Alternate Realities and Overdue for a Vacation

Eh, I seldom write about dreams, but I crashed hard last night and had one that pretty much lasted the whole night even between waking up for ten to fifteen minutes here and there.  

I'm a bit worried that the long night - almost eleven hours - might be burnout.  The only real vacation we've been on since London was a few days of Gameholecon and my wife's knee surgery, and for five out of those six days off I worked [much] longer days than usual, but without the meetings.  And the last six months went from reorg and picking up new team members who had all the usual issues with having their team members laid off and having to shut down projects they cared about, to dealing with transitioning the projects they were previously on, to holiday coverage for the team so they could all go on vacation/holiday [not unusual for me, but it was in the middle of a long, uninterrupted stint of work], to the aforementioned knee surgeries [worse on my wife than on me, obviously, but they do mean if I'm going somewhere, it'll have to be alone, and not while she's immobile], to annual reviews, to annual planning, to a hard pivot in annual planning, to being acquired as a private entity [and worrying what it means for my taxes/assets/etc as well as for my team/co-workers], to more planning, to finally getting past the planning waits and and on to the actual work.  I've got Con of the North coming up and  a four day weekend with the holiday, but it's not the same as getting away.  In retrospect I should have gassed up a car and run away to a hotel where it was warm enough to bike near a trail for a week. There's not a lot of point to "unlimited vacation" if your vacations are in the living room.

So...burnout?  Almost eleven hours of sleep is crazy for me.  Really crazy.  Garmin tracks all my stats and a cursory glance says that over the last six months I've trended from 6.5 hours up to about 7.25 hours.  That doesn't seem like much, but it's an extra five hours a week total.  Certainly not negligible.  I wonder if the lower sleep duration was tied at all to a bit of pharmaceutical help at the time? Hard to say - lot of variables and Garmin doesn't track everything.  It is interesting to think of what it doesn't track that eventually it could/might in order to really understand how to optimize your sleep pattern.

Anyway, on to the dream.  You've been warned that we're about to start.  No one wants to hear anyone else's dream/s. I don't want to hear yours.  I don't want to hear the dreams of anyone famous.  Unless they include me and even then only as relates to a few people I've never met [AOC, Anushka Sharma, SRK, let me know if I make an appearance].  This is solely for my amusement and record.

I find myself at a bunch of docks full of mostly small passenger ships, like you'd find in an area with water commuter routes.  It reminded me of a cross between Sydney and the old Universal Studio set for Jaws.  But there are larger ships as well and a larger variety than it seems at first despite some similarities such as all are obviously passenger ships.  At least one ship is enormous and hosts two of the smaller passenger ships in 'wings'. It almost looks like something more suited for space travel than water travel.  But I am urgently looking for the correct ship to get me where I want to go and a couple of friends I don't recognize are with me, as well as one or two people we bump into on the docks including a blonde woman.  We think we know each other, but we can't say from where.  After a bit of running around, finding schedules, and avoiding some police-looking [dock security people who are looking for me and her and my friends, I climb aboard a small ship with four friends and the woman and we head off.

Cut to being about 16, which I really hadn't been at the docks [I'd been close to my current age].  I'm helping build  and maintain a house as a job for an older guy.  The place reminds me a bit of Hugh's house in Monti with a lot of things collected over a lifetime. His granddaughter, my age, is visiting and we chat about things he needs fixed. We hit it off and become friends and that's pretty much that...I just work for her grandfather and take care of the yard and maintenance.  But I know I'm almost forty years younger than I had been on the docks and that this isn't where I came from. And she seems familiar, like we've always been friends, but we know we've never met before.

Someone else knows I'm not where I belong as well and a bunch of "black suits" show up to arrest me and the four other friends who had been at the docks. But not the blonde woman.  They take us to an underground facility / holding room and it becomes obvious they mean for us to live in these underground rooms permanently.  One of them mentions to another where we can hear that we're screwing things up and things are falling apart, but maybe they've caught it in time.  We're there for a long time, and finally I help my four friends escape while I stay behind to distract and misdirect the government types.  My friends are gone for a long time and I'm slowly running out of food after the room starts running down and the suits completely disappear leaving me alone.  Finally one day, I walk out of the run down rooms to find my friends coming to get me.

They take me to a large apartment building that's run down in a different way than my underground rooms.  Instead of falling apart, this building seems to be thriving and getting better, despite not having a working elevator.  There are at least seven floors because I walk up that many, although it seems like two to three times that many floors or more.  Thousands of units and a commune vibe and everyone patching things up and making space to cohabitate.  After talking to a lot of the residents, it's obvious the government has simply disappeared and even started to fade from memory, and after some initial backsliding for a few years they're all rebuilding something better.  It's like the government types knew my friends and I were from somewhere else and were disrupting their reality, but couldn't stop it in the end.

After a stint doing maintenance at the apartment building, I go to a corporate party at a bar down the street.  Not my corporation.  But an exec is trying to run some reports and I help him figure them out. He invites me to stay and have a drink, hands me a hundred dollars in cash for supplies and residents after he hears I work maintenance at the commune, and introduces me to his daughter....the girl I met when I was 16, but she's in her mid-early 20s now, so I've been underground and working at the commune apartment a long time.  He offers me a job and it turns out she works at the same company, although mostly I'm remote from the building while handling analytics between commune rebuilding.  We hit it off at the bar and run into each other at work now and then.

Not long afterwards, she's laid off and I'm worried I won't see her again.  And I don't in the short term.  I spend the next four years doing analytics reports and working at the apartment making it a better place with a working elevator so no on has to walk up [at least] seven flights of stairs, bridges, communal rooms, free day care, free health care.  It's a wonderful place. Truly a happy commune.

Then one night I'm out for drinks with some co-workers and my friends from the docks and the underground holding facility and she's there.  Her father invited her to visit old friends.  She's spent the last four years going back to school to learn about nuclear energy waste reclamation and is currently in an internship/starting gig as a green energy consultant not far from the commune [which, to be accurate, is a bunch of communes now].  We talk for a long time.  I show her around the apartment commune.  She shows me her single apartment and talks about how much more of a family my apartment building is and that she'd like to move there and be part of it. It becomes clear that we've finally met up and maybe that was the point of this reality/timeline all along.

So....there was way more to in terms of detail and imagery, but that's the basic rom com in a nutshell.  I didn't even know I was in a nexus for alternate realities at the outset, that the 'cops' were alternate reality police, that the other 'cops' were a somewhat dystopian government that was going to vanish because my impact and my friends' impact on their timeline would erase them in favor of something else. And each time I met the woman, there was no "this is the woman I'll stay with" until the end or that we'd known each other since the docks.  

Is my mortality showing?  Am I getting old and wondering what things might have been like if I'd made other decisions? Or maybe I'm just tired and my brain is trying to take the vacation my body won't take?  Or maybe I really was walking alternate realities. Nice ones for the most part thankfully, despite my tendency to favor dystopic stories.  I wish I was a better artist.  It'd be fun to try and draw images of the grandfather's cluttered home with a super neat yard, the commune as it evolved from slapdash to something amazing, the busy docks with all the ships and Chesapeake Bay/Amity Island vibe, the underground room, the friends, and the woman.

I hate writing about dreams...

 

I hate writing about dreams...

...despite doing it obsessively when I was younger.  I don't practice remembering them now, so they're less likely to be sticky right after I get up which means I definitely won't remember them later unless something triggers an association.  But I'll throw one down here for amusement because I actually remember last night.

So I was writing a book.  It was roughly done, but needed an editor, so I traveled to a small town with an editor I was referred to and booked lodging in the upper level of a barn-turned-apartment with what seemed on the surface to be an Amish family, but had vibes of a cult.  I made friends with one of the daughters (sounds like I'm going down a farmer's daughter joke path here, but I very seldom have those sorts of dreams.  My brain is far more likely to use sleep time for unpacking things than for dealing with any sexual repression) at the compound, and she heads off to meet the editor with me.  The editor gives me good feedback and reviews some of the work paragraph by paragraph.  The daughter...her name is something like Celia, but that's not right, it was more esoteric...is excited about the editing process, particularly as the editor is a woman.

Time passes.  Editing.  Hanging out with the daughter.  It's a relationship almost with a montage.  But after a while said cult/compound becomes suspicious and digs around in my things, pulling out excerpts of my novel from the trash and desk.  They decide it's sacrilegious. Not-Celia is whisked away, but not before she has time to warn me they intend to get rid of me as a blasphemer.  I grab my manuscript from under the eaves where I had it hidden and run for it with the cult in close pursuit.

At some point during the chase, I find a path that goes between mossy cave walls, getting tighter and tighter until it pops out into a huge field with various people standing like statues in the meadows.  In retrospect, I crossed into some other world location with deities.  That tunnel was the equivalent of the rainbow bridge or walking around a mound three times before entering it.  I thread my way through the field toward a source of loud noise and general partying.  It is a party.  A party of deities, albeit deities who have other deities as their patrons.  So maybe a party of heroes?  Bit more than that.  There's a group of men who worship Zeus (black), a group that worships Athena (mostly men, one woman), and a group that worships a pantheon of gods.  That last one is vaguely Chinese pantheon, but not.  For a moment, it looks like I'm going to be a problem as a guest, but the Zeus worshipers talk to me and I show them some trick making a puff of smoke appear from their loin clothes and they're greatly amused and I'm in (as a guest).  The Zeus worshipers make a big deal about how I should join them and they can help me find raw power.  A woman with them channels invisible lightning, shaking everything.  But it obviously makes her very violent and intent on using the power to destroy something. 

Eventually I end up by the pantheon folks.  One of them looks at me carefully and notes that the pantheon is virtually limitless and that certain deities are in certain people.  Some of them are willing to manifest.  Some of them want to ignore and be ignored but just need a home for part of their essence.  He notes I have at least a dozen, but I have to accept them.  And, more important, I have to not offend them by doing something they wouldn't have done in their own manifested life once they manifest through me.  So if a deity was celibate, celibacy.  If a deity wrote a lot, write (no problem in this context).  That means any romantic entanglements with Not-Cecelia, who I am obviously here to help save, are off the table.  And there it ends...gotta make a choice.  Manifest some aspects of internal deities or deny it and potentially take the path Zeus offers even if in some ways it's more constrained in the power and desire to use it.

If I had to posit what it means (and I don't deal in symbology), I suspect it's a dream about focusing on the physical (health) versus focusing on internal growth and the benefits to me versus how it might be perceived externally (in the guise of Not-Celia).  Taking it to the base level, should I be exercising as much (see that last post) versus reading and writing.  So it's not treading any new ground, but rather picking apart Coronavirus summer focus issues, and likely triggered by a bit less exercise lately (not much less, but some; no big rides) and a bit more writing and reading.  I'm glad to see unconscious me is trying to work it out, even if it can't decide between Zeus and a pantheon of hit-and-miss aspects of erudition.

(Lamp via Wikipedia under a CC, unknown author)

Visions

My sister said that last post might freak people out.  I tried to frontload quite a bit of text so that the photos were further down the page, offering a chance to bail.  I try to observe a bit of blogging etiquette.  That post was about my body after the accident.  This post will be about my brain.  The thinky part, not the mushy gray and pink part.  Although as far as I'm concerned, they're one and the same.  No thinky without the mushy.

I had a lot of hallucinations while I was in the hospital.  I tried to catch some of them in a writing notebook Erik Hyrkas gave me.  What's below doesn't include the bugs crawling on the ceiling.  Or all the people standing in the road near where the hospital helicopter would land.  Or the endless, dimly lit, cells, stacked off into infinity where I though they parked my moveable bed shortly after I came out of the coma, an infinite number of patients above, below and beyond me, my own cell destined to enter a rotation as new patients entered cells behind me.  Or my daughter's picture, which for a moment, despite knowing what it was, who it was, and that it was just ten feet away, looked like a man with several bottles in his hand.  That was more upsetting than almost anything, because it's frightening to think you might not recognize the people you love.

So here are a few of the things I saw.  I don't think I capture how truly real they felt at the time, despite knowing that I'd just closed my eyes (or not) and even telling myself as I did, "I'm probably going to see something weird.  It's not real."

...

I close my eyes.  Only for a moment. Not a blink.  Shut, then open.  Purposeful.  Barely the time between two thoughts.

I see a German movie.  1930s.  Black and white.  Images scroll across the lit front of a grandiose theater of old stone and early 1900s sensibilities, the film playing across the facade as a way to entice theatergoers inside.  It's Berlin.  Somehow I know.  Although nothing on the theater states Berlin.  My only hint is lettering that subvocalized sounds German in nature.  But despite the size of the city and the premier happening in what is a first rate theater, there is no one about.  Only the theater and the movie.  Behind the credits, the full movie doesn't play outside, I see rolling waves crashing against a rocky beach, revealing the names of producers and stars.  Or at least what appear to be those roles, given my nonexistent German language skills.  In the lower right in large white letters, I see that the main actress is Eina Rance.  A name unknown to me, in either incarnation.

Open.  That wasn't bad.  It's been worse.

Close.

An ocean.  Old.  So very old.  Beneath the thick, bubble-filled water, it's obvious the only life is nothing with which I'm familiar.  Rather than gently undulate, the water slides and oozes across itself, forming those sticky bubbles.  Where the bubbles coalesce, the green water transforms to viscous red.  Something is rising.  Welling up from the deep, just like the blood.  Is the blood residue from what it's eaten?  Or is it oozing from the creature's pores, like sweat?  Or is it saliva, a sign of depthless hunger?  I don't want to know.

Open. So tired.  So tired.

Close.

Roiling darkness.  Rolling directly at me.  A thing like the hidden thing in the ocean, but emerging from thick, oily clouds.  Larger than the largest whale.  It's not an animal.  It thinks.  It sees.

Open.

Pigeons. The dream catcher near my bed a friend hung on my wall.  It has three clutches of feathers adorning its ring.  Now there are three pigeons, as large as my hand.  Dead.  Hanging there as if clipped up by their necks, their bodies loose and rustling in the wind of a closed room.  No, not rustling.  Twitching.  Constantly.  They're dead.  But they're not dead.  An my eyes are open.  I can't tell if these zombie pigeons are imaginary or real.  Maybe it doesn't matter.  Because they're here and in pain, unsure why they're mounted on a native american dream catcher and subject to so many poisonous dreams from the nearby human.  I refuse to look away.  If I do, someone in the room will know I see them.

Close.

It's a ship.  Like a spaceship.  But underground.  And I'm captaining it from above, third person, I think.   So it must be a video game, unless I'm dreaming myself into Ender's Game.  I direct the ship left.  Right.  Forward.  Although I can't tell if I'm directing it, or just following its autonomous direction and narrating in my head.  It rolls under a farm.  A small, fenced in area containing half a dozen sheep.  The fence and sheep stick to the ground wake of the subteranean vehicle and are pulled along behind.  Like two magnets on either side of a table.  Ten dollars.  Taxes collected.  What?  The ship rolls under a barn and farm house.  They also stick.  There's now a conglomeration of small fields, buildings, and various field animals trailing along behind.  Fifty dollars.  Taxes collected.  It is a video game.  The goal seems to be to make as many cities, houses, animals, and farms stick to the ship as possible to accumulate taxes and upgrades.  It's like Katamari Damacy meets The Sims.  There are children and whole families bouncing along in the ground wake.  This vision suddenly disturbs me more than most.  Maybe it's my history degree influencing me to innately avoid taxation without representation.  Maybe I'm worried this is real and all those animals and people are being dragged from their homes at my whim, and tumbled along, bruised, battered, and dead, in some remote locale.

Open.

I focus on the zebra pillow pet my daughter brought to the hospital.  His name is Stripe.  Because he's striped.  Black and white with a pink belly.  My daughter has the smaller version so we have a connection while I'm laid up from my accident, separated by a city.  She named him something obvious, something easy.  I appreciate it as I don't always retain what people tell me at the moment.  I hope Stripe's colors are what I first see when I close my eyes.  Or the zebra pattern.  I want to control what I see.  Not be subject to random access channels, like someone is signal surfing in my brain.

Still open.

The blinds cast a golden glow in the room.  They're metal, with words engraved in the vertical slats.  And I can see the light coming through the filigreed writing.  I can see the light as it crosses the room.  Not just where it hits the wall.  It's as though the light is solid.  Or slowed.  Like in a Discworld novel.  Which amuses me for a moment before part off me remembers I'm not in Discworld, I'm in a hospital room, awake.  The words, where they free float in the air, twist and snap, leaving little loops and fragments of gold in the air, like fine wire.  And the loops glow with reflected sunshine.  And grow.  Fractally.  They grow off visitors.  Off the end of my bed.  Through the glass window and down the wall.  Out of my toes.  They curl and curl and curl.  Then break and drift to the floor and through the air, like shiny dust motes.  I'm afraid I'll breath in the metal shards.   Breathing fine metal wire can't be good for your lungs.  And my collapsed left lung already has enough problems without growing wire.

Look at Stripe again.  Fix the pattern.

Close.

Damn.  No Zebra colors.  Wood cuts.  Like out of a 16th or 17th century manuscript.  All of them variations on Satan punishing sinners.  Something out of Dante's Inferno.  And as in the Inferno, these woodcuts appear to have been carved by a first person witness to the events.  They're full of horror, pain, and glee in the face of each demon or Satanic entity (I didn't know there were Satanic entities that weren't demons) in charge of dolling out punishment.  The cuts are wood, but you can feel the blood and pain oozing from their carved lines, almost see the red and clear viscous liquids that might be blood and thickened tears.  There are hundreds of cuts.  And though my eyes are only closed for a moment, I see them all and know there are millions of others in the collection.  I'd see them all if I kept my eyes closed long enough.