Dream Journals

[ryan]

Hey, crew. As many of you may know, I've been travelling recently on a contract through my employer, TekSystems. It's a job that entails some minor repairs to handheld scanners used by FedEx. At any rate, this contract is taking me through Illinois and Indiana. Tonight, I'm in Indianapolis, a city I've discovered I am not fond of. But it's all very interesting, and I've been keeping a few journals to help me better keep track of my days on the road.

One of these is a dream-journal. I've found that, when I'm travelling, or starting a new job, or undergoing any kind of a big change in my life, my dreams become startlingly vivid. Sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're bizarre, and sometimes they're disturbing. But I've always found it enjoyable to write them into little short-stories upon awakening. My method for doing this has evolved gradually over the years, and is still evolving, but I always try to stick as closely as possible to what I remember from the dream. Sometimes I fudge the dialogue, since I can scarcely remember the exact words exchanged in a dream, but I always try to capture the right nuances of what was said. And, since people in my dreams often represent more than one person at once, I sometimes give them more than one name in my stories. Sometimes I change their names as the story proceeds, and their role changes. Also, because my dreams often unfold in clear scenes followed by moments of blurry abstraction, I try to jump past the abstract parts while keeping the integrity of the dream intact.

So, with those things in mind, here are my dream-journals. I'm posting them here in the "art" section because I don't think there's a better place for them. Are they "art," though, I ask myself? Well, I dunno. Maybe.

[ryan]

"State-Fair Statue"

I was attending the state fair with my parents and my brother. I was excited, because the fair only came once a year, and every year brought new attractions. This year, Derek told me, the fairgrounds were introducing a permenant new installation: a 50-story statue of Abraham Lincoln. You could ascend into the statue, he said, and there was a museum there, and windows where you could look out over the fairgrounds. It seemed too cool to be true.

We parked near Bell's Amusement Park, which lies at one end of the fairgrounds. We then walked across the grass and gravel toward the entrance on the north end of the park. I watched from a helicopter's height as my family and I passed through the gate and rounded the corner by the Himalaya. And there it was, right behind the Himalaya: The 50-story statue of Abraham Lincoln. His towering form was cast entirely in colorless concrete; his bearded face was crowned with a tall stovepipe hat; he leaned ever so slightly on a cane held at his side.

A moment later, my family and I were inside Abe Lincoln's head. There were many windows on either side of the colorful round room, windows which had not been visible from outside. The room was made-up as an interactive museum. There was a biology exhibit, which pointed out Abe's gray pulsating brainstem, and fleshy pink facial muscules; these features formed the walls and ceiling. There was a door which led into a small theatre, playing educational films of some sort. There was a wall and a moveable sectional which featured a photographic exhibit of Abe's hometown. And at the center of this red, white, and pink room was a round enclosure where you could pay a couple of tickets to ride a long slide out of Abe Lincoln's right nostril.

I was excited. This was much cooler than I had hoped. It was all so new and interesting.

Although I was interested in the film and photographs, I said to Derek, "I wanna ride that slide."

[ryan]

"The Skatepark in the Sky"

I was riding in the backseat of my parents' car, through a city I was visiting. The people in the front were my parents, but were also my aunt and uncle, and were also new acquaintences of my own age who were showing me around the urban area.

We were passing by a huge grandstand, where bleachers piled high above the road. The bleachers were built of concrete and they stretched up into the sky for what seemed like half a mile, right there at the edge of the elevated highway. The people in the front seat said something about it, informing me that it was a sight worth seeing.

As I gazed into the heights of the bleachers, I noticed that the long metal poles which I had originally mistaken for floodlights were actually something entirely different. Each pole, which easily rose another 1000 feet above the bleachers, held two wide pieces of curved structure, which circled like bands around a central axis. As I looked closer, I spied some telling notches and grooves on these pieces, and realized what they represented.

"Wow, they've got a skatepark up there," I said.

"Yes, they do," said the people up front.

I gazed wide-eyed at the massive planes of wood and metal, arranged at terrifying angles around the apex of each pole, like massive sails billowing in the wind. I thought I could see some ladderwork along each pole, and it looked like the central apex of each pole contained a kind of indoor/outdoor enclosure, where participants could rest, and others could watch. It was all so high up, each enclosure area looked tiny, like a birdhouse; the curved planes looked enormous by contrast, like the shells of planets. I couldn't imagine the sort of people who would dare to skate in such a place.

"I don't think I'd ever want to go up there," I said in amazement.

Then I noticed that the last pole was different from the others. It contained the same enclosure at its apex, and the same curved planes -- but its planes were not stationary. One plane swished back and forth like a cradle; the other groaned in slow orbit around the central axis.

"Wow," I thought. "That one is even more terrifying than the others!" I guessed it was for more advanced skaters.

[ryan]

"BenChet and the Bus Pass"

I was staying in a dirty city where I had once lived while in college. Some of my college buddies still lived here, and BenChet was one of them. He was my landlord as well; I was here for an unspecified amount of time.

I'd ordered a bus-pass from BenChet earlier in the day, but upon realizing something that had slipped my mind, I urgently needed to obtain a refund for the bus-pass. I floated down a grimy street which ran under an elevated highway toward the roadside shack where BenChet lived. I saw the city metro make a stop up ahead of me, and I knew this was the stop where I was supposed to board, but it didn't matter -- I wouldn't be taking this bus as I'd planned; I needed to get my refund.

I climbed onto the concrete porch out back of BenChet's place. He resided in an old frame-house where the white paint was peeling off of gray weathered wood. The yard was all dirt and mud. It was a rainy day.

As I looked across the soggy backyard, I saw Lucy from Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College tromping across the yard toward the porch. She had her black hair gathered-up in a black bandanna, and had a bag slung over her shoulder. I hadn't seen her in years, and we'd parted on bad terms. As I watched her approach, it occurred to me that she, too, was travelling, an unanchored wanderer.

"Hey, Lucy," I said.

"Uh-oh, it's 24-hour trouble," Lucy chided in a tone that was pregnant with words unsaid.

"Hey, come on, give me some credit," I said: "I'm more trouble than that."

"Yeah," she laughed.

The back-door opened, revealing a cramped kitchenette where MikePatrick was making some tea.

"What's up? Hey, who're you?" he asked Lucy, ashing his cigarette in the sink.

"I'm looking for benChet. Does he -- is he here?"

"He still lives here," I answered. "What's up, MikePatrick?" He nodded to me, granting me pass. As I shouldered my way past him, I noticed that he was wearing hemp sandals which showed his bare toes.

A wan, milky light filtered into the hallway through a white bedsheet stretched over the front-room window. Halfway down the hall, I found the door to BenChet's room. I opened it and went inside.

Benchet and Erica were sitting around a low table at the far end of the long and narrow room. Benchet sat on a sofa which kind of hugged the ground. Erica sat on something that looked like it had once been the backseat in a van. Erica took a long drag on a joint and ashed it in a steel skull-shaped ashtray on the table, then passed the joint to Ben.

"Hey, Erica, what's up?" I said.

"Oh! I --" She looked at me in surprise, then pointed and glanced from side to side, as if attempting to locate something that would explain her presence. "Uh! I ..." Finally, she just blanched and said, "I always sit here!" She laughed nervously and glanced questioningly at Ben, making a coded kind of hand-gesture.

Ben coughed out half a hit with high, tittering laughter, then said something to Erica which I could not hear. Erica glanced at me, then back at Ben, mouthing something and wagging her eybrows.

"That's some good pot, huh?" I remarked, knowing that their conspiring behavior spoke of something much stronger than weed.

Ben laughed again. "Yeah! Yeah, pot. That's what it is. Good pot." He finished his hit and passed the joint back to Erica.

I regarded them both, then clucked my tongue and drawled, "Yeah." I felt a pinch of deep sadness, which I quickly stashed aside. "Ben, I need to get a refund for that bus pass," I said. "It turns out I'm gonna have to leave much sooner than expected, and it's urgent that I cancel that bus-pass today, and get the money back that I gave you for it."

Ben listened intently, twitching as if he were beset with a swarm of mosquitos. When I finished explaining myself, he said, "Yeah! I understand, dude! No problem!" He jumped up off his sofa, stepped around the table and behind Erica, and opened up the closet door.

A sediment of paperwork was scattered across the floor. Ben sifted through it, making frustrated little noises and scratching his neck. Watching him search, seeing his genuine concern, that pinch of sadness returned again.

"Dude, I am sorry. I can't find the receipt," he said. He picked up a handful of open envelopes and thumbed through them, muttering to himself and nodding as he mentally checked-off each one.

Scratching my chin, I said, "You didn't give me the envelope, did you?" I asked because I'd suddenly realized I couldn't remember. Perhaps I had been the careless one.

"No, I didn't. I never do. I would have kept it."

As he grabbed another stack of envelopes to thumb through, I thought about giving him my cell-phone number. I thought about telling him, "Look, just call me if you find it." It seemed like it would be the kind and courteous thing to do, but then I thought, "I'll never get my money back if I do that -- he'll stop looking as soon as I leave the room." So, I stood there in uncomfortable silence and continued to watch him -- then I woke up feeling a deep sadness.

[ryan]

So, this is all pretty weird stuff. These three dreams are ones I've had over the past three or four nights. I enjoyed writing them, and thought it would be fun to share them. I like the weird logic of dreams. In the Bus-Pass dream/story, I like how there's never any clear indication of exactly what this refund is, or why it's necessary that I obtain it -- it's just a simple matter of fact that I must. And then, when Ben goes looking through the envelopes, the crucial item he's looking for is not my money, but my receipt -- and in the context of the dream, this all made perfect sense to me, probably because the dream was not really about a refund, or a receipt, but was about a certain kind of detachment, a certain way of seeing your friends as familiar strangers, or castaways; and about a certain kind of friendship tinged with sadness.

I also enjoyed the crazy architecture featured in the Skatepark dream, and the hilarious idea of riding a slide out of Abe Lincoln's right nostril; I have no idea where that came from.