CONQUER THE WORLD . . . ?
Well, Im in a pretty soul-grappling kind of mood right now - I feel like I need to get out there and conquer the world. And Im thinking it has a lot to do with the number of times Ive seen Brokeback Mountain (two so far; four as of next weekend), and that between that and my having taped every Jake interview for the last week (even including the two seconds of Heath interview that Joan Rivers just played on her "show" on the TV Guide channel [right before she referred to the movie as "Big Little-Bang at the KY Corral"]), Ive cried more in the last week than I have since high school. I really love that movie; its just so damn upsetting and it gets me every time. Well, I guess this is what The Notebook is like for straight people. And a week of having these sad feelings and being slightly sick culminated last night in this bizarre dream:
I was at work at Target, working over in the Consumables section, except it was totally different than in the real store: it seemed to end on the Electronics side in the crook of an L-shaped wall, in which were two alcoves for a men's and women's bathroom, with a four foot glazed concrete block wainscot and white plaster above, like in my high school. Tom, the security guard, was walking around with a glass bottle of Arizona iced tea, asked me if I wanted anything, and I said "no," and he went into the bathroom.
Customers were doing some shopping, when the lights suddenly went out and there was an anouncement that store was closing. People were confused and asked me what was going on, when I told them that we were closing early, at 6 pm, because it was Martin Luther King Jr Day. Everyone was flustered and mad, and left the store, angrily, except for this rude couple that started complaining about "we shouldnt be closing before they finished their shopping," etc, etc, and were browsing through ham hocks in a huge meat cooler against the L-shaped wall, to the right of the bathroom alcoves (this was a real couple that did the same thing to me in real life last Saturday, except in Electronics - there are no meat coolers at Target). So I tried to force them out, and they went, again, angrily, so I decided to go get Tom and tell him that [1] there were angry people in the store being rude and vaguely threatening, and [2] I did want something to drink.
So I leave the couple as they headed, reluctantly, back up to the front check lanes, and go into the "guy" alcove, and turn the corner around the prvacy wall, and suddenly find myself in this long hallway, tiled in the same glazed concrete block, the smooth surface of the plaster broken every ten feet or so with an oak-trimmed door or a window, and wide glassed doors led to a wide stairway down at the end on the left. It was the dream-version of my real life high school, although even as I walked down the hall I knew (y'know how sometimes in dreams you just "know" things?) that it was different because there'd been "improvements" done.
When I got to the staircase I started to climb up it, and found that I was then on the top floor, looking out through the glass doors (they were closed here) that I realized had always been locked when I went there (that didnt really happen), and that one of the "improvements" had been to finally unlock them and let the kids use the back stairs, that had been cut off because they led to totally different parts of the school (aka the hallway that leads to Target, apparently). But it was an odd feeling, like I wasnt supposed to be there, or like it was being okayed for me to be there by people that didnt understand I didnt want to be, or shouldnt have been, or it was dangerous to be, or something. It was odd, and unsettling, and part of what made my dream so freaky.
As I pass through these glass doors there are another pair of glass doors across the hall leading to a simpler staircase heading down (the staircase I remember us using when I went there [again, from my dream "memory" not real life]), and on the landing in front of it were three or four low, round armchairs occupied by three or four teachers having a conference, and between them was a yellow antique table lamp from my living room. I knew this was another "improvement" they'd done, bringing in the furniture for them to use - it had been forbidden when Id gone there.
I passed by the teachers, who took no notice of me despite my small wave, until I was almost out of their sight when one dignified looking woman noticed me and gasped. I almost stopped, but also almost ran, because it was another moment where I felt like I was in danger, or something was wrong despite everything seeming alright. But instead I kept going down the hall, at a slightly faster pace, looking around. Somehow I came upon the back entrance to the auditorium down that hall (the actual KenWest auditorium is across the entire school from that hallway [not that this is an actual representation of any hallway at KenWest - dreams are so weird]) and went in.
It wasnt like the actual auditorium - the "back entrance" off this hallway was another set of wide glass doors, no more than six feet across, which were wide open and inside was another back entrance to the stage; this one being more like forty feet across - an actual loading dock. But the prim, small glass doors were hiding that from the hallway, and only the people inside knew the doors were so big. There were torn curtains and ropes and random sheets of cloth hanging pell-mell from the catwalk, and everything was very dark, and shifting very slightly back and forth. The whole small-entrance-to-large-cavity-with-various-movement-and-things-hanging-in-the-way reminded me unpleasantly of a giant vagina - but that was only a momentary thought. Overall, it gave me even more of a sense of foreboding and I-shouldnt-be-here.
I realized that all the tabs and valances were hanging crooked, and completely torn and wrecked, and that the box of the auditorium was dark, and round, and everything was upholstered in dark burgandy-colored velvet; looking much more like a theatre than the actual Ken West auditorium does, and everything was slightly dirty and old. They were trying to "improve" this part of the school as well, but the auditorium was just moving waaay to much to let that happen easily. People were suddenly behind me somehow; sweaty stage hands in rags, a veritable crowd of musicians in tuxedos passing along down a surprisingly clean hallway between the glass doors and the loading door of the stage, and kids, obviously in one of the high school musicals, started climbing up on stage form the orchestra pit and crossing it to start a rehearsal.
I wandered through, looking up at the valanced being hoisted into place and corrected by the swearing stage hands, and then noticed Mike Riccio was part of the cast of the musical. I noticed him and immediately thought of everyone I could tell that I saw Mike, and all the people Mike would tell that he saw me, and who would be jealous they didnt see me, but he didnt see me afterall. Then I decided I needed to be leaving anyway (the forboding sense was incredible by now), and I think he noticed me then, as we passed, but I was almost to the end of the stage by then and didnt notice.
And then, as I was walking up the aisle, I passed Nikki Kibby and Karen Cowles sitting in the dark red seats, talking to each other and waiting for rehearsal to start - I "knew" they wanted to be in the show, but were only admitted as crew. They immediately saw me and started talking, and I tried to get away from the foreboding sense. I smiled at them and waved, and said nothing, but they reached out and grabbed me, and held on, and followed me as I escaped their grasp and ran out the rear entrance door of the theatre, which had somehow become the back of the theatre, and as I passed through the forty foot loading door, and past the narrow hallway, in which the whole cast was congregated looking at the call board, Mike looked at me directly in my eyes, and I dropped my gaze and ran through the little glass doors. Immediately, everything stopped shifting and moving, and I darted up the stairway I'd just come up, the newly opened one (which was somehow directly across from the aud now - I dont know what happened to the other staircase, although the hallway did still extend to my right), and turned only as I was almost at the next floor, and Nikki and Karen were stopped at the previous landing below me, grinning at me to stop and talk and hang out, and for the rick of not being trapped, I gave them another wave, smile, polite excuse, and darted away up the stairs. I dont know how the stairs went up now, considering I was on the top floor, but it was something like that.
I have all kinds of bizarre dreams in which things from my real life, like my house, or school, or work now I guess, are blown up and are huge and out of proportion and sometimes look like the "better" version of reality, because everything is basically the same, except its always bigger, or better, but also creepier and more unsettling.
I had a series of dreams once in which my house, which is already kinda large, was an all-out mansion, but it was the most terrible thing ever because the huge rooms were so beautiful and yet so dark that it was just unsettling, and the whole point of the dream was that my attic, which was the same style except three times as large as my real attic, was haunted, and there was this one little creepy place, under some boards, where I couldnt go because I knew it was haunted and I would die if I stood there too long, but I couldnt go anywhere else in the house because the haunted-ness (I guess) would get me anywhere I went so I may as well stay where I was by the source of it, where I might atleast find out something, but thats when I would always wake up, freaked out and looking at my real-life ceiling like something was up there.
I dont know if Im weird (Im working on it), or if my dreams are (working on that, too), but either way - what could that mean.
In other news, classes start tomorrow and Im not too excited - this is shaping up to be a difficult semester, and after paying tuition, I dont have any money left for buying textbooks. Please, dont anyone expect me to go out or eat food this semester - I cant afford it.
My mom went on vacation last Wednesday, and she's not going to be back until this Wednesday, during which I have to feed her cats. It turned from me feeding the cats into me basically living at the house for the first time since September enjoying the TV, computer, and food, but missing the warmth that I have in my little apartment but not in this huge drafty old house.
Which is why Ive spent so much time at the movies, seeing, well, one movie.
Jake, I swear . . .
Out -
I was at work at Target, working over in the Consumables section, except it was totally different than in the real store: it seemed to end on the Electronics side in the crook of an L-shaped wall, in which were two alcoves for a men's and women's bathroom, with a four foot glazed concrete block wainscot and white plaster above, like in my high school. Tom, the security guard, was walking around with a glass bottle of Arizona iced tea, asked me if I wanted anything, and I said "no," and he went into the bathroom.
Customers were doing some shopping, when the lights suddenly went out and there was an anouncement that store was closing. People were confused and asked me what was going on, when I told them that we were closing early, at 6 pm, because it was Martin Luther King Jr Day. Everyone was flustered and mad, and left the store, angrily, except for this rude couple that started complaining about "we shouldnt be closing before they finished their shopping," etc, etc, and were browsing through ham hocks in a huge meat cooler against the L-shaped wall, to the right of the bathroom alcoves (this was a real couple that did the same thing to me in real life last Saturday, except in Electronics - there are no meat coolers at Target). So I tried to force them out, and they went, again, angrily, so I decided to go get Tom and tell him that [1] there were angry people in the store being rude and vaguely threatening, and [2] I did want something to drink.
So I leave the couple as they headed, reluctantly, back up to the front check lanes, and go into the "guy" alcove, and turn the corner around the prvacy wall, and suddenly find myself in this long hallway, tiled in the same glazed concrete block, the smooth surface of the plaster broken every ten feet or so with an oak-trimmed door or a window, and wide glassed doors led to a wide stairway down at the end on the left. It was the dream-version of my real life high school, although even as I walked down the hall I knew (y'know how sometimes in dreams you just "know" things?) that it was different because there'd been "improvements" done.
When I got to the staircase I started to climb up it, and found that I was then on the top floor, looking out through the glass doors (they were closed here) that I realized had always been locked when I went there (that didnt really happen), and that one of the "improvements" had been to finally unlock them and let the kids use the back stairs, that had been cut off because they led to totally different parts of the school (aka the hallway that leads to Target, apparently). But it was an odd feeling, like I wasnt supposed to be there, or like it was being okayed for me to be there by people that didnt understand I didnt want to be, or shouldnt have been, or it was dangerous to be, or something. It was odd, and unsettling, and part of what made my dream so freaky.
As I pass through these glass doors there are another pair of glass doors across the hall leading to a simpler staircase heading down (the staircase I remember us using when I went there [again, from my dream "memory" not real life]), and on the landing in front of it were three or four low, round armchairs occupied by three or four teachers having a conference, and between them was a yellow antique table lamp from my living room. I knew this was another "improvement" they'd done, bringing in the furniture for them to use - it had been forbidden when Id gone there.
I passed by the teachers, who took no notice of me despite my small wave, until I was almost out of their sight when one dignified looking woman noticed me and gasped. I almost stopped, but also almost ran, because it was another moment where I felt like I was in danger, or something was wrong despite everything seeming alright. But instead I kept going down the hall, at a slightly faster pace, looking around. Somehow I came upon the back entrance to the auditorium down that hall (the actual KenWest auditorium is across the entire school from that hallway [not that this is an actual representation of any hallway at KenWest - dreams are so weird]) and went in.
It wasnt like the actual auditorium - the "back entrance" off this hallway was another set of wide glass doors, no more than six feet across, which were wide open and inside was another back entrance to the stage; this one being more like forty feet across - an actual loading dock. But the prim, small glass doors were hiding that from the hallway, and only the people inside knew the doors were so big. There were torn curtains and ropes and random sheets of cloth hanging pell-mell from the catwalk, and everything was very dark, and shifting very slightly back and forth. The whole small-entrance-to-large-cavity-with-various-movement-and-things-hanging-in-the-way reminded me unpleasantly of a giant vagina - but that was only a momentary thought. Overall, it gave me even more of a sense of foreboding and I-shouldnt-be-here.
I realized that all the tabs and valances were hanging crooked, and completely torn and wrecked, and that the box of the auditorium was dark, and round, and everything was upholstered in dark burgandy-colored velvet; looking much more like a theatre than the actual Ken West auditorium does, and everything was slightly dirty and old. They were trying to "improve" this part of the school as well, but the auditorium was just moving waaay to much to let that happen easily. People were suddenly behind me somehow; sweaty stage hands in rags, a veritable crowd of musicians in tuxedos passing along down a surprisingly clean hallway between the glass doors and the loading door of the stage, and kids, obviously in one of the high school musicals, started climbing up on stage form the orchestra pit and crossing it to start a rehearsal.
I wandered through, looking up at the valanced being hoisted into place and corrected by the swearing stage hands, and then noticed Mike Riccio was part of the cast of the musical. I noticed him and immediately thought of everyone I could tell that I saw Mike, and all the people Mike would tell that he saw me, and who would be jealous they didnt see me, but he didnt see me afterall. Then I decided I needed to be leaving anyway (the forboding sense was incredible by now), and I think he noticed me then, as we passed, but I was almost to the end of the stage by then and didnt notice.
And then, as I was walking up the aisle, I passed Nikki Kibby and Karen Cowles sitting in the dark red seats, talking to each other and waiting for rehearsal to start - I "knew" they wanted to be in the show, but were only admitted as crew. They immediately saw me and started talking, and I tried to get away from the foreboding sense. I smiled at them and waved, and said nothing, but they reached out and grabbed me, and held on, and followed me as I escaped their grasp and ran out the rear entrance door of the theatre, which had somehow become the back of the theatre, and as I passed through the forty foot loading door, and past the narrow hallway, in which the whole cast was congregated looking at the call board, Mike looked at me directly in my eyes, and I dropped my gaze and ran through the little glass doors. Immediately, everything stopped shifting and moving, and I darted up the stairway I'd just come up, the newly opened one (which was somehow directly across from the aud now - I dont know what happened to the other staircase, although the hallway did still extend to my right), and turned only as I was almost at the next floor, and Nikki and Karen were stopped at the previous landing below me, grinning at me to stop and talk and hang out, and for the rick of not being trapped, I gave them another wave, smile, polite excuse, and darted away up the stairs. I dont know how the stairs went up now, considering I was on the top floor, but it was something like that.
I have all kinds of bizarre dreams in which things from my real life, like my house, or school, or work now I guess, are blown up and are huge and out of proportion and sometimes look like the "better" version of reality, because everything is basically the same, except its always bigger, or better, but also creepier and more unsettling.
I had a series of dreams once in which my house, which is already kinda large, was an all-out mansion, but it was the most terrible thing ever because the huge rooms were so beautiful and yet so dark that it was just unsettling, and the whole point of the dream was that my attic, which was the same style except three times as large as my real attic, was haunted, and there was this one little creepy place, under some boards, where I couldnt go because I knew it was haunted and I would die if I stood there too long, but I couldnt go anywhere else in the house because the haunted-ness (I guess) would get me anywhere I went so I may as well stay where I was by the source of it, where I might atleast find out something, but thats when I would always wake up, freaked out and looking at my real-life ceiling like something was up there.
I dont know if Im weird (Im working on it), or if my dreams are (working on that, too), but either way - what could that mean.
In other news, classes start tomorrow and Im not too excited - this is shaping up to be a difficult semester, and after paying tuition, I dont have any money left for buying textbooks. Please, dont anyone expect me to go out or eat food this semester - I cant afford it.
My mom went on vacation last Wednesday, and she's not going to be back until this Wednesday, during which I have to feed her cats. It turned from me feeding the cats into me basically living at the house for the first time since September enjoying the TV, computer, and food, but missing the warmth that I have in my little apartment but not in this huge drafty old house.
Which is why Ive spent so much time at the movies, seeing, well, one movie.
Jake, I swear . . .
Out -