The man in my house telling me I can't do anything. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm in a house with my parents, and we want to travel from our rural area to another location closer to the city. 

We're with a really, really cynical, unpleasant guy who doubts everything we try to do and vocalizes his doubts about us--a lot. 

I forgot that we need to take our cat, and so I bring her from our old, permanent house into the newer house. The cynical man says bringing the cat along will never work. I tell him it will work, and easily too. I bring the cat's litter box into the house. 

A red bowling ball comes down from a chute in the ceiling, and I give it to the cynical man to hold to keep him occupied. 

Then the house breaks off from its foundation and it walks to the city.

I go into a studio where they're teaching comedy. The director adds me to a skit and asks me for ideas for humor with live goat kids. The goats come running from across the room. A black one jumps into my arms. He's pretty big and I rest on the floor to accommodate him.

I come up with a joke, but I don't like it that much, and I leave the troupe, mentally. Then I kick myself as rehearsal goes on, because I have a much better joke, but it's kind of late to add it. The show goes on before an audience, and I wonder if it could've been better, but I'm glad it's been made. 

INTERPRETATION

I think most of us have an annoying man who just stands there in our heads saying that what we do will never work. In the dream, I keep him occupied with a bowling ball. In real life, I think it's a lot harder to visualize the process of keeping him quiet. 

I've been reading about mindfulness for the past several weeks, and I really think it helps to take a step back and label thoughts. Then you either let the thoughts pass or choose to accept them. For example, you can notice that there's a lot of tension in your body, then step back and label a thought or a line of thinking as "worrying about the future," "craving junk food," or "angry thought." But you generally don't have to accept every thought and identify with it and let it change your mood and actions. 

Negative thoughts are just as a quirk of the human brain. They're sometimes realistic but oftentimes not. Maybe identifying with negative thoughts helps you out 1 in 10 times, but the other 9 times, they'll probably just make you miserable. 

I think the end of the dream just points out that it's much better for something imperfect to get made than to endlessly try to perfect something. 

The purple dragon of decision-making. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm in a darkened bar with blue accent lighting. I work here in some kind of management/ownership position. A small, flying purple dragon who is a regular customer of mine is drunk, and he flies behind the bar. A cat jumps up and eats it. I don't want to lose that regular income the dragon provides, so I try to get it out. 

I can't. I worry that I just haven't tried enough things. I heard from one of Louis C.K.'s interviews that if you put alcohol into a dog's mouth, it will make them throw up. But I really don't want to harm the cat. What if alcohol hurts cats and not dogs? What if I use the wrong type of alcohol? What if it hurts the dragon?

Fortunately, just by reaching into the cat's mouth, I can eventually pull the dragon out. It's not harmed. I think to myself, If this wasn't a dream, he'd have suffocated in the cat's stomach.

I go to another part of the bar with my parents--an outdoor area. I'm just showing them around when I see an impression start to wriggle upwards from the soil. Snakes pop out of the soft dirt floor. I analyze at them and declare them harmless. I put them in containers. I put one in a container with water. I say it's a Mississippi mud snake. But I doubt myself because something about his face looks like a gila monster, and those are desert animals. I categorize the other snakes as a garter snake, and a corn snake. 

Then I hear a rattle. One is a rattlesnake! I missed it! How could I have done that! Now it has my dad cornered and it's heading towards him. I tell my dad to run and he does, barely missing getting bitten. 

I survived that, but don't know what to do now about the snakes in my restaurant. The bar is packed with customers. 

Then I see on the TV that the wife of famous evangelist, Billy Graham, has killed herself. Some people were trying to break into her seven houses before she died. There's a TV special about the theives' lives. They were doing a lot of social engineering, but were also searching dumped databases to try to get to her assets. 

I'm high in the catwalk of a stage. I look down on some white horses with numbers on their flanks. We're still following the lives of this small team of crooks. The thieves have inside knowledge about how fast the horses need to be in order to win a contest with them. The trainer calls me down and asks me to help. 

He thinks that if we all speed our clicking noises and chewing, these horses will move through their marks faster. I look around, and all the girls handling the horses are chewing. We try it, all six or so of us and have a good laugh, but I agree that the trainer is on to something.

INTERPRETATION

This dream seems to be wrestling with the challenges of managing problems. I felt pretty relieved when the horse trainer came up with a solution to a problem instead of me. It was a different kind of stress at the very least to try to follow someone else's directions versus coming up with my own.

I often feel what I felt when I was trying to get the little dragon out of the cat. I often think I can't think fast enough because I haven't tried a wide enough variety of things, or that I'm going to harm someone or something, or that I'll ruin things through inaction because I'm too lazy. 

For example, I just had a flat tire, and I had no idea what to do. My initial thought was to tow the car to a tire shop, but then my stepfather told me I should use an air pump to inflate the tire, and if it's a slow leak, I can just drive it to the shop. Then my neighbor told me I should put my spare tire on, and he described how to do it. That didn't work out, because I bought my car used, and someone swiped the spare tire. Then my friend said I need to call roadside assistance. I tried that, but it wasn't on my insurance plan. I gave up and called a tow truck, which did work, but my therapist said I spent a lot of money I didn't need to, because the tire place upsold me four new tires and a warranty plan, when I could have just taken off the wheel and had someone drive me to the tire store. 

I bought the roadside assistance plan and added it to my insurance, so hopefully in the future, I can just get it towed for the $7 a month that the plan costs me, but sometimes, problems like this make my head spin. 

I'm also having challenges with thinking about getting a job that will downgrade my insurance. Will it end up being worth it? If it doesn't work out, it will set me back for who knows how long. This is one of the biggest problems with not having universal healthcare: you're tied to certain systems and it stifles innovation and entrepreneurship. 

I'm also attempting a certificate program right now that involves a lot of problem solving, not the least of which is how to structure my progress within the program. It's not as well-structured or as gameified as a college class. So it's not so much the actual coursework that gets to me as the life-management issues. I guess the emotional impact of problem-solving bookwork is a lot less severe, because you know that no matter what you do, it's not going to restrict your future lifestyle. 

I have other big life decisions I need to make. I don't like having to make these types of decisions. I guess part of my problem is that I keep thinking about what it would have been like had I done things another way when life is just going to unfold the way it unfolds. 

I don't know what I can learn from this. Maybe that living in the future (can I do better?) or the past (I should have done ___) instead of the present can really make you miserable. 

Eating pancakes when I'm dead. (dream)

Image by Ian Cv, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

DREAM

My best friend and I both die in a hotel, but it takes me a while to figure it out. I'm in an elevator. There was an accident in the elevator shaft. But when that settles down, I go to the ground floor, and no one seems to be able to tell that I'm there. I get out, and people still can't tell I'm there. They can't tell that my friend is there either. 

We're approached by another pair of friends: two black men who are strangers to us. They let us know that all four of us are dead. 

We go out into the world, and there are no other dead people like us. It's kind of unnerving. Where could they all be? 

Then someone alive sorta kinda seems to notice us. He sort of seems to be able to "smell" that we're there, but we stay just outside of his reach. He's spooked, and must sense we're following him at a distance, because sets up a Native American ritual of some kind, and we run away, because we know that might pull us into some kind of zone where we can both interact with each other. Who knows what might happen then?

We eat a breakfast of pancakes and French toast. Then we hop a ride in an empty taxi. I ask my friend if he'd like to go to Australia since we don't have to eat. He gets very uncomfortable and says, "no." I'm under the impression that it would be uncomfortable for him to go. I'm surprised, since I think we probably have a lot of time to kill. 

INTERPRETATION

The fact that we couldn't see any other dead people kind of reminds me of a pet theory I like to consider about aliens: they're there, they're just using some kind of technology to isolate us and hide everything from us.

The Icelandic civil war. (dream)

Image from Omnom's Instagram

DREAM

My father and his friend who lives with us go to Iceland to try to assist the King of Iceland with a civil war. 

Back home, I keep going on long bus rides with a friend, but I keep forgetting my money.

Her brother is helping me keep an eye on my father. He thinks he saw a secret door in the king's room.

My father and his friend come back. They say they the king took their gold and didn't explain what he was going to spend it on. They suspect that he will buy ice cream and chocolate with it and continue work on a statue made of that material. I mention the secret door, and they're upset. The king is not taking the war seriously. He's too crude with his use of his trident. He seems to forget that these people are his people, and he doesn't listen, killing and injuring them thoughtlessly. 

I imagine taking the trident and go through what I would do if I had it. 

At least now that they're back, my father's friend can change out of his pants, which are much, much too tight for him. He should have complained, but he is frugal and long suffering.

INTERPRETATION

Well, the tight pants thing is clear: I saw a show that night in which someone was late to work because they got stuck in their tight leather pants. 

And I think the money on the bus thing is related to how I keep leaving the house worried that I forgot my wallet. 

The King of Iceland making a statue out of chocolate and ice cream is probably related to how I follow Omnom Chocolate on social media. Omnom is an Icelandic chocolate company that I believe is branching out to making ice cream as well. Delicious, but very, very expensive here. I'm talking $10 for a regular-sized bar of chocolate.

I guess the whole thing about the king not paying attention to the complaints of his subjects, and hiding his money in a secret door is how I feel about all the complaining I see on YouTube about the American economy, while no real action is being taken to make things better. Or maybe I should just say that there are no resulting improvements that I can feel as someone on the lower rungs of society. 

A lot of personal symbolism to unravel. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I am talking to someone who grew up knowing my dad. I want to know if he was horrible towards them at some point and if what they experienced, even at a very small dose, was like what I experienced. I explain that I was trapped with him, because I needed intellectual companionship that wasn't available elsewhere. 

Then I want to test out buying a car. 

The people selling me a car are going to steal the car I want to trade in, and I know it. I want to rehearse what would happen if I brought a gun with me. 

I set up the purchase. I see a video about a lady getting charged with hysteria, even though she was right about having her car stolen. The lady taking my trade-in is an internet-famous astrologer, and wants to bring her 12 year old daughter. I take this as a sign of unprofessionalism. Perhaps even... criminality. 

I brought a gun, and point it at them, stopping traffic. The FBI and the cops arrive. They disarm me with a gentle discussion. I explain that they were in the middle of stealing from me. 

As I look around at all the trouble, I think to myself, This is supposed to be a thought experiment. It's not supposed to actually happen. 

INTERPRETATION

I don't get to talk about my dad often. The opportunity doesn't arise that often, and when it does, I can only recall a jumble of memories which were formed decades ago. All of the memories, even the positive ones, occurred alongside a fear and anger and an intense pain. So the memories tend to come through to me as very unclear. That's the main reason why I decided that I would make Lost Atlantis such a focal point of my life. I needed to get something down on paper about what he put me through that I didn't have words for before. 

I didn't unload everything there is to unload when I wrote Lost Atlantis, but I unloaded a lot. I feel much lighter in that area of my brain after having completed that journey. Now as an artist, I feel as though I can move on from fixating on that to other topics. Pivoting more into comedy as a writer just feels right. I feel a lot more free.

But many, many, many times, I have thought about what it would be like to ask other family members if he was horrible to them like he was to me. 

I wrote the first Lost Atlantis book--the most shocking one, just a couple years before my own life arguably had some real shocking moments of its own. And sometimes, I'd think to myself that all the shameful, challenging things that my character went through were only supposed to be a thought experiment about what it would be like to suffer very badly in the aftermath of an abusive childhood. I wasn't supposed to live such a tumultuous, harsh emotional life as an adult myself. But I suffered. Very deeply at times.

I haven't suffered nearly as much for these past several years. And the suffering I have felt generally hasn't been felt as sharply. Sometimes, looking back on my life feels like looking at a stranger. 

I become Catwoman when others refuse to assert their independence. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I am at a retreat, and my friend says that a lot of people don't want the daily task of caring for a pet, but he loves to nurture them. I pray a Buddhist-style blessing over him, saying things like "May you be happy, may you be free from physical and mental suffering, may you live with ease," but also saying, "May you never be conned." 

The retreat gets into gear. It combines the high emotionality and theatricality of Pentecostalism with theatre. A class of us analyze film and talk show business. 

I ask an actor what's wrong when he freezes. He doesn't go into detail when I prod him. I tell the head of the program that I hate what he's doing, because it tells me he dislikes something he senses other people will like, so he's afraid to stand alone. 

Then I imagine myself being perceived with this new identity of independence, like Catwoman. I try to imitate and nail her voice. Then a spaceship boards ours and tries to take our captain hostage. The captain refuses to go quietly, so the woman interrogating her transforms into an alien with huge claws. It looks like she is clawing out the captain's insides, but without doing physical damage. So it's all for show. 

The alien is called away. Then they board our ship and take us all hostage. 

In our cages, we pass notes to each other that now's the time to mutiny. Alternative notes are passed telling us not to do it, but we do, and the walls come shaking down. We win the hand to hand combat, then throw a bomb which destroys the alien ship in their dimension. But they're cloaking their damage, so we can't tell how much we've hurt them and how weak they've become. 

Their ship looks like a house in space now. We go through our own ship/house knocking on doors to assure the aliens aren't leaking into our dimension. 

Then I'm in a bunk bed, and I consider kicking the bedding out of the top to be the finest act of preserving a democracy.

INTERPRETATION

Wow, I think this is a pretty accurate description of the dream, because I recorded it right after waking up in the middle of the night, but it's all over the place. 

I think there are a lot of small, daily observations being made, like how nurturing people are often exploited, and how scared people can be about disagreeing with popular opinions, and how some people get prideful when they're hurt and try to hide their vulnerability.

I couldn't tell you anything about kicking the bedding off the top of a bunk bed. I did that a couple times as a little kid, and I guess it felt good. 

Learning from Tina Fey's "Superman" series. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm studying film at a community college, and the course is based off of videos of Tina Fey's TV show about Superman. I watch Superman fly around inside a giant volcano. 

I develop my own TV storyline in which I am a mutant with the traits of a cat. My tagline is "What makes you different makes you bleed."

INTERPRETATION

Hmmm, well, I'm not too sure about that edgy tagline, but the Tina Fey part makes sense to me. I think of her as a comedy Superwoman. There's something linguistically-satisfying about a lot of her work. 

I've been trying to study her style by watching 30 Rock.