dream 2006-05-18

Didn't remember this 'til midday, sitting at lunch in a kitschy restaurant. M'excusez, svp...

In a building, concrete walls, dark wooden doors; I walk through networks of halls with no windows. My mind identifies it as Winters res, but the one of these past years of dreams -- recognizeable and very different, all at once. Something is particularly different this time. As I walk, I encounter people I haven't seen in res since first year. For some reason, I'm apparently living in a different room than I remember -- not the room of this whole past year. And yet, my keycard... as I wonder, realization races down the empty hall and hits me: I am dreaming, the first time I know it is so!
So in this dream I live in a different room. What about my card? I try it on the door of my dream room, a theory already in mind. And, yes, it doesn't work! Now to test the rest of it: I rush to my "real" room -- someone else's in the dream -- and my card works there. I haven't actually broken completely free of the dream rules, moving omnipotently through and shaping the world, but I've still achieved a minor miracle, the changing of one small detail. I've created my own personal loophole.
Elsewhere in the halls, I encounter Armour, just like when he lived in res in first year. I'm excitedly telling him about all of it, and he accepts it all -- even the fact that he's just a part of my dream, and not the real Armourtime. He seems genuinely pleased for me that this has happened, but of course that's really my mind giving itself a pat on the back... which I guess is why he takes being told he's not real so well.
One other thought has been with me throughout the dream: it's interesting how this place IS res to me, but when I think about this, it's laid out nothing like the actual place... yet I've dreamed it before and know it well.

three steps

On the way to Downsview Stn., there's this concrete step-like structure built into the side of an artificial hill or berm next to the street. Three steps over a metre tall each. I have no idea what this structure is, as it doesn't have any signs or doors, or any visible machinery on or next to it. There are no buildings near it, either. My strongest memory of this place is seeing it from a passing bus while two girls standing near me spoke critically about an acquaintance of theirs. Today, over two years later, I glanced at those weird stairs, again from a bus, and realized that every time I do, the first thing that comes to mind is that overheard conversation, the details of this person's problems. It's almost as if the bizarre natures of this person and this thing have become one, each a representation of the same fundamental absurdity.

dream 2006-05-13

We hung out until the wee hours, and even they began to grow before sleep came. Only one image remained on waking, and the rest was just an impression.

Don't remember the context, but Armourtime is hanging out with a bunch of us in a place (his place?) that is almost, but not quite, like HomeFree. We're kind of bored, kind of restless, and so he produces a comb out of somewhere (probably nowhere) and combs my hair for maybe two seconds. I'm completely bewildered, and he just laughs. I know it's some kind of kindly joke, but I'm unsure as to the meaning.
We're all gathered in one place, and in the dream that seems strange, some kind of dangerous break from a life on the run. There's something that lurks below the surface in the waking world that has carte blanche in this dream place, and it's a different life altogether. Constant dull menace has replaced constant dull comfort.
We're in an apartment complex, making me think "Soviet Workers' Housing" even more than HomeFree already does. And yet, this tiny room is comfortable, if only because of the company, so I know this is important above all and to be nurtured... of course, right?

dreams 2006-05-06

I'm watching a video feed, overhead real-time bird's eye view of an outlying area of a Middle-Eastern city, most likely somewhere in Iraq. On a dirt road just outside the suburbs, a truck sits by the shoulder, a few armed men gathered around it. As someone, civilian, bicycles past along the otherwise empty road, I hear radio chatter and a missile streaks across the screen, narrowly missing the truck and the cyclist and exploding maybe ten metres away from the road in the desert. The cyclist pedals frantically to escape, but heavy machine-gun fire -- from offscreen, again, but a different direction -- blasts his body off the bike and sends it tumbling across the road. But why has this person been shot, and not the armed men? They had started running as soon as the missile struck, heading off the road towards the suburbs, going from one backyard to the next through gates, over fences and hedgerows. Now the machine-gun tracers follow them, blasting fences to bits, tearing gaping holes in anything they hit. And I realize that this is no Iraqi suburb any more; they're now running through the North American Suburb of Myth, the land of soccer and SUVs. I can tell the machine-gun fire must be coming from low-flying helicopters, and these people might as well be sheep for all those flying metal tanks may care... I see bodies getting ripped apart and tossed across backyards when struck by these rounds -- those guns are designed to take out light armoured vehicles, this I know! my God, my God... In one backyard, I swear I see a gunman run past a kid just playing, oblivious and happy, but then the tracers come -- no, how can this be? -- and both just ragdoll under the impact. Then I see one of the choppers fly overhead and hover -- it's an Apache, I think mechanically: 24 missiles to unleash the very fire of hell, and a 30mm automatic cannon besides. The gunner looks around, the gun automatically pointing wherever the gear on his helmet faces; just look, press button, slaughter. Two people try to hide under a picnic table; he just looks down, gun swivels, brrrraap, they're gone.
Now the video feed is coming from a camera on the ground; marines are charging down the streets, bursting into house after house, this horrible pursuit now being taken to the next stage. It's madness and death everywhere, and I can't even believe I'm still watching.
But then the video stops and I'm sitting and talking with an Arab guy my age; he's weary and sad, but hasn't totally given up on the world yet -- he's trying to get through to me, at any rate, but I'm just reeling after all of this. "Everyone's raised to think that their people are the good guys," is all I manage to say. His expression is moral pity, but not any sympathy for me -- I should still know what's right, he seems to be telling me...

dreams 2006-05-04

The southern shores of the now-wide, clear, sparkling, free-of-pollution Ottawa River near my house, boasting a stretch of well-used beach, a sunny summer tourist playground. And it's not Ottawa, or somehow we're bordering France; I can walk across the border from where I stand watching, a dozen or so metres from the shore -- and my heart full of fear, for I have in my hands a secret list of a half-dozen nations that France plans to invade imminently, and sure enough Canada is on it. However can we stop this expansion of a New French Empire?
Now turning away from the water and looking uphill, I'm walking away from the familiar Camp Opemikon Beach, and there's the dining hall at the top of the slope. My mother is here, organizing something, giving orders, and I'm totally out of the loop. Then a grey military twin-engine propellor plane flies over, shit, that was low. My mom is talking on radio to the pilot, telling him to come around for another pass, but lower this time. I'm getting nervous, more nervous every second, as the plane banks tightly and rustles the top branches of the forest around the camp. Again, lower! "That's too dangerous," I'm yelling but she won't listen to me, and now it's too late as the plane is flying over, too low, its wings clip the tops of trees and get sheared off by the trunks, then the fuselage ploughs through the forest and into the ground not even 100 metres away, a tangle of metal shards and wooden splinters. I'm shocked, horrified, they must all be dead, I think. I rage at my mother, who doesn't seem bothered. Then I see one figure in a messy flight suit struggle, hurt, out of the crashed plane. I run over to meet him and end up walking with him up the hill to the dining hall basement entrance 'round back. I'm still furious at my mom, talking wildly while the airman limps in silence, but before going inside he turns to me and says angrily, "Don't expect me to help you with this."

Elsewhere, a militiaman, rebellion fighter, war-weary sniper is setting up in a highrise, hunkered down and virtually invisible from outside in his abandoned apartment perch.
Then I'm in a military helicopter, flying over the city, watching a grinning, don't-give-a-shit maniac soldier traversing his heavy machine gun pointed out the side door, across the city, and letting off bursts of fearsomely powerful belt-fed rounds, rattling their way out of a giant military-green ammo crate, across the chopper floor, and into his monstrous weapon. Two loud clangs of high-velocity metal impact, two holes invisibly punched in the crate, smoke trailing out -- it's the sniper! It's gonna explode, I think, and apparently he does too, as he lets go of the murder weapon and rushes to the ammo crate, fumbling with it. What the hell is he doing? I wonder, then I see four giant bolts on the corners are now unfastened and, heave, he dumps it out the side door. It lands on a main road, skidding, sparking, into an intersection. I look on expectantly, waiting for the explosion I'm sure will come. The gunner seems unconcerned. A beaten-up bus has shuddered to a stop practically on top of the crate and I fear tragedy, but it doesn't blow and we fly beyond view.

Somewhere in the wilderness, in the merging of the Ottawa Valley and the Canadian Shield, I'm climbing a narrow path up the side of a valley. As I reach the forest at the top, there lies stretched out before me the river inlet at the valley's bottom, then at one end the lake that spreads further, into the distance. A crowd has gathered on the rocky peninsula on the far side, and the sun glitters on river and lake. This is no deserted wilderness, people dot either side of the valley -- I passed many on my way up here, and here I want to stay...

Even earlier, a vague dream forgotten til mid-afternoon: I start out in a York-CIA architechtural mash-up... in the maintenance tunnels I remember from otherwise-forgotten dreams, not York tunnels, but something totally other. Still dark and possibly dangerous, but more MY tunnels than Theo's at York, strangely (but familiar I guess because I've dreamed these several times). I'm in there with a friend, don't remember who, we're exploring when we hear people behind us talking -- we're caught, it's maintenance/security/doesn't-matter cause we're screwed. We book it and try a side door to hide or get above...
Then not long after, we're rushing through the tunnels once more, when we hear the voices again and it's too late, they're upon us, but we see them up close and it's just two random dudes, explorers like us; we nod in greeting and move on.
Later, I'm above, on my own, in and out of the buildings and grounds of the complex at nighttime. There's some kind of event going on, perhaps a gala -- I'm near the fringes of the activities. I encounter several well-dressed middle-aged folks, People With Credentials no doubt, but they're all pretty inebriated by this point. After speaking with a pair of them I come into posession of 16mm film canisters containing footage that would be utterly, undeniably damning to the current government should it be made public. My civic, moral duty is clear, but I know I'm in grave danger from ruthless power-mad officials and their conscience-less agents. I try to figure out some way to hide this thing, keep it safe, stay free, and get the truth out...

dreams 2006-05-03

I'm taken out of my age-context, transplanted into high school library dreams. First, exploration of the unfinished building: high up in the metal roof beams, and no false ceiling to hide me. I don't feel alone or afraid; I'm sure that if I look around or call out, brilliant mad Theo will appear, eyes alight with the thrill of unsanctioned discovery.
--later, brief snippets of leafing through someone's forgotten CD slipcase binders, lots of selection... somewhere in the reference section...
Then, inside the finished library, discussing the pros and cons of the multimedia section with Rachel B. and the Doctor; "they're always scratched, every time," I complain, meaning the CDs (and really dreamthinking of SMIL). As Rachel speaks, I see it on a table, this book I didn't know existed. And how can this be? The Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band have written a book! A young music fan's primer to religio-political conspiracies (mysterious, morally ambiguous, long-dead popes and cabals of the power-hungry), all told through a musician's lens, complete with photos -- PHOTOS! I look to see if I can find a picture of the mysterious Efrim. The Doctor and I are enthralled; he's raving about their new album that's coming out soon in the dreamworld, and I suggest pooling our resources of rare music, and even Rachel is interested by this book -- apparently she's heard of them...
Earlier, vague memories of hangouts in a row of student-ghetto houses along a quiet midtown street, journeys back and forth between the different buildings along the sidewalk or through the backyard, it doesn't matter which. Another wishful hipster community dream.

the yellow corvette

It's strange, the kind of things we believe when we're young. We come up with some interesting notions, seemingly out of nowhere -- at least, to an adult. They seem like the best answers at the time, however. Sometimes, we believe them for years. It wasn't until she began driving lessons that my mom realized that a painted "X" on a road doesn't, in fact, mark where someone was killed. However, she could forgive herself, as her father had told her that story when she was young and impressionable.
I didn't have the excuse of a mischievous parent.
Perhaps it was a strange coincidence in my home town, but something struck me as odd as I sat on the toilet one day many years ago (this was where I did most of my deep thinking and, coincidentally, most of my trying of my mother's patience). I thought to myself, why didn't I see any yellow cars on the street? Oh sure, there was the occasional car or truck owned by the city or the newspaper or some other company, but I couldn't recall ever seeing privately-owned yellow cars driving around. I surmised (and this seemed to make the best sense out of a confusing situation) that yellow cars weren't legal on the road, except when operated by a properly-licensed organization. This was a regulation that I didn't understand, but the only reason I could think of to explain this confusing problem. And besides, I had just begun public school, and inexplicable rules had become the order of the day.
There was this one problem with my theory, though. This one guy on the other end of my street had a yellow car. A Corvette. It was his baby: he took exceptionally good care of it, kept it in the garage in the winter, under a sheet in the summer, and drove another car, besides. The yellow Corvette stayed at the back of his driveway all summer, covered and withdrawn from casual view. But every once in a while, he'd roll it closer to the front door, work on it for a day or two, and drive it around for a few hours. I couldn't help but be stunned by his boldness. I was a little worried, partly for him, and partly for the rest of us who knew about his illicit drives (for no-one talked about either him or his car).
One day, I worked up the nerve to ask my parents about this yellow car mystery. They told me that it was perfectly legal to own a yellow car. When I asked them why there were virtually none, they said that it was probably because it just wasn't popular. This made sense in a mundane sort of way, but from then on I felt as if the mysterious owner of the yellow Corvette had somehow let me down by not being the dangerous rebel that I'd thought he was.