What Dreams May Come

I haven’t been sleeping much recently due to school and holding down two jobs and working with an obsessive compulsion towards the immeasurably unattainable 4.0 GPA, so when I do sleep, I cherish it and relish every moment. I tell you that to establish just how rare it is that I would take time away from my sleep schedule no matter the cause. Yet when I had the dream that is documented in the following post I awoke with the inescapable realization that I had to write it down immediately as it was not only the most interesting and one of the most vivid dreams that I have ever had, but perhaps one of the most important as well.

Feel free to psychoanalyze this to death, if you like. I am pretty sure what some of the elements mean, but most of it is a mystery even to me. Take your best shot at dream interpretation, this one is ripe for analysis. I may be about to divulge my innermost secrets, fears, and aspirations, but I am not aware of it.

To avoid acronymic confusion, here is the cast of characters, whose names, though not relationships to me, have been changed for their, and my, protection:
My Sister – My Sister
Blue – The Instructor that I had several session ago that I have been working for the past four months.
Dad – Dad
Mom – Mom
Kat – A highschool friend that I haven’t spoken to since graduation
Random other participants who were invented by my subconscious that I do not know.

And thus the disclaimer ended, and the dream began…

I was waiting for a competition to begin. A challenge for what purpose I do not know. We were standing in the quad of a large university, in the grass next to a dorm of some kind. There weren’t too many competitors, but I sized them up anyway. The first was a middle-aged man with a bald crown and pate and shaggy hair several inches long around the rest of his head. Somehow I immediately assessed him as a threat and stored a mental GPS of his position relative to me as I reviewed the other competitors. The next was a young woman in sleek jogging pants and a sports bra work out top with her hair tied neatly back in a ponytail. I noticed that her shoes seemed more appropriate for physical exertion and started to worry what the challenges might be. But the next challenger was an elderly man with a smartly buttoned collared shirt and a cane made of dark wood that he lightly held in his right hand. He had glasses and a pleasant countenance and I was momentarily interested in what he started to say to the young woman when the starting gun fired and we were off. It was suddenly clear that the first task was to sprint around the building we had been standing next to. I knew at once that the young woman would win the first challenge, but she surprised me when she stopped running to walk beside the elderly man and have a conversation with him. It wasn’t a trick or a diversion on his part, he just had a genuine question, and she had the patience and generosity to stop and speak with him. I took the opportunity and bolted. I was neck and neck with the middle aged man at a brisk walk for the majority of the “sprint”. Although we were right next to each other, we never said a word, and only traded sideways glances to determine the other’s location and proximity. When the finish line was in sight, he unexpectedly sprinted and left me in his dust. I ran as fast as I could and my legs moved sluggishly beneath me and I was awarded second place.

I was disappointed by my performance and hung my shoulders somewhat as I proceeded, seemingly without my fellow competitors, to the next challenge. When I arrived, I was a little confused by the semicircle of costumed participants, led by my sister in a brightly colored, sparkly fish monster costume reminiscent of the Godzilla-inspired animated monsters on the Powerpuff girls cartoon. All of the others in costume weren’t there to participate, but instead seemed there as guides, or as obstacles, depending on your perspective. My sister stood in the middle of them, smiling brightly, though not singling me out at all and merely acknowledging me as she did all the other competitors. The circle was completed by a series of seven foot tall wire cages that were empty. It wasn’t clear what they were there for. One of the other competitors asked my sister “Where is Blue going?” and she smiled, nodded, and pointed the cage directly behind me. The cage remained empty, but I was intrigued none the less.

It was only then that I realized that the other competitors from the sprint were starting to trickle in and amongst them I saw my Dad and my Mom. Both of them were dressed in nice slacks and dress shirts with unreasonable uncomfortable looking shoes, and both were drenched in sweat from the sprint. My Dad, looking actually really fit and young, said “I’m not dressed for this.” And I replied, “I know, it’s really hot and you’re not even wearing shorts.” My sister began to explain that the next task was a labyrinth set in the library of the University. But that was all she really explained before she suddenly, and quite gleefully, yelled “Go!” Everyone raced into the labyrinth, but I stood there panic stricken and said “Wait! You haven’t explained the rules!” The only remaining people were the obstacles, all dressed as cartoonish monsters, and each and every one of them turned towards me, my sister included, her hands plaintively folded in front of her, sticking through arm holes beneath her giant, sparkling pink fins, and none of them said a word. I gasped and ran into the labyrinth behind everyone else.

The labyrinth was a towering, oppressive series of brick red walls, book cases, and off white hallways lit with flickering fluorescent lights that cast everything in a eerie green light. In the labyrinth is when we were presented with the obstacles. The monsters were roaming around, to be sure, but their costumes made them slow and ungainly and they were no real trouble. I saw several other fish, but they didn’t have face holes, as my sister did, and were just fumbling people in costumes that they couldn’t see out of. I avoided those twists and turns to avoid dealing with the blind monsters whose sole purpose in the event was to slow me down.

The next obstacle, however, was unexpected. There in the hallway, unobtrusively having a conversation with another man was Pablo Neruda. I wanted to stop and talk to him (I mean, Pablo Neruda!) but I didn’t want to lose the competition. I noticed that he was talking to another man who was also a genius of some kind, but I don’t remember how or who, but I thought to myself, “Wow! At least they are occupying each other.” And I ran past. I didn’t have a conversation with Pablo Neruda given the chance!! Once past him, I was able to get to the door leading out of the first building, which was the library, and into a hallway with a linoleum floor that led to an exterior exit. I pushed open the doors and found myself facing my sister, again with hands folded and a peaceful expression, standing on the first row of concrete seating in an amphitheater. An amphitheater on whose stage I was standing. I ignored that completely and looked to the ground, on which had been drawn a giant chalk message in concentric rings leading to a central circle in which was written three tasks. The tasks involved information that we had to seek out in the library, which was buried in the labyrinth I had just escaped. I grabbed a piece of paper set out on a folding table at the side of the amphitheater specifically for contestants, and a stubby pencil like the ones you use for miniature golf, and I wrote down the three tasks and ran back through the door I had just exited.

I found my way in the labyrinth pretty quickly to a more open area with low bookshelves that had flat, wide tops that a dozen other competitors were already using as desktop space to review the dozen atlases that they had pulled from the shelves to search for the answer for the first clue. Amidst them I saw Kat, who had always been extremely competitive, and was in her own right a gifted gymnast and extremely intimidating. She was studying her atlas with rigid concentration and seeing her there made me nervous. The information I had scribbled down was to find the word in Mayan that means “part of the soul” in regards to a ritual dance or food. I grabbed the first book that I could reach and it was a children’s book. I flipped it open and on a giant colorful page, with an illustration of a Mayan dancing and colorful text running down the righthand side of the page that said; “In Mayan, Pololoe is a word that represents “part of the soul” and is used in rituals and dance.” I discreetly wrote down the information next to the scribbled clue and replaced the book, slipping away undetected.

Once free of the open area I found my way to the stacks for the next task. The clue was to translate a Spanish phrase and determine what literary work it came from. I looked up the nouns and quickly determined that the phrase was “Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?” I knew that was from Hamlet, so I scribbled that down and ran towards the next task, which was taking me back down the narrow hallway where Pablo Neruda had been, but in his place was Blue, standing somewhat nervously, barring my way. He was fidgeting with the seam on his right pant leg and refused to make eye contact more than sporadically. He smiled kind of sheepishly and said, not unkindly, that he couldn’t let me by. “It’s kind of my job” he shrugged. I was so close to winning I could feel it, and I didn’t want to let anything stand in my way. The only thing I could think to do was hastily wrap my fingers around his head, cup his cheeks in my palms, and pull him into a kiss. He stood stunned, hands extended awkwardly by his side, not sure whether to push me away or return the embrace, but before I gave him a chance to choose, I quickly turned him to the side, slipped past him, and yelled “Sorry!” over my shoulder as I ran down the hallway towards the amphitheater.

After only three hours of sleep, that is when I awoke with a start, frantically pulled out my journal and wrote the whole thing down. Despite a little embellishment for artistic license and flare, that is exactly how the dream happened. I kid you not, she had pink fins.

With The Door Open

There is something grounding about taking a breath of fresh air. Something naturally cathartic. I work mostly sixteen hour days in one of three cramped rooms - the office where I am an intern, the computer lab where I do all of my digital work, and the classroom. I am becoming bleached of all my enthusiasm, as if the very essence of hunching over a computer all day and the lack of sunlight have stripped me of my skin and the bandage that was holding in my creative spirit has been breached, and like oxygen seeping out of a hull I am losing that which keeps me floating. And yet at night, when I return to my haven, my single room with three walls of light and a forest of frogs that sing me to sleep, I open the door, smell the mixture of the sea and the foothill mist and I remember how to breathe. The summer nights are cool enough that, with the door open, I can feel the stagnant air of my life dispersing as the breeze curls in around my feet and up my legs. There are fingers of life in that air trying to find the wounds and the cracks and seal them up with every exhale. As the temperature drops I lower my guard and let the flickering shadow of moth wings distract me from the mountain of pressure I have built up above me, shuddering under its own weight so violently that when I step outside of it I wonder who could possibly survive under such conditions.

There are little reminders every day of something good, but they are harder and harder to hold on to. A letter from a mentor who has become a colleague, a private joke with a new friend, truly grasping an alien concept. Little glimmers of hope that there might be a path still, somewhere in the dark and shaded landscape of the future. Illuminating that path is getting harder and harder as raw and naive enthusiasm is sculpted into the increasingly humble and experienced pragmatic. A creative existence has more dark times than bright, more doubt and fear than rejoicing. But those moments that shine are the only thing that we have to hold onto. It is hope and belief, not only in yourself, but in the world, and it is getting harder and harder to find. Being the best means nothing. This is not a world where anything can be defined in such terms. There is no caliper, no multiple choice, no guarantees. Committing more time, money, and effort offers you no promises. This future is imperfect, unreliable, and for every moment, every success, it was my blood on the page, my weeping the soundtrack.

Beyond the open door is only black. But when I am here, when I can sit and be, that is when I remember how to breathe. And from breathing comes a pulse. And from the pulse a stride. And from the stride a direction. And then there is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and I find my way to breathe and place one foot in front of the next, tackle one problem out of the pile, complete one task for my future. And I can't look at what I am not, and I can't judge what I haven't tried, and I won't stop picking up my feet no matter how heavy the mountain, no matter how painful the load. That is all I can do. That is all there is. Just breathe. One more breath. And then another.