The Earth, Further and Further.

This morning in the midst of a nightmare, I achieved lucidity, as I am wont to do in the midst of nightmares. Something about the absurdity strikes me as so irrational I realize it must be a dream, allowing me to wake myself from the unpleasantness. 

I dreamt there were snakes crawling into my body through my feet. At one point my feet were stuck together by these awful things worming their way inside of me. I tried pulling them apart like the two pieces of bread stuck together by a stringy mash of melted cheese. Once I was free to walk, I found a doctor, a beautiful woman in all white, she stayed calm and pulled from a jar a glowing white worm which she told me to swallow. She said its presence would “overwhelm” the others and they would leave. Then she held a lantern up to my body and my skin appeared transparent, revealing the squirming shadows inside of me, writhing around in my legs and sides, but she said, “It’s okay, they won’t harm the baby.” At this I realized there was something small growing in my womb, it rested peacefully, unaware of what was going on all around.

Soon, these snakes began coming out of my every orifice. The beautiful doctor stood behind me as she pulled them from my body, and I was calm and not afraid, though also not fully present as I put all my faith in her. Then she told me, calmly she told me, “grab that one and pull it out” and I suddenly saw a tiny hissing snake head before my eyes, emerging from my mouth. I grabbed and pulled on it, but it bit my hand. “Smash your fist into the wall” she told me, still calm, and I did as she said. It was just after this that I became lucid to the dream state and I took it all in for one more moment before opening my eyes. 

Most people wake from nightmares upset, but I was delighted! What a dream to interpret! What a wonderful gift from my subconscious!!!

THE INTERPRETATION:

The snakes: I kept referring to them as snakes in the dream, but in fact they were parasites. I once watched an episode of House where he made mention to these parasites that live in desert sands, and if you walk over them barefoot they will crawl into your body through your feet. This information was filed away into my brain and therefore accessible as material for dreamstuff. 

Those parasites are all the bad feelings, all the toxic feelings that have been feeding on me, depleting me, stealing my energy, all those parasitic things, etc. 

And what’s more—“everyone in your dream is you.” That’s a staple of dream interpretation. This beautiful doctor, she is me! My inner strength. The one telling me, “No, these feelings don’t have to be inside of you.” Remaining calm and positive in the face of a troubling situation, shining her light and making me transparent, seeing, not ignoring but acknowledging the bad things inside of me and casting them out. 

And the baby? My future self, perhaps? My better self? Rebirth and all that. Becoming a better person, growing, changing, ridding myself of what’s unwanted and nurturing and protecting that which is. 

In light of recent events, this nightmare gives me great hope. 

I try to understand you as men of an ancient past sought to understand points and swirls of light in the night sky. I am Copernicus to the unknowable universe of you. Returning to you every night, staring at you through unremembered hours, struggling to understand. Just as things begin to grow clear in my mind’s eye the day always steals you away from me, steals me away from you, plucks me out of seductive experiment as time will always do to great minds before they could ever rest assured in any discovery to be their last.

My interest in you grows as new branches of science sprout from requisite knowledge. We can always go smaller. We can always go larger. I want to discover the new mechanics of your infinitesimal complexities, of the uncertainties of your most imperceptible of vibrations. I want to launch definition to your dark matter, to your unknown elements. I want to win the Nobel Prize of you. To be the world’s only expert. Because if I could understand you, perhaps then I could understand why I am to you as insignificant as I am the stars. 

I wish you could share some memory of all the things we’ve done together. When we swam like feathers in the endless ocean of creamy sky, when your eyes enlarged like pupils in the evening and I felt my face absorbing the sight of you. It was hot, too hot, but something was inside, and I woke up feeling warm, and without opening my eyes I tried to crawl back to that look on your face, searching for the frayed hem of your pants, one last line, one last cast, one minute more. These are the wrong feathers, wrong span of ruffled ivory, wrong weight in the air and sense of my body so solid, so solitary. The burgling sun is groping for the key beneath the mats of my eyelids and I’m floating downward vanishing whiter and whiter away, waves of sunlight washing out the scene, the sky, the you, the weightless, and I awake a castaway in a foreign but familiar feeling. Because mornings, like beaches, seem all the same in their feeling. My own bedsheets. But I don’t want to go back more than I wish you had been there for it.

In reality it hurts me that we don’t talk anymore. So in dreams I give you the words to hurt me better. You were sitting at my piano with some bland beauty waiting in your bed, also in my living room, and I quietly made my way up the stairs but then doubled back to yell at you about what a loser you are. You were indifferent, as you are, you were careless towards me, as you are, you were unfazed by your effect on me as you are every part of the world orbiting around you. You, just as you are. 

I’m happy that my dreaming mind is ebbing away the delusions of wakeful hope - confronting the reality of what you would be like if you were like anything to me anymore, exactly as you’ve always been: empty. I tried to fill your empty skin and you felt it but you couldn’t keep it in, or maybe you didn’t want to. I knew it because every time I’d see you it felt like starting from scratch. You’d be cold again, you’d have wrung yourself dry of me - so I was easier to forget? When did this stop being about my dream?

At least in my dream you didn’t look very happy with her. Neither of you were laughing, or grasping for each other’s skin or maundering on about nonsense disguised as intellect - we were good at that. I think this is the type of woman you’d prefer. Because you’re a man. Because you’re human. Aren’t we all afraid of someone who can raze our guard without our knowing? Better to stick with the predictability of the nonthreatening.

Maybe you grew suspicious of me. You can’t trust guiltless pleasure. We’re programmed for guilt, even those of us, like you, who dismiss it instantly. It’s too much of a challenge when no one’s being manipulated, when you can really do and say whatever you please without secret judgement or upset. Unquestioned acceptance frightens the hell out of a man. I was too easy: too much of a challenge to the paradigm that women never say what they mean and couldn’t possibly be all fun and no expectation, no demands. Men say they want this, but like most desires it may be better left as fantasy. Maybe I was the dream all along, and like a dream I disappeared when you returned to reality. A reality where a woman has to be difficult, elusive… indifferent, careless, unfazed… Maybe you grew to hate me because I feminized you in this way. Or maybe you just grew bored with me because I was more of a playground and less of a sport. 

In the dream I ran upstairs and into X’s arms, who was in my bed, which was actually your bed. I closed my eyes and laid prostrate against his chest. I opened my eyes and he was sitting at the foot of bed, his gorgeous girlfriend next to him, and it was Z’s body I was clutching all along! But Z didn’t belong in this scene, and then, finally, I realized that neither do I. 

And I woke up. 

This morning I woke up to a dream of my own death. I’ve never dreamt of my death before, but I’ve heard rumors that if you do dream you die, you actually die.  Evidently this is just a myth. 

In the dream I don’t remember how I died, but the next scene I do remember was the first-person sense of “me” staring at my own dead body.  My body was on a metal table, zipped in a black bag but only up to the neck; my head was sticking out, skin greyish white, lips slightly parted, and most unusual of all, my eyes were open. They were blue and grey as they are, but they seemed bright despite no question I was truly dead.  And the first-person sense of “me” stared right into my dead face as a dream voice explained the cause of death as toxic chemicals absorbed by the eyes. And then I woke up.  But I didn’t feel unsettled or disturbed or anxious, just fascinated.

I miss the clarity that came with the pain—The dreams that came with the fever: despite discomforting in their entropy, so captivating in their vividness.  The extraordinary cause for displeasure makes them more memorable, more distinguishable, more pleasurable.  While recovering from emotional injury, I experienced endorphic thought.  I want that experience back, but I don’t want the pain.  I don’t want the heartache that makes me think about love, but I do want to keep thinking about it.  I don’t want the loneliness or fear or insecurity that helps me better understand those things, I just want the understanding. Perhaps I keep jumping into the fire because I like the process of healing more than I like being healed.