man in the brown coat, but the boardwalk was empty.
Standing on the wooden sidewalk, I looked into the horizon until black dots swam around my eyes.
I walked amidst foggy streets and empty yawning homes made of aged, almost blue plank wood. I was looking for a place to rent.
The streets were empty of people and sound, but there were lights on in a three story building on the street corner. The second floor opened on to 3/4 rooftop deck, fenced in with chicken wire, while the third floors windows were dark.
I was with a group of friends - faceless and indistinct, they drifted down the hall, led by an elderly woman describing the fixtures and appliances this house offered. I walked up a steep, rickety set of steps to the second floor - opening on to the 3/4 second floor deck.
There didn't appear to be any way to the third floor. Curious, I climbed on the railing, careful not to fall by gripping the chicken wire. I reached the third floor after locating a seam where the wire was not completely affixed to the ceiling above.
Entering through a window, an old man sat in a worn rocking chair in a long, narrow room. In the dim light, this room connected to another larger room facing the front of the house.
"Things don't always come back the way you want" the man said sadly. He looked at two encircled rings on the floor in front of the door. They looked like two circular gears set into the old wood finished floorboards. An identical ring assembly was laid into the floor of the larger room at it's center.
I realized something troubling. From the outside of the building, there was no larger room. There was only this small, one room apartment atop this old building.
Looking through the doorway, the light shifted, drawing odd shadows in ways that light should not behave. I touched the doorway, and realized it was solid - a mirror. Abruptly, the rings on the floor began rotating in place and the sound of gears moving filled the room from below.
The world went askew, and straightened. I stood in the larger room, now lit with grey light. An identical old man sat in his chair, and mumbled something I couldn't hear.
_____
Though recollection becomes fuzzy from this point onward, I learn that the gear assembly is actually a gateway between parallel worlds. However, physics and the interaction of matter isn't consistent between each universe. Amino acid chains and protean don't react the same way in one world as the next. The old man and his wife had two children who were heavily disabled.
Upon sending them through this gateway for medical help, their DNA now recombined to correct missing strands - two horrors emerged instead.
What was a normal human being in one universe became an ogre in another. Violent, and looking very much like the disfigured guy from "The Goonies", I ran through this confusing parallel dreamworld, trying to escape a bestial creature damaged by its transition from one world to the next.
_____
As I awoke, a compressed epilogue of some kind was produced - showing me that this house and the work within were part of a larger war between worlds. The creation of terrible creatures, produced by the forced transition from the physics of one place to another. A vision of a single warlord, adorned in bronze armor, inlaid with the familiar gear-motif stood atop a concrete barricade, and released unmitigated horrors upon another opposing side of disfigured, but still visibly human soldiers. Wearing the hazard suit-armor of the semi-humans, I fled this conflict - up a set of stairs, through a door, and into the blue mist.
A deep sound that began above 20hz, but quickly fell below, and crippled me. Like an air raid siren you feel, but don't hear, the assault continued as the world shifted. I stood through the same Forrest, but I was surrounded by plague victims - blackened and dying, the ran towards wooden steps that led up the hillside. Pursuing them were armed men in hazard suits and frighteningly anonymous gas masks.
I wrapped my blue wool coat tightly around myself, and ran up the stairs. At the top was a ridge and the sky filled with stars. A ship unlike any I'd ever seen stood docked to the stairwell. It was
constructed from many copper pipes, canvas and other materials.
Looking vaugley like a creation of Jules Verne, it was suspended in the air by two vast, oblong balloons. Through the scuffed glass of a nearby window, a man wearing a long brown coat and tousled hair screamed at me. I turned toward him as he pounded on the window and screamed again "It's a Time Crash! Get out! Run! -"
Another wave of deep bass descended, shuttering the outline of the ship. A great pressure built up behind my eyes, and I stumbled. Time and perception fractured, showing me the events of 50, or perhaps 70 years from now, jumbled with the present. The hazard teams, the quiet gray Forrest, the diseased people fleeing, the empty cobblestone path - the conflicting epochs shuttered and froze, fracturing and skipping into an indistinct haze.
* * *
I laid in a large freight elevator, slumped against the wall. The lift came to a stop, and opened on to a boardwalk lit by a deep red sunset. I searched for the man in the brown coat, but the boardwalk was empty.
Standing on the wooden sidewalk, I looked into the horizon until black dots swam around my eyes.
* * *
I walked amidst foggy streets and empty yawning homes made of aged, almost blue plank wood. I was looking for a place to rent.
The streets were empty of people and sound, but there were lights on in a three story building on the street corner. The second floor opened on to 3/4 rooftop deck, fenced in with chicken wire, while the third floors windows were dark.
I was with a group of friends - faceless and indistinct, they drifted down the hall, led by an elderly woman describing the fixtures and appliances this house offered. I walked up a steep, rickety set of steps to the second floor - opening on to the 3/4 second floor deck.
There didn't appear to be any way to the third floor. Curious, I climbed on the railing, careful not to fall by gripping the chicken wire. I reached the third floor after locating a seam where the wire was not completely affixed to the ceiling above.
Entering through a window, an old man sat in a worn rocking chair in a long, narrow room. In the dim light, this room connected to another larger room facing the front of the house.
"Things don't always come back the way you want" the man said sadly. He looked at two encircled rings on the floor in front of the door. They looked like two circular gears set into the old wood finished floorboards. An identical ring assembly was laid into the floor of the larger room at it's center.
I realized something troubling. From the outside of the building, there was no larger room. There was only this small, one room apartment atop this old building.
Looking through the doorway, the light shifted, drawing odd shadows in ways that light should not behave. I touched the doorway, and realized it was solid - a mirror. Abruptly, the rings on the floor began rotating in place and the sound of gears moving filled the room from below.
The world went askew, and straightened. I stood in the larger room, now lit with grey light. An identical old man sat in his chair, and mumbled something I couldn't hear.
Though recollection becomes fuzzy from this point onward, I learn that the gear assembly is actually a gateway between parallel worlds. However, physics and the interaction of matter isn't consistent between each universe. Amino acid chains and protean don't react the same way in one world as the next. The old man and his wife had two children who were heavily disabled.
Upon sending them through this gateway for medical help, their DNA now recombined to correct missing strands - two horrors emerged instead.
What was a normal human being in one universe became an ogre in another. Violent, and looking very much like the disfigured guy from "The Goonies", I ran through this confusing parallel dreamworld, trying to escape a bestial creature damaged by its transition from one world to the next.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Stone Casket, and other Dreams
stood to the left of a large, withered tree. Its leaveless branches reaching towards a moonless, gray sky, and down toward a colorless stone coffin. The sound of crackling wind filled the air, but there was no sense of motion in the empty surroundings.The land seemed familiar, reminding me of a distant castle and perhaps a road from another time. However, I could see nothing beyond the tree and raised stone casket. A fog seemed to permeate the distance, blending the horizon with the twilight sky.
While the casket was closed before, the lid was now shifted aside, and a dessicated corpse laid on it's side in the upper portion of the vast interior. I was no longer outside, but laying inside this open casket next to the occupant, but at its feet. My mother stood outside, looking in. I could sense no emotion from her.
I stand next to my mother, and my younger brother Christopher lays where I once did inside the casket. My mother is very disappointed, both with my brothers choice, and with me for letting him climb in.
We stand silently observing my brother lying in the casket next to the dried corpse. Christopher is laughing.
What I found most disturbing, and entrancing about this dream was its visual style. While the people appeared flesh and blood, the surroundings and atmosphere were distinctly Edward Gorey. Most people would know this look from the animated introduction to PBS "Mystery".
The presence of my younger brother, Christopher was interesting. I've come to believe dreams are shadow cast by memory. As your mind puts away all the objects, events and issues it deals with during the waking day, they each briefly pass before a metaphorical light projector, casting distored images of light and shadow.
For the past few months, I've dealt with some family matters concerning my brother which I don't let myself think about. Somehow, they found expression in an Edward Gorey vignette. No matter what he does, in a way I'll always feel responsible for him. Perhaps this sequence was a subtle way of reminding myself of that.
Now, for your reading pleasure, here's a two-page comic on Edward Gorey I found online.Page 1: Alphabets, Bearded Gentlemen, Cats, Hapless Children, Nonsense, Po-Faces and more.
Page 2: A question of sorts.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
It was a different world. What I suspected was gray ash, but looked like snow drifted peacefully over the tree line near an old castle. Traveling in a car near twilight, I watched as the countryside passed by.
I'm at my house. I'm offered a form of group therapy with my younger brother. This involves the opening of a very large vertical trunk. Unfolding it's self on hidden hinges, what emerges is a traveling museum trunk, filled with strange and interesting objects. Some hang and slowly pinwheel, others play music, while most sit idlely by.
My brother sits in front of the trunk at eye level. I can see him through the various hanging objects inside it from the other side. The therapist just wants my brother and I to take photos of any thing in the trunk-gallery that interests us. She doesn't specify any limit on how many pictures we can take. I'm handed a strange camera: when closed it's the shape of a thick wallet. The camera opens into a trapezoid-shape, and has one large orange shutter button. It is unlike anything I've ever seen.
She gestures to the box. I begin to look at all the objects arranged within. After a time, the only one that catches my eye is a photo hanging on the inside right side. It is a black and white photo of a room containing a full-wall mirror, with the reflection of a man standing in it. However, in the room the mirror reflects, there is no one there.
I never took the picture, but I looked at that image for some time.
* * *
I was standing outside on a blustery day with the sound of a strong wind crackling around the corners of a large Victorian house.
An immaculately dressed Ian and Gabrielle entered the house, as it was in fact a large curio shop fill with all sorts of oddities.
As I walked up the stairs, I could hear the tapping of Ian's cane on the landing above me. Dressed in a Victorian suit and bowler hat, he stood amidst a cluttered, yet ordered loft space. I could see dust in the air as it drifted past ceiling window panes. Gabby was examining a series of old ties hung over top of an old clock. Near a large mirror, was a box filled with turn of the century children's toys. Inside the box was a hypercube, which I picked up. It was made of light, and cast a soft light on its surroundings. Not unlike the expanding/contracting "Hoberman Sphere" toys that expands into a large lattice-work version of its self - my hypercube expanded into a fourth dimensional, multigonal version of its self in my hands.
I could see and understand for that brief moment shapes that don't really exist - math that lacks form in our world. This was both frightening and fantastic. In the back of my mind, I remember being very concerned that my hypercube was knocking over antiques over when it expanded. Gabby and Ian were not pleased.
I'm at my house. I'm offered a form of group therapy with my younger brother. This involves the opening of a very large vertical trunk. Unfolding it's self on hidden hinges, what emerges is a traveling museum trunk, filled with strange and interesting objects. Some hang and slowly pinwheel, others play music, while most sit idlely by.
My brother sits in front of the trunk at eye level. I can see him through the various hanging objects inside it from the other side. The therapist just wants my brother and I to take photos of any thing in the trunk-gallery that interests us. She doesn't specify any limit on how many pictures we can take. I'm handed a strange camera: when closed it's the shape of a thick wallet. The camera opens into a trapezoid-shape, and has one large orange shutter button. It is unlike anything I've ever seen.
She gestures to the box. I begin to look at all the objects arranged within. After a time, the only one that catches my eye is a photo hanging on the inside right side. It is a black and white photo of a room containing a full-wall mirror, with the reflection of a man standing in it. However, in the room the mirror reflects, there is no one there.
I never took the picture, but I looked at that image for some time.
I was standing outside on a blustery day with the sound of a strong wind crackling around the corners of a large Victorian house.
An immaculately dressed Ian and Gabrielle entered the house, as it was in fact a large curio shop fill with all sorts of oddities.
As I walked up the stairs, I could hear the tapping of Ian's cane on the landing above me. Dressed in a Victorian suit and bowler hat, he stood amidst a cluttered, yet ordered loft space. I could see dust in the air as it drifted past ceiling window panes. Gabby was examining a series of old ties hung over top of an old clock. Near a large mirror, was a box filled with turn of the century children's toys. Inside the box was a hypercube, which I picked up. It was made of light, and cast a soft light on its surroundings. Not unlike the expanding/contracting "Hoberman Sphere" toys that expands into a large lattice-work version of its self - my hypercube expanded into a fourth dimensional, multigonal version of its self in my hands.
I could see and understand for that brief moment shapes that don't really exist - math that lacks form in our world. This was both frightening and fantastic. In the back of my mind, I remember being very concerned that my hypercube was knocking over antiques over when it expanded. Gabby and Ian were not pleased.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Standing in an apartment, I hold two shopping bags. The kitchen sink, dishwasher and other appliances are afixed on a 90 degree angle to the wall behind me. Ward and June from "Leave it to Beaver" sat on separate chairs. Ward was reading a paper.
A sequence of events occurred, ending with standing under an overcast sky on a dark city street, talking to a person wearing a pink t-shirt.
After walking through a doorway, I entered the same apartment. Ward is sitting in a slightly different place. We have a conversation about my day, when I notice I only have a backpack instead of shopping bags.
* * *
I realize after seven variations of the same scene are played out that every time I walk out that door, I walk into a different version of my life. Slightly different, but close enough to cause doubt about my memories.
For the first time, I look out the window. Outside is the blue fog.
More of the dream exists, but only as feelings and disjointed images that defy transcription.
___
This fog has reappeared in a few dreams that I can remember, and seems to exists only in my most brain warping mind-adventures.
The fog seems to represent both the distortion of time and memory, while signifying the unseen limit of my inner dreamworld. Every time I've consciously decided in-dream to cross it, I wake up.
A sequence of events occurred, ending with standing under an overcast sky on a dark city street, talking to a person wearing a pink t-shirt.
After walking through a doorway, I entered the same apartment. Ward is sitting in a slightly different place. We have a conversation about my day, when I notice I only have a backpack instead of shopping bags.
I realize after seven variations of the same scene are played out that every time I walk out that door, I walk into a different version of my life. Slightly different, but close enough to cause doubt about my memories.
For the first time, I look out the window. Outside is the blue fog.
More of the dream exists, but only as feelings and disjointed images that defy transcription.
This fog has reappeared in a few dreams that I can remember, and seems to exists only in my most brain warping mind-adventures.
The fog seems to represent both the distortion of time and memory, while signifying the unseen limit of my inner dreamworld. Every time I've consciously decided in-dream to cross it, I wake up.
Monday, January 15, 2007
I was in a spare bedroom in my parents home. There was a wardrobe dresser that had a large, oval mirror mounted on top of it.
I look at my reflection in the mirror, and vividly see someone else. A beautiful girl, somewhere in her teens or early 20s with reddish hair and freckles. She stares back at me. Every facial expression and subtle movement of my body is reflected by the person in the mirror.
I look at my body, and see that I'm still myself- only the mirrors reflection is the girl.
I blink, and my reflection is added to the mirror. Both figures reflect my movements like puppets, moving in unison. I put my left arm around the girl, and in doing so, she puts her left arm on top of mine.
I study the scene inside this mirror closley, and find it facinating.
My sister comes into the room with her friend. They begin playing with a blanket on her bed and laughing. I try and explain the mirror phenomenon to her, but she just giggles.
The clock says 2:00am, and there's music coming from the downstairs vent. It sounds like a trumpet practicing musical scales. I wonder why my brother is practicing music so late at night.
I look again at the mirror, but now I am the only figure there. I'm slightly confused why I now wear a suitjacket with wide lapels.The world turns a shade of gray, and begins to shift and contort.
I stumbled away from the mirror, and fall backwards on to vacant bed nearby. My sister and her friend are jumping on their bed, still giggiling.
I look at my reflection in the mirror, and vividly see someone else. A beautiful girl, somewhere in her teens or early 20s with reddish hair and freckles. She stares back at me. Every facial expression and subtle movement of my body is reflected by the person in the mirror.
I look at my body, and see that I'm still myself- only the mirrors reflection is the girl.
I blink, and my reflection is added to the mirror. Both figures reflect my movements like puppets, moving in unison. I put my left arm around the girl, and in doing so, she puts her left arm on top of mine.
I study the scene inside this mirror closley, and find it facinating.
My sister comes into the room with her friend. They begin playing with a blanket on her bed and laughing. I try and explain the mirror phenomenon to her, but she just giggles.
The clock says 2:00am, and there's music coming from the downstairs vent. It sounds like a trumpet practicing musical scales. I wonder why my brother is practicing music so late at night.
I look again at the mirror, but now I am the only figure there. I'm slightly confused why I now wear a suitjacket with wide lapels.The world turns a shade of gray, and begins to shift and contort.
I stumbled away from the mirror, and fall backwards on to vacant bed nearby. My sister and her friend are jumping on their bed, still giggiling.
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