The Stuff of Dreams

Dream of Flight

Something has happened to me that has not happened in the last five months. No, not another accident silly. I woke up this morning and remembered my dream! I can recall – even now, hours after it occurred - lots of details and I am able to tie in all of the influences to the long dream of last night. I can't express in words how happy I am about this.

Now don’t get all excited with anticipation that any of those details are sexual. They are not. That does not particularly disappoint me, but if you stop reading because you were hoping for an erotic dream tale I guess I will understand. Now why is this a really happy big deal for me? I’m going to tell you why after a little background. My whole life I have had a very active dream life full of wild and crazy adventures. I can even recall particularly cool dreams from my childhood even today. My dreams have always been vivid and full of colours and sounds and interesting settings and personas. I could always remember the very smallest details of my dreams. Sometimes I even wrote them down in notebooks. I could fill pages with a single night’s dream or dreams. I always looked forward to sleeping because to me it was like going to see a new random movie every night and not knowing what the ‘theatre of the mind’ was going to show and I didn’t care what the show would be because I knew it would be cool… even if it turned out to be scary. I only ever cared that I was going to dream. At the age of fifteen I even read a book about how to control and even plan what to dream about. Of course being fifteen I generally planned to have dreams about sex. Hey at fifteen the testosterone is raging and so are the hardons. Fortunately that still happens. Yeah, yeah... TMI. Anyway, I only ever had partial success with the planning and directing of the dreams, but I did learn to recognize that I was indeed dreaming, that I was in dreamland and that I could wake myself at anytime and escape many bad dream situations if I wanted to. If I awoke in the middle of a dream – say to go to the bathroom – I could return to the dream where I left off. The subjects of my dreams were as varied as the subjects of my photographs and drawings. That was until five months ago… the time after the May 13th accident and at the time where I began taking the pain killer Percocet and the muscle relaxant Flexeril on a regular basis. On Wednesday October 6th I stopped taking these and I will not take them again. During the time I was taking them they totally blanked out my dream life, which is both a source of entertainment and a creative influence to me… more so than any drug could be. There is another reason that I stopped taking them and this is a tough one to admit. Here goes… over the past couple of months I believe I developed a dependency on them that I was not fully aware of until recently. I recognized this dependency while away with Jenne last weekend. I realized I was taking them at night when I wasn’t having any pain, that I ‘needed’ them – at least the Flexeril – to get to sleep and this had pretty much become an every night deal for some weeks. My doctor gave me a huge prescription of both, more than he probably should have. I used to joke about the Percocets in some of my entries even. In the words of Mr. Mackey from the show South Park, “drugs are bad… mmmm-kay” and these two drugs are definitely bad news, so on Wednesday night I admitted to Jenne that I believed I had a dependency and I needed her help and support. Of course she agreed. I asked her to watch me flush the remainder of each. I felt it important that I personally destroy them to break the cycle. Destroying them was the best thing I could have done for my overall health and my dream life. Last night I was rewarded by the return of my dream life and it was wonderful, crazy and silly. Now the fun part, I tell you about the dream and I note the influences I was able to identify. Keep in mind that it is a dream and there is no real story line or plot. I also provide many links so that you will have a point of reference to understand what I am talking about.

The dream begins with Jeff, Becky and I in a nice bar in some generic downtown of some generic city with the typical skyscrapers, nondescript people walking the streets in business casual clothes, some moderate traffic and cool and sunny weather with fluffy little clouds in the sky.

*NOTE: The song Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb is a favorite of mine. I also love to have clouds in my landscape photos. I despise ‘bald’ clear blue skies in photos.

Strangely the unnamed generic bar was packed with friendly good ole boys and Anime fans. A most unusual and unexpected combo of people, but this is a dream and this sort of stuff happens.

*NOTE: I am an Anime fan. In other words I like Japanese cartoons where everyone "looks like Speed Racer", as my dad would say. I hate when people say that about Anime because it’s not true and it shows their ignorance of a great story telling medium. Anyway, the Anime influence in the dream, I believe comes from having seen a flier for an Anime convention a few hours previous to bed time. Sapporo Beer is my favorite and often shows up in my dreams. The only connection I can make with the 'good ole boys' is Jenne's fandom of popular country music and her watching of country music videos.

Hanging on the walls were they typical things one sees in a finer bar or tavern. Neon signs advertising various beers, B&W photos of the city in its past, and some of that whacky stuff you see at places like Ruby Tuesdays and TGI Fridays; out of state license plates, stuffed fish, oars, bicycles, etc. Everyone was friendly and many conversations were going on. There was no music playing and no one was smoking. The bartender, an older gentleman, was pouring drinks and spouting street wisdom. I was having a twenty-one ounce Sapporo. Jeff and Becky were near the back of the bar talking with some Anime fans when whispers ran from good ole boy to good ole boy and they headed out front to the side walk. One of the boys was carrying an eight foot by eight foot piece of board that he laid on the sidewalk.

*NOTE: The influence of the following part of the dream will be obvious to anyone who has seen a certain movie, which, as it happens, J&B and I were talking about just that evening while in the car going to Nerd Zone to buy some hobby paints.

I watched with great interest as they gathered around it in a sort of tribal circle. Two of the men, an older bony gent and a young man in his late twenties, removed their shirts and stepped onto the board. They shook hands, stepped back from each other, smiled and raised their fists in a classic boxer pose. They were having their own fight club right in front of the bar! I yelled to Jeff and Becky with great excitement to come to the window. As we stood there I commented to Jeff that I was going to open the door and yell that there was a phone call for a Mr. Tyler Durden. We laughed and left the bar to go back to J&B’s place. Upon arriving there in an instant – I should point out that we didn’t drive, fly or teleport, at least not that I am aware, we were just there – Jeff told me he had a new job painting toys from the Anime series Macross and that I could have a job too.

*NOTE: The influence here is the aforementioned convention flier and the fact that Jeff and I had been painting game pieces on his dinning room table before bed time. The weapon influence comes from the fact that I went shooting last week with J&B and Da-veed at the NRA Range. There, I admitted it. Yes, I fired actual weapons; an AK-47 and an AR-15. I also did very well for not having fired a real gun in almost nine years. The Valkyries - a fighter jet that transforms into a humanoid robot - in the dream come from the fact that I am a fan of the Macross anime and Da-veed has a nice collection of scale models from that show. Actor Robert Duval owns a restaurant in Virginia that J&B told me they were going to this weekend. They told me an amusing story about the restaurant, which they can tell on their web sites. I want to stay focused on my dream.

I sat down and started painting a Valkyrie VF-1A model in the classic tan and white paint scheme (I told you my dreams were detailed). Jeff told me the model was for Robert Duval and that he was paying a lot of money for it. Then Jeff took me out into his yard to show me his collection of scale and full sized models that he had been working on in his new job. There were various space ships, scifi weapons and robots propped up against his fence and each other. We worked our away around a path he made through the maze of models. It was like Watto’s junk yard for Star Wars Episode One. I remember hefting a full size replica of a gun that would be carried by one of the Valkyries that we had been painting. This was no easy feat as a Valkyrie is a two and a half story tall humanoid robot piloted by a human sitting in its chest! After we finished in the yard Becky wanted to show me her new fish tank.

*NOTE: The only influence I can think of for the next section is that Jenne and I saw Finding Nemo a few weeks ago and the latest Shell gasoline TV commercials with all of the colourful CGI fish. That and science fiction. You’ll see why.

The fish tank was a perfect cube about two feet by two feet with the water approximately four inches from the “top” (which I will call side ‘A’. You’ll understand why in a moment). There was no visible filter system. It was full of brightly colored fish that were all excitedly swimming around. Now here’s the most amazing thing about this fish tank; it could be freely rotated 360 degrees and the water level always stayed exactly four inches from side ‘A’. I rotated the tank so side ‘A’ was now vertical and the fish would swim into the open air, drop down to what was now the bottom, flop around until they touched the surface of the water and would swim around again. I rotated the tank again so that ‘A’ was now the bottom horizontal of the tank and the surface of the water was now suspended four inches from the ‘bottom’ of the tank. A fish would occasionally swim through the ‘surface’ and lie flopping on the new ‘bottom’ of the tank until it flopped high enough to touch the water and resume swimming. I was totally fascinated by this incredible floating rotating fish tank.

*NOTE: We are now back to the heavy Anime portion of the dream.

At this point I appeared back at the bar sans J&B. I was having another Sapporo and waiting for friends that I don’t actually know. What I mean by that is the people I was waiting for were not anyone I actually know in my waking life, but I did know that they were friends. They were still at the Anime convention and were going to show up any minute. The fight club outside the bar was gone. I was dressed in the Macross uniform of character Roy Fokker and armed with a laser pistol side arm, which for some reason I knew was real, although I never fired it. My friends arrived – they were also all dressed in Macross uniforms – and we ordered a round of drinks. The bartender, that older wise gentleman I mentioned earlier, gave me a smile and a little knowing wink and said, “It’s a pleasure to see you again and so soon, sir."
I asked him, “do you know me?” To which he replied, “Is this a test, sir?” (another Fight Club reference)
One of my friends, a pretty Japanese woman in her mid thirties, took my arm at this point and said, “come on Will-san. It’s time for you and me to go. We have an undercover mission to perform… remember?” She picked up her laser rifle, slung it on her shoulder and led me by the hand out the door and into the street. At this point I heard my name being called on an intercom. Then I realized it was a call from beyond the dream world. Becky was calling my name in the real world. It was 6:00 AM and time to get up and go to work. Total bummer. I forgive you Becky ;-)

At least it’s Friday and Friday night is approaching and hopefully it will be another night of wild and crazy dreams. Maybe I’ll get to see what that undercover mission was all about. I’ll let you know. I also recently read a very good article in a Newsweek magazine that I picked up the Orthopedic Doctor's office. It was all about the importance of dreams in our lives. You can read it here. So what are your dreams made of?