Oddly, my dreams usually make a lot of sense. My war dreams: I play a lot of first person shooter games. In them, I'm often handy with a sniper rifle or a melee weapon. It doesn't take Freud. Yet this one... Well, I had only one reaction to this one.
I was back in my old neighborhood. With the chill in the air and the soft glow of a halo around the street and porch lights meant it was the middle of the night, perhaps as early as three in the morning. The light catches onto the moisture in the air, hence the halo effect. I was walking from a one story house at the end of a cul-de-sac, heading into the street. What I was investigating was obvious enough. He was dressed in faded jeans and a light grey sweatshirt with his black hair in a sharp bowl cup. And he was making all kinds of noise as he ran along the yards and hiding behind cars, jumping out and making a huge racket.
So just to sum up: It was back in my old neighborhood, it was the middle of the night, and I'm the only one who woke up to see why some scrawny kid with possible mental issues is making a fuss.
I called out to him, asking him what he was doing, why he was making the noise, but he seemed more simian than man as he kept on hooting and hollering. I got fed up with being ignored and chased after him, but he was too nimble for me to catch. I was about to give up when a group of kids came running from a house across the street.
I heard one of them call him "Jacob", and she asked what was wrong. She looked to be about sixteen with honey blonde hair and amber eyes, wearing dark jeans and a white tank top. I told her that "Jacob" was having a fit or something and that I couldn't get him calmed down. With her and her group of friends running interference, I was able to finally catch Jacob, and the girl apologized for the trouble and asked if I could bring him back to their party.
Not knowing what else to do, I led Jacob along with them, right towards the corner house across the street. I knew that place well, it belonged to some of my best friends. But as the girl led me up the driveway, I knew there would be changes. For one, there didn't used to be a doorway in the kitchen. Second of all, for a one story house, when I got inside and passed the hall, the place had expanded into a vast chamber that looked more like it was a hotel carved from a giant tree.
I let Jacob join the others as I looked around when I felt something soft brush my arm. I turned to look and jumped a step back as I saw it was a giant spider-web, which was crawling with arachnids. I nudged my young host and asked if they were there to keep the bugs down. She promptly replies: "What bugs?" Silly me, thinking there would be bugs.
It was obvious there was some kind of party going on. Some kids were watching a movie, others sitting around on cushions, talking. And the girl who seemed to be their ring leader was making out with a much older guy. Well, I had seen enough. I went back through the kitchen and out the door when I had spotted an orange rectangle in the driveway. I was a wet piece of fabric that had the letters CSA in the middle. And around it was a circular border that spread out into a swastika. Nazis?
"Traitor!"
What? I looked up and got a bright, neon green water balloon in my face. Parked at the curb was a station wagon. In the front seat were a pair of skin heads that were laughing at me. The one who yelled was a woman in the back, holding what appeared to be some kind of cannon.
"Traitor! We don't need any traitors!" She cried, sending a flurry of water balloons at me with the cannon. I don't know what made her think I was a traitor, I came primarily from mexican stock, but that was not something I should probably correct a bunch of neo-nazi clowns on. They might start throwing something worse than water balloons. I started jogging across the street when screams came out from the surrounding houses, and I noticed the front door to my place was open.
Oddly, the first thing I noticed was that the walls were painted a sky blue. The second thing I noticed was my mother running out with a broom, and a bunch of white supremacists chanting racist slogans while wearing black military hats and lederhosen. I would have started laughing if not for the serious attitude that was apparent on their faces. And yet a click from behind me was enough to distract.
I turned around and saw a guy in a straw hat taking pictures. One of them, I thought, so I gave chase humming Yakety-Sax simply because the whole thing seemed absurd and I thought it fitting.
"Stop! Get him!" I heard the cry from one of the lederhosen wearing punks who were now in the middle of the street. All of them started pulling out guns. I promptly stopped, shifted my weight back, and charged them. Suddenly, my point of view shifted into third person, and as threw out my arms, blades sprung out from my wrists and I ran towards them wearing the assassin's clothes of Ezio Auditore, complete with a cape and a beaked hood.
As I ran, a tingling grew in my right leg. My focus shifted back into first person view, and the tingling grew. Everything started feeling distant, and I awoke to the droning of the fan in the window and the shadows of my bedroom.
My reaction to that particular dream was something out of Assassin's Creed II as well.
I do not think this one is that hard. I mean, once the story is stripped down to the root elements, and your gamerness is translated, it is a fairly basic dream.
ReplyDelete1) Visiting "the old neighborhood" represents potentially unresolved issues, or at least a re-evaluation of issues. Pensive-ity-ness. (I made up a new word for you)
2) As initially you seemed the only one to be aware of Jacob, and while manifested as a human, lets say, the behavior was primitive - under developed for society (the neighborhood represents yourself and those you immediately interact with. You house, though your old one, is still "you"). Jacob is you. The socially unprepared-for-the-world you; the playful adolescent you.
3) the old house of your friends. This is the icon for what once was your base friends. You know they have changed and moved on, but this is your link to what they used to mean to you.
4) they were calling to Jacob, appeasing "him" and you delivered him to them. That is like recognizing that there is a place for that part of you - but it does not belong to "out" as the externalized you.
5) Spiders and spider webs. These represent all the messages - all the links, ties and whatnot that cling you to them. I think that the house/tree manifestation was like how everything has branched out, but from a large base. Think Face Book. And the spiders are all the tendrils of communication.
5.1) The making out going on is just differing levels of intimacy and development with perhaps a touch of questioning some missed opportunities.
6) Water balloons, while "harmless", are insulting, combative, and socially inappropriate. Nazis represent conformity at its utmost. Your accepting that you (Jacob) have a place, tucked away on the side, where you can be, even in a controlled way, still adolescent, is seen as an opposition to the conformity that is logically waiting for you in the neighborhood.
7) Mom chasing them out of your house. Your house is you and your mom is its caretaker. This is your battle with what you see as too much restrictions, blind conformity, etc.
I do not see this as a prophetic dream, or even one of guidance or caution. I thing it was reflective of your thoughts and motivators as you negotiate your position in the part of the world you interact with.
Take care!
Okay. I just did this, like, whole interpretation thing and was going to e-mail it, but just posted it here, but I think it was too big and I think the interwebs ate it.
ReplyDeleteSorry.
Oh, it looks like it did post. Sorry then for the last comment. And this one.
ReplyDeleteInteresting interpretation. You are very perceptive. :) Thanks, Quin!
ReplyDelete