Two Vivid Dreams

Last night I had two dreams which can be included in larger catergories of dreams that I often have: a dream about my father, and a dream about a hypothetical fantasy/sci-fi world.

My father: We were living in a wooded suburb. I was playing video games. I was afraid that my father was going to come home and be drunk. He came home, and indeed he was drunk. He gave me ownership of a house not far from his own. I ran to my house frantically, desperately praying that he would not follow me. When I got there I locked all the doors. I was afraid that he would have a key, and that he would be able to unlock the doors; fortunately, all the doors had deadbolts and chain locks that couldn't be accessed from outside. As I locked the front door, I was terrified that he would enter in by the back. When I got to the back door (off the kitchen) and finally got it locked, I felt the greatest relief. I felt very safe for a moment. Then I realized that he might be trying to get in through a window, so, much more calmly, I set about locking the window and closing all the shades. I knew that once I did that I would feel greatly secure.

This dream was scary, but it was much more preferable to the ones where he is chasing me with a chainsaw or an ax (re: The Shining), 'cause then locking the doors is no help at all; you just have to keep running. It still amazes me just how much my relationship with my father has impacted my life, and how much I fear and hate him.

Fantasy Dream: I personally was not in this dream. It took place in a utopian society, where the technology was environmentally clean, and the people dressed like they were out of Xena or something like that. A happy people, overall, but for some reason they were having a civil war. It was difficult, because very tiny floating vehicles were trying to fight these huge monoliths. However, the people with the tiny ships built their own huge monolith (re: Big O) and just totally wiped out the other side. After this happened peace was restored, and the rest of the story became clear. It seems that the people of this race live forever, or at least a very long time. As they age they get very big, like huge giants if they have been alive for a very long time, and if they meet certain conditions; you can only become giant if you have a lot of contact with a giant, first visually, and eventually a patronage from that giant. The problem is that the smaller people breed just as fast as humans, and so great population problems were arising. This caused practical problems of feeding and such, but there was also the problem of making it very difficult for people to have any contact with the giants, and thus the race was staying small and stagnant. They needed to kill off some of the long-lived giants, especially the ones which had become irrelevent to society. The ones they killed off were like these giant war-like statues. The ones that lived were much more human seeming; one that I saw was an old bearded white guy (re: Gandalf in Lord of the Rings), with a large staff and a rainbow headscarf. He was not a perfect person, but he was alot better than the ones that died off. Alot of the smaller guys were killed off in the war too, so things were much easier for everyone, and one small woman was so excited, saying "I can see him! I can see him! I can finally see him!" He looked surprised at being able to be seen.

This dream seems to be symbolic, certainly. Alot of the over-riding principles of my life have become irrelevent, and I'm stagnating. I need to make way for smaller, less developed ideas to eventually gain strength and power so that they can eventually have more significance and power in my life, and I need them to be connected only to those already established principles that are positive, not destructive. Also, I need to be more selective about which of my smaller ideas I keep around, and which I let die out.

After fifteen minutes nobody looks at a rainbow. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

so true

smoking

I started smoking again. I could feel that old feeling, that blissful deadness, taking over me again. I wanted it, I enjoyed it, but I can't afford it: I have too much that I need to do. So I started smoking again. Oh well...

Going for a Swim...

Last night I dreamed that I was taking swimming instruction at the college. I had taken the first two courses, but that was a long time ago, and I had forgotten what all we covered, and what class I would need to take next.

The instructor was this black guy, a little bit fem. He wanted to let me in the class, but he was worried, because he remembered me, and knew that some of my behavior was a little...inappropriate, not up to standards, like I was always leaving my shoes and clothes in the middle of everything, and there were other protocols that I wasn't following. I promised him that I wouldn't forget, and that I would try really hard to learn all the rules if he would let me in the class. He was like "oh, I won't let you forget", making it clear that he was gonna be riding my ass about it all quarter long. I was nervous about not having my shit together enough to take this higher level swimming course, which was much more serious than the other ones I had taken.

In the dream I was thinking that swimming was the ideal excercise, because you can do it at any age. Like, you can even be born in the water, and it's easeir for old people to swim than to do other kinds of excercise, because it puts less stress on the body. I figured it was a good skill to learn.

I've always interpreted dreams about water to be about emotion and the subconscious. Interesting that yesterday I was writing here that I wanted to explore a deeper level of my subconscious. Well, this dream seems to be saying that, that option is open to me, but I gotta get my shit together a little bit more if I want to do it: this is more serious than before, and requires more effort, more focus and committment, more structure and practice. I can't just mess around like I did before and hope to make any real progress.

Actually though, I don't think I really have time to delve too deeply into my subconscious. I seem to be getting a good deal of satisfaction out of this more superficial understanding. I'll wait until later, when I have less to do in my conscious life, to delve deeply into my unconscious mind. I imagine, actually, that that is what I'll end up doing in my old age.

I had...a not too great weekend. I went down to cincinnati with a friend who had business down there. I'm not completely sure, but I think that on Saturday I acted-out more frequently, with the greatest number of people, doing the greatest variety of things than in any other 24 hour period: and this just after I had vowed to limit my acting out to solitary mastrabation, like, just after.

I really don't know how I'm going to fix this problem. It really is starting to feel like I don't have control over it, like, I think that perhaps I really am begining to understand the 1st step in the whole 12-step thing ("We admitted we were powerless over sexual compulsion -- that our lives had become unmanageable"). I want to start taking this SAA thing more seriously, but even thinking about causes me a great deal of suffering and pain.

This is starting to feel very serious. I thought that this seemed quite big and heavy before, but now...it's clear that I wasn't really getting how much this was impacting my life before.

On another note, I was thinking, while dreaming last night, that the dreams that I remember are not the real dreams. Like, I perceived that I had two levels (at least) of dreaming. The one that I remember is not especially far from my conscious mind, and my reactions, feelings, and thoughts in that state are usually quite similar to my waking reactions and thoughts; it's only the situations that I find myself in that are quite different. I never give up control of myself in these dreams.

The second level is...scarier. In these dreams...I am less myself. I hesitate as I'm typing because I'm really not sure what goes on in these dreams; they're not the ones I remember; but I got a taste of one, a quick glimpse, last night. It was just some animated animals, looking cute and playing games. It was terrifying. Why was it terryifying? Because my consciousness was not having any expression; I was not in control. It was cute right then, but if anything bad had happened then I wouldn't have been able to stop it. I brought myself to a more conscious level immediately.

I want to explore that level of my dream consciousness more, but It's scary. Perhaps that is a project that will have to wait until I'm more mentally stable.

On the other hand, all dreams are simply conscious reconstructions of subconscious mental activity anyway, so my whole perception of having "two levels" is just an interpretive impostion of my consciousness on something that I don't understand.

Gay

By the way, it turns out that I do have some sort of STD...what they call an NGU (non-gonnorial urethra infection). Also, the sobriety thing totally didn't work out. I had gotten to the point that I wasn't just feeling rageful at everone, but was actually seriously considering acting on my rage. Like, I was sitting in the computer lab, and there was this guy on his cell phone behind me, and eveything that he hated was "gay": "Oh man, that test was gay! That quesiton about the cats? What the fuck was up with that? That was so gay." I seriously wanted to hurt him. I was waiting for the elevator right when he was about to leave, and I tried to get the elevator door to close before he could get on, but unfortunatley he was not one of those wimpy elevator riders that is aftaid to push open the closing doors. On the way down I was really thinking of what I could do to hurt him in some way, or at least annoy him, or maybe just make him feel like shit. What I was fantasizing about at the most extreme was to take a straight razor and slice his throat: "Oh shit man, your fucking throat is cut, that's so fucking GAY. Oh man, you're covered in blood, that's so GAY." But that was impractical, so I was seriously thinking of more subtle ways to hurt him.

After that I was like "I'm just gonna act out." So I did, and I felt much calmer.

"Television precludes imagination; Imagination is its enemy. Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -Timothy Findley, canadian novelist and playwright.

That quote has nothing to do with what I'm about to write. I just like it.

I dreamed last night that it was my 19th birthday. I was gonna stage a concert in which I sang a buch of Kate Bush songs, and I was gonna hire Kate Bush to do the music and the background vocals. I was gonna pay her 700 dollars. I was trying to get everything arranged at the last minute, but then I realized that there were SO many things I forgot to take care of, and anyway, since when do I know how to sing professionally? (this was going to take place at a large outdoor arena). At the end I realized how incredibly immature I was. At the same time, a daughter of a friend of mine was having her first period. She was worried about blood coming out of her, but then she figured out that it was just her period.

Overall this was sort of a "coming of age" kind of thing, in which folks are growing up a bit, and realizing their past ignorance. I'm not surprised that I had this dream: I often feel like I have an exceptionally immature and unrealistic outlook on life....

list of reasons to not a/o

Allright: I'm having a hard time remembering why I don't want to act out, so I'm gonna list the reasons here.

1) I need to protect my body from diseases, and not give a disease to other people (rationally I should just practice "safe sex", but somehow that always gets forgotten, or thrown out the window when I'm in the middle of things).

2) Sex is the only way that I know how to connect with other people. The result of this is that I don't have any real friends or real intimacies with anyone. I am extremly lonely. The first step in curing this situation is to become sober, so that I am forced to connect with people in ways other than sexually.

3) I use sex as a cure-all for any "bad" feelings I have. The result of this is that I never confront or deal with those feelings, things never get resolved, and I never get closer to becoming metally/emotionally healthy.

4) My intense obsession with unrealistic, abusive sex, in fantasy or reality, makes normal, loving sex pretty much impossible. Because loving sex is an important part of a healthy relationship, this makes a healthy relationship pretty much impossible as well.

There are other reasons that I can't think of right now. I think that this is enough to get me through the rest of today though.

Money, Latte, Biology

I had a GREAT dream last night, but I totally don't remember it! When I woke up I was like "ooo, I gotta remember that one, that seemed meaningful." But now all I remember is that I went to the local american dive cafe ('bout three blocks from my house in reality) and ordered a latte, and the course packet for biology 113, from the preppy teenage girls behind the counter (in reality it's all, like, stodgy straight guys working there, plus some guy that I'm almost sort of dating a little bit). The latte was 4 dollars, which shocked the hell out of me, but I wanted it quite badly, and I didn't want to raise a fuss, so I paid it. After that I only had 2 dollars left in my wallet, which made me feel sad and worried :(

I enjoyed that part of the dream, but I don't think that it's especially interesting, except that it really closely mirrored my feelings about money in reality. Like, every time I spend any money i always feel that worried, sad feeling. I hate spending money. I wish I could remember the part that did feel meaningful...something to do with being a stranger, or maybe just strange....

Also, I do have to take some science soon, so maybe next quarter I will take biology 113, which is the introductory course for science majors. I'm not a science major, but if I get the idea in my head that a certain higher level science course looks interesting to me then I would hate to be restricted from taking it by not having the proper pre-requisites.

Skinny Italian, Milky White Discharge

Oh I am tired. I drank a little bit last night. I met this guy at the bar that I've had a crush on for...years, literally. He's ultra skinny, with rather severe features, a little hitler-style moustache, and usually very tight clothes, very often a full suit. He used to ride the same bus as me in the morning when I worked downtown, and he always turned me on. I had never talked to him before though, not before last night.

Yeah, we fucked all night...maybe even made love for a minute there. Even though I had already cum that day, I was able to do so again, which is a testament to how much this guy turns me on.

He wants to see me again. I don't think it's a good idea to get too heavily involved with someone right now, 'cause I got my own problems to deal with, but I do look forward to hanging out with him again. I don't know alot about him...he's Italian, a Scorpio, 42 years old, works in finance, into dominance games, rather well-read...I don't know. We seem to have a fair amount to talk about, and the sex is pretty damn good, so that should be enough, right?

The most depressing thing about today is that I realized that I probably have some sort of vernereal disease, 'cause I got some sort of milky white discharge coming out of my dick. Not alot, but when I wake up in the morning there's a little bit underneath my foreskin. At first I just thought it was smegma, but It seems different, and I think it's increasing. Also, my dick is a little irraitated in sore, in a way that reminds me of a urninary tract infection. In fact, I thought I did have one of those for awhile, but coupled with the discharge it's probably a disease. From what we did, I doubt if I gave it to the Skinny Italian, but I'm gonna have to find out what I got, then tell him, and then we'll either not have sex again for awhile, or he'll want nothing more to do with me :(

Really, this is sort of a sign of how out-of-control and unmanageable my sexually addiction has gotten, where I don't even take the most basic of health precautions when It comes to sexual contact. I didn't use any protection with the Skinny Italian last night, and I really don't know anything about him. I think that this means that I'm gonna have to make a more serious attempt at becoming sexually sober. I mean, I can't really have sex for awhile anyway now, so I might as well start now...

last night I dreamed that I went to church, the old church, which I used to go to as a child. The balaconies were huge, and there were just mass amounts of people there, of all ages and backgrounds and such. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to be there again, but I hung out just to see what would happen.

The preacher was this guy that in waking reality works at the human resources office for the OSU libraries, a black man with psychotically good memory. He was telling us all about how the church has been besieged by so many tragedies and problems over the past year, and that now, just when he thought that he had gotten everything budgeted properly, and that in the end everything was gonna turn out just fine, another tragedy has struck. But he's sure that we can deal with it, that god will see us through, and that it's still all part of god's plan.

He points to a pile of rubble on the sanctuary stage. I guess a tree had fallen through the wall, or a violent storm just knocked out part of the wall. But it's gonna be allright, the preacher tells us, as though he's trying to convince himself. The wall that's been busted is behind a curtain. He's gonna show it to us, so that we can see for ourselves what's going on, and draw our own conclusions. He opens the curtain, and it looks as though there is still a large, clear window there; that the wall had just been on the inside, and the tree knocked down the inner wall, but left the window. The window is huge, covering the whole wall, with a complex system of 1900's metal gratings over it. These are used to move the window back and forth, so that it becomes like a huge sliding door. The preacher does this, opening the church up to the outside. The street is there, but there's also many trees, green and pale in the very bright sunlight. It's so beautiful to me that I start to cry.

When I wake up, I think "That is the way it should be."

When i was about 12 I had a beautiful dream where I was walking through this church, the same one in today's dream, and there were vines growing all over the walls on the inside, even as we walked through, while we sang and played guitar, the vines were growing around us.

I think that the heart of my natural spirituality will expresses itself better in the green and trees than in the relgious institutions. Yes, I think that is the direction I should go.

piss, deja vu, relationships

I pissed in a man's mouth today. Not alot, but some. It felt really good, but I don's really see what he gets out of it. Yeah, it felt really good, very relaxing. We're gonna get together to do it again on Monday, and I'm gonna save myself, so that I have alot for him.

After we both came, and we were lying in bed, talking about this and that, I got the strongest sense of premonition, or as though I had dreamed it before. Have you ever had that feeling before? Where you could swear that the thing you are going through was something you've dreamed before? I used to get it all the time, and nowadays I get it...once every few months. I think that I know what causes it: exceptionally busy activity in the subconscious mind. Whatever I'm going through, for one reason or another, seems very important to my subconscious, and for a second a great deal of connecting and incorporating of information goes on in there, much in the way it does during REM sleep (hence the feeling that it was something that had been dreamed at an earlier date; for if I am awake, and I feel like I'm dreaming, then it must be a memory of a dream, 'cause I'm really not so crazy as to think I'm dreaming when I'm not). So it is clear to me that I am NOT dreaming the future, but that sometimes the present feels like a dream.

The reason this was important, this situation, is because this guy wants to get into a relationship with me, but I know it's an extremly bad idea. However, I'm sure that I'm going to do it anyway: I know this because I've done it before, and I know the signs; also, I know that I'm not yet strong enough to stand up to the psychological complexes that make me want to get into relationships with people that I'm not actually into.

Also, I took a sleeping pill last night (which I actually only do like...very rarely, like every three weeks lately), and sleeping pills interfere with normal REM functioning. Once your brain is free from the sleeping pill effect, the subconscious mind needs to make up for the REM sleep it didn't get. Usually it waits 'till you go back to sleep, and then sends an unusal amount of dreams your way. I guess it just decided to start early in my case. Actually, the last time I got this feeling was after I had quit taking sleeping pills after about 9 months of taking them every night; every day for about a week after I stopped taking them I would get that "I dreamed this before" feeling. That was when I figured out that that feeling was my subconscious mind becoming active again, for I had not had that feeling the whole time I had been taking the pills, and I was like "what's different now? Oh yeah, I stopped taking those pills."

Blue Morning Stillness

This morning, as I was waking up, I felt an amazing sense of calm. It was so...REAL. Actual calm. It looked like the scene in front of me was broken up horizontally into two sections, a pure white one on top, and on the bottom a color just a bit darker than true blue. The blue section took up a bit more space in my vision, but overall they were pretty equal in area. The line that divided the two sections was completely level. It reminded me of the sea, but it wasn't the sea, because it was completely still, with no movement at all.

The amazing thing about it was that I was not scared by that stillness; i really enjoyed it.

No graduate school for me....

I'm so sad right now. I just found out that to get into the OSU English Master's program you have to have a 3.85 GPA, and all I got is a 3.3. People are too smart, I just can't compete. I'm just going to have to accept the fact that I'm just not destined for a life in academia...

Well, there's probably hope for me...if I go to a lesser school or something...but...a master's degree is a lot of money to spend...if I can't get into a good school, then it won't lead to anything, and I'll have spent all that money just to amuse myself. I can't afford to just amuse myself.

Why do I have to be so poor!

I acted out a bit today...in rather inappropriate ways...I don't know where I'm going...I feel so lost...and empty...

I think about giving up the compulsive sex, but then something always happens to make me think "acting out is great! I should do it more often." Or at least that I don't want to give it up completely. Like, for example, over the weekend I got to have sex with two guys at once, which I haven't done in awhile. They were doing this thing where they had both their cocks in my mouth at once. It was great! I've been thinking about it alot...

But then all that day, before then and after then, I just felt so weird, so grey and pale, with no sense of pleasure at all. I think that the SCA people would say that instead of confronting my depression I was using sex to escape it. That's true. But is that really so bad?

I'm going to go see Doctor Ruth speak tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm getting nowhere: i'm completely confused by this "Dreams" story. I'll just have to read it again, only closer this time. What a drag...

Almost the New Moon...

I'm feeling quite crazy tonight. I think it's because I was so worried for the last week about this midterm in my Critical Theory class, and now that it's over, I'm having this crazy burst of energy. I did better than I expected...or, I think I did better than I thought I would do. I guess I'll find out when I get my grade...

I shouldn't think about that. It will just make me nervous all over again.

"but the rain only gets in sometimes/and the sun never leaves you alone..." -Jethro Tull

Now it is time to write a paper. I'm writing it on Timothy Findley's "Dreams", which kicks ass. I love a story that's confusing as hell.