A friend of mine wrote this recently, and I thought it would go well as my first post to the list. Mayhaps I'm not being that creative, not writing something myself and all, but hell, I like it ^_^

-Nelle-

Hey there. Let me tell you all a little story. Let's call it a 'General Parable.' Or maybe 'Scattershot Fairy Tale.'



A year or two ago, you were probably having dinner in a restaurant somewhere on state street. It was one of those oppressively hot spring days - hot in the same way as today. Like the sky'd been replaced with damp wool, steaming down into this town and rendering all us thick-blooded types insensate with overheating. Well, the whole time you were eating your lasagna or burrito or whatever the hell it was you decided to eat that day. You were smiling to yourself, smug in the knowledge that you were better - you had to be. You had good grades, you were even in the honors society. You didn't have a decent job, but that's okay. You were good looking. You could turn heads walking down the street, and people paid attention to you even if they didn't know who you were. That made you better than us.

Yeah, you know 'us'. The faceless masses, looking like gray shapes shambling just outside your peripheral vision. We only matter when we intersect your consciousness - which we only do when we're an impediment or you want something. It's like human waste sludge - an unavoidable consequence of a world designed specifically for your comfort. After all, someone has to form the scenery and the grunt work.

You had aspirations of greatness. You had dreams, and that was what mattered. You didn't exactly have a plan - plans involve dates and numbers. Dreams need only a general structure. By god, you would be the greatest (insert title here) ever.

So now, less than a decade later, what's happened to your dreams? Are they gone completely, blown away on the wind like dust in the desert? Did they just crumble while you watched, your hands grasping at the last few pieces of them? Are you still living in them, wool pulled down over your ears as you refuse to acknowledge the neccessity of taking risks and leaving your shelter?

Nothing is certain. Especially not attaining what you desire.

Here's to working at not being one of those people, which I could easily turn into.

("I'm warning you. If you don't change how you deal with the world, you're going to keep hating everything you do.")

I dreamed that our reality is the afterlife. I was being taken somewhere by a woman as she explained that my entire life had actually been my death, and that the reality as we know it is the final step before being assimilated into some kind of greater consciousness. Apparently, part of my penance included being a guide for other women.

I was on a team of people that did this, but I had no idea what was going on and kept feeling like I shouldn't be at the meeting. The small team was gathered outside at a picnic table, drinking tea out of beer mugs and discussing tactics for helping other people ascend to assimilation. It was much like an Alcoholic's Anonymous meeting. There seemed to be some sort of segregation in genders... women guided other women and men only guided men.

This dream was especially strange for me, as it goes against my personal beliefs. I believe that there is most likely not any sort of after life, and that God exists, but not as a consciousness.

I was walking through a neighborhood that looked vaguely like my own, talking to friends that looked vaguely like my own, and drinking bottled water. Now, while I was in fact extremely thirsty in real life, I'm not sure how this cross over into my dream, but I was holding some manner of device that could release objects from the pull/hold of the magnetic field created by the flow of electricity. Now, logically, this was ludicrous, because that magnetic, or electromagnetic field, does not effect things like store-bought water bottles in any noticeable way -- but that didn't stop me. There were light fixtures, on everyone's deck. For some reason most people seemed to be copying a trend I had started, of putting a water bottle up there, instead of a bulb, and turning on the light, so it stayed, suspended.
In any event, I went around, disabling these fields and voraciously drinking all the water. I say voraciously because I literally consumed bottlefull after bottlefull at an inhuman rate.
So while this was happening, I was moving about the complex, and I saw -- or rather walked past -- someone who knew me. Off of friendster, or something. So she ran up to tag along as I continued toward a then-un-beknownst [to me] destination: the apartment which, in this dream, belonged to Ian's family, and which also, in this dream, looked like his actual house on the inside.
Inside, Joshy and a friend of his were sprawled out like they'd been thrashed. I entered, holding a book -- it may have been the book I came in for, I'm not certain. A glance at the cover [in my memory] seems to remind that it was not.
I was holding the book in a fashion so as to conceal it at my side, to make it appear that I was holding a weapon. Apparently, this was the best fashion in which to approach trading the book I carried for the book I wanted.
I did as 'instinct' instructed, and made the trade with Joshy, who produced the desired book from a drawer and replaced it with the one I provided had provided in such a sketchy, dangerous fashion. Then, as we went to leave -- the girl was still tagging along amiably -- Joshy teleported across the room, so as to still be between us and the door. He was laying on the floor, telling me about how 'dad ruptured our [him and his friend] eardrums yelling about the glory of god' -- a notion which, which a little bit of knowledge of Ian's father, would seem completely unbelievable. So, we left.
I released, took, and drank the water bottle off their 'porch'.
Not far from the apartment [about 10 feet], I realized that this was a somehow abridged version of the book I was apparently after -- Ender's Game -- bound to look like those Myst books I still have somewhere. So I wanted to turn back to get the real one [which I KNEW I had been holding at some point] but didn't do so.
Walking further, I realeased a water bottle that had been suspended, upside down, without a cap on it. This might seem unremarkable, except for the fact that it was still full. Apparently there was -- or at least this is what my mind figured out while I was drinking it -- an incredibly thin spider-web of wax over the mouth of the bottle which, combined with surface tension, was enough to hold the water inside.
By squeezing the bottle enough to blow that tension and split the web [also squirting a little water out in a fine mist, which I remember vividly] I was able to start -- and promptly finish -- drinking the water.
I won't go into the details of what happened next, mostly because the 'reality' of my dream began to flicker as I started to wake up -- and I woke up extremely thirsty, parched to the point that I could not have gone right back to sleep.

And here I was told that alcohol inhibited the dreaming process.

I am still quite alive, actually, despite having some rather strange dreams this morning and a small shiner under my right eye [it's going away].

How has everyone been?

protokol_4 thanked me for posting Flaming Lips lyrics in her entry. Here are some more. You may thank me individually, or en masse. You may thank me in the form of check or money order, or you may name any of your first three children or the religion you start for tax evasion purposes after me. (Oddysme Thompson? Oddysmeism?)

'Bad Days', by The Flaming Lips (this song was in the movie Batman Forever)

You're sorta stuck where you are.
But in your dreams you can buy expensive cars,
or live on Mars and have it your way.

And you hate your boss at your job.
Well in your dreams, you can blow his head off.
In your dreams,
show no mercy.

And all your bad days will end.
And all your bad days will end.
You have to sleep late when you can.
And all your bad days will end (repeat).

imagine if everything you've ever known was all just a dream.
Imagine if the only person you ever loved turned out to be someone you didn't expect?
Imagine if the world was flat like the old days, and you could travel just by folding the map.

I had a dream about large fuzzy black spider. The fuzzy black spider was living in a spider-hammock on my best friend's porch. It was about the size and shape of my hands if you put them wrist to wrist, in apposing directions. My friend, his mother, and I were trying to figure out how to get the huge, violent spider to stop swinging back and forth in it's hammock so that we could take it to see a movie with us. It had no eyes or mouth. The lack of these organs only made it appear to pose a greater threat that I still cannot seem to understand.

Leave tomorrow at the door….forget about our yesterdays
Wipe your feet, we’ll call it even….and let’s sleep away tomorrow.
Congratulations on all the miscommunications
Of all the words you never said.
I’m waiting so patiently for the phone to ring
Knowing it never will.
And why do I go through such pain
Just watching you and it’s your turn
But you’re not even in the game.
Sleep only comes when I forget you ever were
To exist is only to breathe you
And I’m not even living.
Tell me why do I end up with all these stitches
After remembering you and biting down
So hard
On all the unanswered wishes.

I was sleeping - surprise -- and I had an outlandish dream, as is my habit.

One thing I specifically remember, however, was that in the midst of this dream, there was almost philosophical conversation about, how about that, means of warfare, which stemmed into another about progress.

The notion was that at the their times of origin, most means of waging war were treated far differently. For example, historically, when guns were first invented, they were not the sleek, dangerous, all-too-easy-to-use weapons of today. They required precise skill, planning, strategy.. I will not argue for their application but there was definitely something to be said for a necessary modicum of skill.
Same with the swords of Japan's samurai -- combat was not just wanton throwdown.

Eventually, even the invention of rockets went through this phase, but somewhere along the lines, we shed whatever small reverence we had for the new -- and started growing by leaps and bounds.

We create things before we wholly know what to do with them -- and already someone 5 years younger with 3 doctorates is working on the next generation down the line. I'm not opposed to progress in the least -- quite frankly I'd almost rather have been born 40 years after I was -- but it's still interesting to notice how discovery these days is as much a means to an end, as it is a revered pursuit.

Now ordinarily I would not post this, but for the fact that most all of this came up in my dream, in conversation with people I know.

It often seems to me that my life has become so surreal that dreaming slumbers are more cohesive than my waking moments.

THE KEY TO MY HEART:
👁 the key to my heart and a rotting autumn leaf

( ...and the meaning behind it:Collapse )