DUDE LIKE WOAH, part one.
You know, I just just thinking recently how irritating it was that I didn't have anything interesting to say on here, mostly because I've been so busy and dealing with so much that I haven't had proper time for contemplation. Having to set aside some of my loftier goals to address those ever present mundane problems means that I've felt rather ancy and shallow the past fews weeks. Appearently, my subconcious agreed. Or *something*. Because, uh, wow, I had a holy shit experience this morning. Cut for those who wouldn't want to read about pyschic dreams, Magic, death and all around weird shit.
To preface, I'm going to make an assumption that most of the people on my flist now what it feels like to have a Dream Of Import (a real Doi moment). Mainly, one where you wake up and realize that whatever you just experienced, whether you remember it or not, had some sort of message in it. Precognitive, symbolic, empathic, whatever . . . but is was one of *those*.
Now kick that feeling up. By a lot.
It was like my subconcious had been trying to get something across to me, nudging the dial of 'Hey, pay attention!' up little by little, until one frustrated nocker in my head went "Well, fuck it, she's being a retard," and spun that knob to the screaming whistles, flashing lights and Danger! Danger! zone.
The set up for the dream wasn't terribly out of the ordinary, if slightly more coherent and linear than usual. Post-apocolyptic zombie nightmare, take one million and one. Me and other survivors stuck in a warehouse, with a big fence that kept the ravening hoardes out. Pretty standard pseudo nightmare setting. Normally, I'd be raving about the dream istself, because it was already charged with something-- a mused-touched dream that would make a really fucking awesome short story or graphic novel. Alas, it was overshadowed.
At the end of the dream, there was of course the zombie movie scene where things fall apart, the defenses fail, and lots of people die. At this point, I would normally wake up in fright. Because, you know, getting torn apart by zombies isn't fun. But there was something about it I didn't want to be over with, something I was waiting for. I stuck with it, exerted enough will to 'fast forward' the dream, because I didn't want to die that way, and because . . . well, I had to. At the end of the fight, I was the last one standing out of everyone there, except for one creepy isolationist guy we'd found living in our backyard who was actually a badass. Yeah, lots of zombie cliche. And adding to that, the government immediatly showed up, put us into quarantine, and took us somewhere safe.
Unfortunatly, all was not well . . . I had suffered a zombie-scratch on my left arm, and knew I was infected. The other guy knew as well.
At this point there was an interlude, where I woke up in dream and was actually told that the story wasn't finished, and I needed to go back; a place between waking and REM sleep where I could go either way.
This level of awareness of a storyline is incredibly bizzare for me, and the level of control I exerted to rework events and keep myself in that dream is unprecedented. I don't *do* that stuff. I am not a lucid dreamer . . . once in a while I can change a small thing, but for tyhe most part, dreaming for me is an excercise in constant ADHD frustration as I am swept from event to event without control or purpose.
This time, I was able to conciously choose where- and when- I wanted/needed to be.
I was in 'safe' city the goverment had set up for us. I was walking with the other survivor. I had a gun in my hand, and I was going to kill myself, so that the city wouldn't be threatened. I remember feeling dizzy and out of touch, the infection taking hold. The man was councilling me in what I had to do . . . saying that I should say goodbye now, so things would be easier for me. I fast forwarded through this, too, not wanting to go through the grief of explaining what I had to do to those I cared about. And then I was sitting in a room, on a couch, with the guy talking soothingly to me, staring at the gun in fear. The scratch was aching terribly.
Red flag number two. I am not a selfless person when I dream, especially not in nightmares. My own survival is priority number fucking one. I do not put myself in positions where I can get killed (though I often am anyway). I run, I betray, I trick, I flee, I do whatever it takes. And I don't suffer, usually . . . it's those *around* me that do, those I care about and don't want to see hurt. They die, I don't.
Not in this case, appearently. This is really where that sense of importance manifested. I was trying to work up the courage to shoot myself in the head and not burst into tears while he talked me through it. I knew that I had to do it, but well, suicide and all is a pretty big fucking deal. I can't remember what the guy was talking about . . . it's one of the only things that I *don't* remember about this point in the dream. The gun was actually a toy gun built out of matte grey plastic with s little red cap on the end, shaped like one of those Nazi pistols that I should know the name of but don't (though it could still kill me good and dead). The couch was bulky and smelled musty, with scratchy yellow and brown cuchions and a square, straight back with wood accents. I remember what I could see out the window, what the walls were painted, the color and texture of the carpet, the song that was stuck in my head on one of the back burners of thought. It was utterly and surreally clear.
And then I got through it the same way I get through anything really frightening action-- after a lot of side stepping and delaying, I do it without thinking.
And I blew my brains all over the wall. There was an immediate disconnection between what I felt physically and what I was perceiving, though my vision didn't go dark, and a sensation of sound without hearing it, because, well, my ear was now located somethere inside my skull. I remember the moment it happened simultanious trains of thought-- "Wow, that really *was* painless" and "Huh, arterial blood really is that fake-looking red" before I toppled over onto the floor. I couldn't move, just stare at the edge of the couch. The guy was still talking, saying soothing things . . . it was actualy not scary at all, just peaceful. I was ready. And then all of the various patterns of thought and million constant voices began going quiet, and that song that had been stuck in the back of my head rose the the forefront as my vision went dark. My body was shutting down, all the background noise was shutting down, and I was just left with me, that bare essential I that percieves self. The song became all that I heard . . .it was actually a remix, a perfect blend of Lenny Kravitz's "Fly" and a Seal song.
"Fly, fly away . . ." And I felt myself *lift* . . .
. . . right into my physical body as I opened my eyes, in bed, at dawn.
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
I've died in many dreams before, but never ANYTHING as visceral or real as that. Normally it's like dying in a videogame. There is panic and terror, then sudden disconnection, then black screen and a reset dream. This was very, very diffrent. This was DEATH. *Every* bit of sixth sense and intuition was ringing with the echo of that. It wasn't just the clarity of the dream, but the . . . the POWER behind it. For all intents and purposes, I *died*. Metaphorically, maybe, but it was metaphor as a goddamn sledgehammer to the forehead.
As I am, in fact, a total spaz, cue panicking and "OH MY GOD IT'S A SIGN I'M TOTALLY GOING TO DIE TODAY BLAAAHGHHH!" and royally missing the point. I am not usually my clearest after a regular dream, let alone a muse touched one, let alone . . . THAT. After about fifteen minutes of freaking the fuck out, I calmed myself down enough to realize I was taking things *far* too literally, and needed to think in more archtypical terms. I was still too blurry and overwhelmed to make sense of things without some sort of guide. I used the Oracle to help a little bit, though tarot would have worked too, since I was already obviously working heavily in symbols. I'd already made the connection of massive poigant death= equal change. First card: Laiste, which makes perfect fucking sense, since she often sends, you know, PYSCHIC DREAMS and all. I figure the toy gun was hers. Pulled one for what I might have been working through subconciously before going to sleep, and what it meant, which actually turned out to be a cautionary card, preparing me for whatever the real answer was: Gloominous Doom.
Uh, okay. Self pity? What? And then I read the desciption more carefully. Specifically the part about making massive changes in self perception.
*Oh*.
And then it all came together, I pulled through the last few threads, and it all made a supreme amount of fucking sense. And the revelation, I'm afraid, will have to wait for another post, because that one is also going to be hugely long.
Je-sus. What a massive boot to the head.
Yeah . . . I'm wearing my Death of the Endless tee-shirt today.
To preface, I'm going to make an assumption that most of the people on my flist now what it feels like to have a Dream Of Import (a real Doi moment). Mainly, one where you wake up and realize that whatever you just experienced, whether you remember it or not, had some sort of message in it. Precognitive, symbolic, empathic, whatever . . . but is was one of *those*.
Now kick that feeling up. By a lot.
It was like my subconcious had been trying to get something across to me, nudging the dial of 'Hey, pay attention!' up little by little, until one frustrated nocker in my head went "Well, fuck it, she's being a retard," and spun that knob to the screaming whistles, flashing lights and Danger! Danger! zone.
The set up for the dream wasn't terribly out of the ordinary, if slightly more coherent and linear than usual. Post-apocolyptic zombie nightmare, take one million and one. Me and other survivors stuck in a warehouse, with a big fence that kept the ravening hoardes out. Pretty standard pseudo nightmare setting. Normally, I'd be raving about the dream istself, because it was already charged with something-- a mused-touched dream that would make a really fucking awesome short story or graphic novel. Alas, it was overshadowed.
At the end of the dream, there was of course the zombie movie scene where things fall apart, the defenses fail, and lots of people die. At this point, I would normally wake up in fright. Because, you know, getting torn apart by zombies isn't fun. But there was something about it I didn't want to be over with, something I was waiting for. I stuck with it, exerted enough will to 'fast forward' the dream, because I didn't want to die that way, and because . . . well, I had to. At the end of the fight, I was the last one standing out of everyone there, except for one creepy isolationist guy we'd found living in our backyard who was actually a badass. Yeah, lots of zombie cliche. And adding to that, the government immediatly showed up, put us into quarantine, and took us somewhere safe.
Unfortunatly, all was not well . . . I had suffered a zombie-scratch on my left arm, and knew I was infected. The other guy knew as well.
At this point there was an interlude, where I woke up in dream and was actually told that the story wasn't finished, and I needed to go back; a place between waking and REM sleep where I could go either way.
This level of awareness of a storyline is incredibly bizzare for me, and the level of control I exerted to rework events and keep myself in that dream is unprecedented. I don't *do* that stuff. I am not a lucid dreamer . . . once in a while I can change a small thing, but for tyhe most part, dreaming for me is an excercise in constant ADHD frustration as I am swept from event to event without control or purpose.
This time, I was able to conciously choose where- and when- I wanted/needed to be.
I was in 'safe' city the goverment had set up for us. I was walking with the other survivor. I had a gun in my hand, and I was going to kill myself, so that the city wouldn't be threatened. I remember feeling dizzy and out of touch, the infection taking hold. The man was councilling me in what I had to do . . . saying that I should say goodbye now, so things would be easier for me. I fast forwarded through this, too, not wanting to go through the grief of explaining what I had to do to those I cared about. And then I was sitting in a room, on a couch, with the guy talking soothingly to me, staring at the gun in fear. The scratch was aching terribly.
Red flag number two. I am not a selfless person when I dream, especially not in nightmares. My own survival is priority number fucking one. I do not put myself in positions where I can get killed (though I often am anyway). I run, I betray, I trick, I flee, I do whatever it takes. And I don't suffer, usually . . . it's those *around* me that do, those I care about and don't want to see hurt. They die, I don't.
Not in this case, appearently. This is really where that sense of importance manifested. I was trying to work up the courage to shoot myself in the head and not burst into tears while he talked me through it. I knew that I had to do it, but well, suicide and all is a pretty big fucking deal. I can't remember what the guy was talking about . . . it's one of the only things that I *don't* remember about this point in the dream. The gun was actually a toy gun built out of matte grey plastic with s little red cap on the end, shaped like one of those Nazi pistols that I should know the name of but don't (though it could still kill me good and dead). The couch was bulky and smelled musty, with scratchy yellow and brown cuchions and a square, straight back with wood accents. I remember what I could see out the window, what the walls were painted, the color and texture of the carpet, the song that was stuck in my head on one of the back burners of thought. It was utterly and surreally clear.
And then I got through it the same way I get through anything really frightening action-- after a lot of side stepping and delaying, I do it without thinking.
And I blew my brains all over the wall. There was an immediate disconnection between what I felt physically and what I was perceiving, though my vision didn't go dark, and a sensation of sound without hearing it, because, well, my ear was now located somethere inside my skull. I remember the moment it happened simultanious trains of thought-- "Wow, that really *was* painless" and "Huh, arterial blood really is that fake-looking red" before I toppled over onto the floor. I couldn't move, just stare at the edge of the couch. The guy was still talking, saying soothing things . . . it was actualy not scary at all, just peaceful. I was ready. And then all of the various patterns of thought and million constant voices began going quiet, and that song that had been stuck in the back of my head rose the the forefront as my vision went dark. My body was shutting down, all the background noise was shutting down, and I was just left with me, that bare essential I that percieves self. The song became all that I heard . . .it was actually a remix, a perfect blend of Lenny Kravitz's "Fly" and a Seal song.
"Fly, fly away . . ." And I felt myself *lift* . . .
. . . right into my physical body as I opened my eyes, in bed, at dawn.
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
I've died in many dreams before, but never ANYTHING as visceral or real as that. Normally it's like dying in a videogame. There is panic and terror, then sudden disconnection, then black screen and a reset dream. This was very, very diffrent. This was DEATH. *Every* bit of sixth sense and intuition was ringing with the echo of that. It wasn't just the clarity of the dream, but the . . . the POWER behind it. For all intents and purposes, I *died*. Metaphorically, maybe, but it was metaphor as a goddamn sledgehammer to the forehead.
As I am, in fact, a total spaz, cue panicking and "OH MY GOD IT'S A SIGN I'M TOTALLY GOING TO DIE TODAY BLAAAHGHHH!" and royally missing the point. I am not usually my clearest after a regular dream, let alone a muse touched one, let alone . . . THAT. After about fifteen minutes of freaking the fuck out, I calmed myself down enough to realize I was taking things *far* too literally, and needed to think in more archtypical terms. I was still too blurry and overwhelmed to make sense of things without some sort of guide. I used the Oracle to help a little bit, though tarot would have worked too, since I was already obviously working heavily in symbols. I'd already made the connection of massive poigant death= equal change. First card: Laiste, which makes perfect fucking sense, since she often sends, you know, PYSCHIC DREAMS and all. I figure the toy gun was hers. Pulled one for what I might have been working through subconciously before going to sleep, and what it meant, which actually turned out to be a cautionary card, preparing me for whatever the real answer was: Gloominous Doom.
Uh, okay. Self pity? What? And then I read the desciption more carefully. Specifically the part about making massive changes in self perception.
*Oh*.
And then it all came together, I pulled through the last few threads, and it all made a supreme amount of fucking sense. And the revelation, I'm afraid, will have to wait for another post, because that one is also going to be hugely long.
Je-sus. What a massive boot to the head.
Yeah . . . I'm wearing my Death of the Endless tee-shirt today.