The poisoning of the scientists. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm an explorer in a large submarine. All of a sudden, the submarine starts to shake and flip upside down and side to side, and we're crashing. One of us has locked the others in a room. We watch in horror as he paces up and down the viewing window, cackling. He explains his evil plan, showing us how he's put some strange chemicals in the tubing we use for air. The tubes are filled with a magenta-colored substance. 

Then we're at the surface. It's calm. All of that stuff with the evil scientist is behind us, and we're inspecting the tubes he left behind for us. I hesitantly reach into one tube. I pull out seaweed. It's just algae and kelp in the tube. Maybe we'll be okay.

Now, I'm in a lab with a lot of sophisticated machinery. I check the results of a test. A yellow, gum-like substance is in my magenta, gloved hand. 

It's radioactive.

I leave the lab to discuss this with the two men who have been waiting for me at a dining room table. In the dream, it only just dawns on me that this person whose point of view I've had is actually me--I am the scientist. I connect to that identity in thought and emotion. 

One man wears a broad smile that spreads deep crow's feet on his boyish face. He's in a brown polo shirt, and he's happy. 

The other man seems calm. He's probably in his 50s, with dark hair, a large nose, sun spots, and a kind face. He's dressed like an environmental scientist coming back from the field.

I tell the environmental scientist, "It's radioactive." 

His friend, who was chatty only a moment ago, becomes quiet, and sombre. 

We all know the implications: this stuff has been in his body. He's in trouble. 

He takes it gracefully, but might simply be in denial. He thanks me, and I know he knows this is very bad news, but he avoids the topic and continues to talk about work. 

Then, I'm telling my professor that I don't want to do any of the things my boyfriend wants to do. And I'm watching a reality TV show--or at least I think it is. Emilia Clarke is sitting outside in a grass-filled garden eating little tea party confectionary treats that are tinted a pastel blue. She's there for some kind of rehabilitation, and she narrates her inner experiences of suffering and pain over the camera shots. The cameras follow her as she goes out into the city, but everything warps, and bends, and twists. I find it a strange thing to do to have such hard-core special effects on a reality TV show. What are they trying to say by including this?

The camera cuts to an Emo young man wearing braces, who holds out a large rubber band with crystal letters on it. Most of the letters are nonsense, but there is a word there that I can't remember. He talks very conspiratorially with the other cast members about how difficult Emilia was at the start of the show. 

INTERPRETATION

I think this dream is about my recovery from fleeing my hometown over 10 years ago.

My thoughts about the nature of evil have changed a lot over the years. When I was 22, I had a part in a play where I played a woman who betrayed her cheating husband to the enemy, who then blinded him, and he killed himself. I played her as though she knew exactly how evil what she was doing was, and she didn't care. 

I had a heckler in the audience (yes, a heckler for a university play), who shouted out in the middle of my monologue, "Evil!" 

Of course. It seemed obvious to me that handing over your husband to a warring people to be murdered, no matter what he'd done, was evil. The character had to know it was evil. 

How naive I was about the nature of evil! In reality, I've found that almost all evil is unselfaware. It's usually justified into something righteous by its perpetrators, and they often don't just think they're good people, they think they're better people. And it works because you can kind of justify anything if you don't bother to develop your sense of ethics and let your emotions decide. 

That night after the play, the director instructed me to figure out a way to make the character not evil, and it seemed impossible then. She left town the next day, pretty much, so I didn't have to try. But I'm shaking my head now. I think I know exactly how to make the character justify basically killing her husband: just feel victimized so strongly, and have such a powerful belief in your own heroism that you get into delusional territory. People will even feel sorry for you. They must've written her with the thought that she wasn't evil in mind, too, otherwise the directors (who wrote the play) wouldn't be asking me to play her as not evil!

There is a very distinctive feeling that I get about evil being "after" me, like when a Karen complains about me at my minimum wage job, or when my evil ex-roommate goes around the school spreading rumors about me, or when a teacher decides that they're going to use their power to harm me (or someone else--I've been savvy enough to dodge that bullet a couple times, often watching or hearing about it hitting another student). I think this is the same feeling I got when that scientist was cackling through the window about how he'd ruined our air.

Then I think about the guy in the dream who got the news about radioactive substances being in his body. It surprises me when people just have no reaction to horrible things sometimes. I would actually say that it happens a lot. With the evil ex-roommate, I was certainly not the first victim. She ran around harming lots of people. You know what they typically did afterwards? Absolutely nothing. They'd usually do something kind of small and shitty that they were ashamed about, and that usually silenced them from speaking out against her. But it's just not in everyone's nature to cause a bunch of drama when things go wrong in their life. 

I noticed that calm people were my colleagues in the dream. Maybe that's because it's so much easier for me to genuinely love non-dramatic people, even though I typically get sucked in by the dramatic ones. I think it's common for our attention to go to the least deserving areas of our lives.  

And I think Emilia Clarke in the reality TV show is me writing my way to some kind of healing after pretty much fleeing my hometown and all the awful people I got involved with. (For people in other countries who might not know: reality TV has no relationship to the very, very old tradition in English literature for writing autobiographical material. I think it might not be common in every country for people to write extensively about the unique details of their personal and family lives. But in America, we're doing it pretty much straight from day one in kindergarten, and a lot of our most revered authors do it until they die. Maybe it's part of being in an individualistic culture. I don't know. I'm not well-versed in the literature or educational systems of other countries, so I could be wrong about other countries working really different from ours in these areas.)

I think this is a topic that's been on my mind, because I'm reading a book called How to FAIL at Stand-Up Comedy: Avoiding the Pitfalls that Kill a Comic's Career, and I am stunned to see just how many people in this author's career have started very serious drama. As one example, the author said he's been assaulted either on stage or in the parking lots of his shows twelve times. All the behind-the-scenes drama totally reminds me of the social atmosphere I had to deal with in college in my hometown. 

I guess it just surprises me that people can be so different. It's easy to make the mistake of thinking all people will react to things the same way you would. I'd say it's almost a mistake to try to predict what people will say or think or do at all. No one is truly an expert on that, no matter how much they charge for their services. It's going to be anecdotal, or statistical at best.

I also watched this video yesterday that got me thinking about the differences between people:

Infusing a character with the love I felt from before. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I take out two half-finished outlines of drawings I started. They're of a young Asian man with a trendy hair cut. I line it up on my desk under a desk lamp and get back to work. He's the character for a new story I've been thinking up. 

When I think of who I want this character to be and how I want the other characters to react to him, I think of someone who I was in love with as a teen. 

I don't have to think too far back, because I'm staying in a house with him right now! His family and some other people who were/are important in that social circle are all there too. It's thrilling.

But when I come out of the house into my nearby art studio, it feels like recalling a distant memory, even though I'm recalling memories from a day or two ago at most. 

I try to remember my emotions and thoughts about this person: the flutters, the single-minded focus, the high of actually talking to him and spending time near him. 

I feel very nostalgic as I draw my imaginary universe.

INTERPRETATION

When I write, and the characters are experiencing loving relationships or interactions, I almost always draw on the friendships and experiences I had in high school. I just had really, really good friends back then. It all faded away as we left for college, or the military, or something else, one by one. But it was a really nice time of life. Living with my parents was awful, but I just spent as much time as possible outside of the house. 

Having those friends taught me what it is to be a loving person in a community. I'm sure I never would have known without their influence in my life, and I'm very thankful for those experiences.

I really think that people underestimate their influence--either for good or evil. All it took was the good people around me being themselves and including me in their lives to completely transform me, and it concerns me a little that it was such a freak accident. Because everyone should have the kind of love and sense of community I had--at least for a part of their lives. Love really makes a massive difference in who someone develops into. 

We usually think of destructive acts as having a lasting effect. And it sometimes seems as though it's so easy to tear down people's growth and creativity that it discourages us to act on those positive impulses to do things like reach out and say something kind and thoughtful, or to just ask how someone is doing and to listen carefully to their answer and not be afraid of their truth. Why bother? But love has a lasting effect too--something I didn't expect when it became clear that our time in high school was over. 

But after the pain of that separation left, this sense of fullness and love from that time has been something I've noticed in my heart 20 years later.

My wedding is a celebration of myself. (dream)

 

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm in an apartment waiting for my best friend and his husband to return to our place. It's a special day for me--it's my wedding day! They're supposed to help me celebrate! 

They come back to the apartment with a pet rat in a Tupperware container. I find that to be a bit odd, but whatever. It's pretty cute. I just didn't expect them to buy a new pet while they were out. 

Then I start dancing. There's no groom. I'm celebrating being married by myself today. 

INTERPRETATION

I think I've gotten very, very used to being single over the years. I definitely prefer being single to having to deal with anyone I've ever dated except one guy. Not worth it! 

I think I'm done. I may have married myself. 

Originally, I wrote a little rant about what I think about the people who I've dated in the past, and as you might guess, I wasn't talking about how great most of them were. That got me thinking about how some Buddhist writers are really against blaming others for our own misfortunes. I decided to consult ChatGPT about that, because weirdly enough, the chat bot is quite good at giving spiritual advice. 

It just didn't make sense to me that if you know why something shitty happened, you should avoid assigning responsibility to a specific person. If you're the manager of a company, you should definitely restrict, retrain, or fire someone who makes a very big mistake. So why should you make an exception for your spiritual life? 

First of all, I think blame has a different connotation than simply assigning responsibility in these texts. Blame suggests anger. And people have their reasons for why they do things--often understandable reasons, if you were to dig deeper, even with the business analogy. Maybe instead of just blaming the employee, you need to change the system they're working in.  

But I think the most significant reason to avoid blaming others for your personal  misfortunes is the idea that you are responsible for your own part in every interaction. And this is actually quite liberating, because it means you always have some little bit of control. 

I think Buddhist writers suggest avoiding blaming others because of karma--the idea that your future will inherit the circumstances you create in the present. You always have some hand in creating those circumstances.

In terms of dating, in the past, I think I've done things to attract and retain bad people in my life. The main thing I've done is to tolerate. I think that all you have to do, really, is tolerate toxic behavior, and toxic people will end up playing a prominent role in your life. And I've reacted badly to those bad people when my reactions are within my control, making things worse. And I haven't always taken action to find better people to replace the toxic ones. So now I'm single, and I don't have a wide circle of influence. 

But it's actually a really good thing. I've learned that it's far, far better going it alone than being with someone who drags you down--which, for me, has been a lot of people, if not most of them. So I'm quite happy and content with "marrying alone." And I really treasure the good people in my life, like my friend and his husband, because they're so very rare and precious. 

Watching my friend miss her chance and reclaim it too late. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm looking at an elderly relative of a neighborhood friend I had while growing up. She's in the garden of my back yard. She berates my friend, saying, "I just wish you'd done that role!" 

My neighborhood friend's face appears on a light blue screen. She's quite elderly now too. Her hair is gray, and she has many sags and wrinkles in her face. And she wears a scarf. But she seems so hurt and motivated by her elderly relative's disappointment in her. 

She gives an incredible performance of a role that she was supposed to do as a young woman. There's so much passion in her face and voice. Every line is delivered so far and above what one would expect from the writing. It elevates the script to something it probably wasn't before. 

But as beautiful as this is, it's also tragic to watch, because you know this performance which has been refined almost to perfection is decades too late. The audition for the role in the film is long gone. 

INTERPRETATION

I seem to be developing a dream theme of: "I missed my opportunity, and it will never come again." I say this because this is the theme of the ballerina and Louis C.K. dreams I just had too. 

By the way, although $100 is too much for me to spend on something that isn't directly tied to my survival right now, I did spend $5 to watch the show, and it's incredible. It's so funny. I am laughing out loud frequently and consistently throughout the whole thing, which is very unusual to do at all. You especially notice how unusual it is to laugh out loud in front of a screen when you realize how much scrolling you do, how many really solid jokes you pass, and how silent you are the whole time.

I think I might be developing this theme because I've been taking so many tests for the past several months. You only get one chance to get every answer correct before time is up.

But I think that in this dream, I'm mixing that test-taking idea with the idea that life only happens once. And it's so easy to passively watch life pass by without risking anything personal. I guess I worry that I'll regret not pushing myself harder, creatively-speaking. 

I am star struck and miss my opportunity to make an impression. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm supposed to meet my best friend and his husband at this large mall, but I only see the husband. I touch base with him, and then I go to change my clothes in the bathroom. 

I'm mid-change in a very, very short bathroom stall where you can see everything, when a small, young Asian woman walks in holding a resume. She seems really discouraged and says, "I can't believe the positions that require a professional degree these days!"

As she talks a little more, I'm directly under the impression that she applied for the job I trained for with my master's degree.  

I say, "You know, I got a master's degree in that field, and it's really easy to earn." (I edited this dialogue to conceal the name of the program.)

She seems to think things over, and leaves me to do my thing.

Unfortunately, I turn around, and I'm completely confused about where my clothes went. My brown skirt with little brown lace accents is still hanging there on a hook, but the top seems to be missing. It takes about 10 minutes for me to figure out that my top is there--it's just not the top I remembered bringing. It's tie dyed neon yellow and pink.

I get changed, and hang out with the husband while we wait for my friend. He eventually arrives, and we go to the main event: meeting Louis C.K.

We aren't just meeting him--we are having a private, one-on-one dinner with the famous comedian! I sit at the table with him, and he is so personable and affable. And I just go completely blank. I desperately want to say something that will make me useful or helpful to the man--something he would like me for, or remember me for, but nothing comes to mind no matter how much I scramble for conversational material. 

There's a newspaper on the table advertising other acts in the area, and one of them mentions Batman and a dog. Didn't Louis C.K. do a comedic bit with Batman? He did, and it was one of my favorites! Can't I think of something to say about that?!

I just watch, helplessly, as Louis C.K. smiles and talks like a normal, friendly human being to my friend and his husband. I have nothing to say and I'm almost starting to panic about not taking this opportunity to describe how much his work impacted me and how much I adore him. He gets up and leaves the table for a moment, and it's just a sad preview of the future when he'll leave for good and I'll have missed my opportunity.  

INTERPRETATION

The thing I take away the most from this dream is how I really wanted to buy an autographed poster from Louis C.K.'s website. It (is still) only $100 (you can see the deal here), but I felt as though it would be irresponsible for me to spend grocery money on something I really don't have the space to frame and hang up anyway. But it feels like a missed opportunity to support one of my favorite celebrities and get something really cool in return. 

Also, my master's degree still feels kind of senseless. I don't see why organizations will often require these super expensive degrees. It seems unnecessary to me, and I regret my life choices sometimes (often).

Excited about experimenting and sharing what I love. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

Happy St. Patrick's Day (or, more likely for you, a day or so after St. Patrick's Day)!

I wish I'd planned a little better for this holiday! I would have found a good recipe online and gone to the store and bought some corned beef and cabbage. Instead, I just played around with some St. Patrick's Day prompts on Midjourney. 

DREAM

I go into an old, independently-owned music shop. One of my favorite people in the world is there. He shows me something he's been working on: a stringed instrument that has little purple "socks" over the strings. He plays it for me. He pulls the socks down at different times, and the instrument makes different noises. I'm surprised! That's pretty cool. He is very original. 

I look around a little more and something really catches my eye: paintings done with a red-orange paint that almost seems to glow on the page. I would really like to experiment with that color, that texture, that material myself. I make a mental note to look for it at the crafts store next time I'm there.

But I have to leave because I have a presentation to do. I'm going to offer a presentation in front of a large group of people about one of my favorite characters: Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. I'm a little embarrassed, because I'm not sure who else will like this character, but I'm also feeling great about being able to share what I know just because I'm passionate on the topic. And that turns my nervousness into excitement and some degree of confidence. I go into the large, futuristic, Cathedral-like room and make my way to the front with my notes.

INTERPRETATION

I think that ever since I left California, I get these occasional urges to experiment with artistic materials I find really beautiful or interesting. I think I used to be much more excited about the concepts in my artwork than playing with physical, sensory materials. Now, especially with the advent of AI art, I think it's more important that it feels good to make your art instead of making it look incredible. 

The person in the music shop is one of my favorite people in real life too. It's very uncommon for me to meet someone and almost instantly have this great, amazing feeling about them, but I think I felt that way about him within 30 minutes of being in his presence. And I haven't felt conflicted about adoring him in the many years I've known him now--also very unusual for me. 

I also think I'm getting a little less embarrassed about sharing the work I do, which is a great feeling. But in real life, it's more like taking little baby steps rather than confidently striding down a great hall with notes in hand. 

Dream Diary giveaway this weekend! March 16-17 PT. (news)

Hey, everybody! 

I goofed! I did not download my own books for Kindle when I was doing free Kindle giveaways. So I need to run giveaways to pick them up now.

The first and second dream diary collections are going to be free to download this Saturday and Sunday (March 16-17) from midnight to midnight, Pacific Time. 

These two books are just collections of blog posts like this one, so if you like reading my dream blog posts, you might like these "archived" posts!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SQI9ZFO

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZXNMMMQ