subconscious rising

I dreamed about him last night.  He looked like himself.  He painted the street so it looked like sun reflecting off of water.  It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  We got in a big fight and he looked at me with a face that was so very angry.

I cried about it today, just a little.  I've only cried about it a little.  It was my choice, after all.

I feel as if I'm not entitled to feel anything.  I feel this thing inside me, a big thick ball of mucus with a heavy stone at the center, and if only I could reach my hands down my throat and vomit up everything that's inside maybe I would stop feeling as if the world is ending.

DREAM

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART

He was in my dream and it actually looked like him.  That's the first time that's happened.

I was straddling his lap and I had my hands around his neck and our foreheads were pressed against each other and we were both crying and his eyes were closed and he was saying to me "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have known there were things you needed to do."

ANOTHER IMPORTANT PART

I saw Cannon, briefly.  I said "I'm sorry I didn't see you before you died."  And he simply replied "I know."

And now I'm awake and I don't know how to feel about anything.

stopitstopitstopit

The first dream, a few weeks ago: What was happening? I don't know. We were standing across from each other, his hands were on my shoulders and my hands were flat on his chest under the dip of his collarbones. We weren't moving or speaking; we simply stared at each other from arm's length apart.

The second dream, a few days ago: He was sitting at a table? I don't know. He was sitting and looked thoughtful. Melancholy.

The third and forth dreams, separated by a brief awakening, last night: We were in Busan, trying to purchase train tickets from the automatic ticketing machines to get back to Masan. There was a code or game or something on the machine that we had to touch and move to get our tickets. We couldn't figure it out, so we had to stay in my old apartment in Waegwan. I pulled back the comforter on the bed and lay down in it. He got in next to me; he was wearing the same sort of undergarments that WC wears/wore, plain black. I curled myself against him. He felt smooth and warm.

...interlude...

We were going to sleep on the beach. He was angry with me? Not quite angry. Not fire angry. More like irritated. Rubbed the wrong way. I lay down on the sand and felt alone. I sent him a text message asking him to come. He came, reluctantly but coming just the same, and sat down on the sand next to me. I put my head against his side. He felt smooth and warm.

There was nothing sexual about the feelings in either of these dreams.

more dreams

Parts of last night's dream:

Location: coastal, carribean/tropical, small town/village

I was driving at night. I was in a car accident. There was a line of cars driving down a dark highway in the rain, and everything looked blue and orange in the street lights. I saw the cars before me braking but I couldn't brake in time. My right leg had been crossed and propped up on my left knee. A half a second before it happened I thought to myself "I should put my leg down, because if I need to break I won't have enough time to react." I was driving a large black monster-truck-ish sort of vehicle. I crashed into the back bumper of the car in front of me, and I pressed the gas on impulse and crunched over the whole car. I was horrified as it was happening, but I felt impelled to do it. I got out of the car, and there were people all around. They told me to look into the car to see if the people were ok. The entire roof had been crushed in. Everything was rust red and brown and burnt orange. I looked in through the passenger window even though I knew they would be dead. Their heads had been crushed into oblong shapes and their mouths were stretched open grotesquely.

Later in the dream, I was at the Jacksonville house (*note*: I first wrote "my home" but that place feels strange and unfamiliar now). Don was there (I think), and my mom was too. My mom was teasing me about something, and she would stop. She kept trying to touch me or wave her fingers in my face or something, and I wanted her to stop. I started getting really angry and irritated, and I ran and she chased me. I made it into the bathroom and I locked the door behind me. I wondered how long I'd have to wait before I could dash from the bathroom to my bedroom, which was (is/was) just down the hall.

..

...and then there are those dreams that blindside you with guilt for what you did years ago. Or maybe not what you did, precisely, but what happened because of you and what you feel like shit for.

I don't know if I've grown more responsible/aware/careful of and with others, or if being with Dan has just significantly lowered the instances in which I can be a terrible person, simply because I'm no longer trolling for boys to make mine. Hmmph.

Regardless, waking up this morning felt like swimming from the bottom of a very deep lake.

post.apoca

It was hot and humid and unbearably sunny*; strong southern weather. I** saw him walking down the road. He was wearing a dusty brown sun hat with a wide floppy brim and denim coveralls. He had short brown-red hair and a short beard. There was dirt smudged on his face and arms. He didn't have a shirt or shoes. He was pushing a rusty shopping cart filled with all sorts of dirty fabrics and god-knows-what. I was wary; you always had to be wary of who you met those days.

I invited him over. He parked his cart on the peeling sky blue painted porch of my farmhouse, sat next to me on the bench and we ate. He only had two fingers on his right hand -- his middle and index finger. He put them together and used them like a spoon to scrape out chunks of canned peaches in syrup from a dirty can with no label and a jaggedly-cut lid. He offered me the last suck of juice from the can, with one small square piece of peach left in it. I let him scrape his fingers around the sides of the can of my own lunch -- one can of tomato paste.

He followed me inside the house. My house had a huge, fairly modern kitchen. I went rifling through the refrigerator in search of something to offer my guest. "I'm sorry," I said. The electricity has been out for a long time so most everything is spoiled. I haven't had the heart to throw it all out." I pushed past half-open packages of hot dogs and old cheese. There was one white plastic package -- it felt like half a pair in syrup -- that I held for a moment, but then I put it back. I thought mom might be angry if the man and I ate it. I stood up, shut the door to the fridge, and turned around. The strange man had been busy at the stove. He had cooked a giant omelette and a plate of pancakes. "We had eggs?" I thought to myself, surprised.

Then the electricity flickered once. It flickered again, and we heard a huge rumbling noise throughout the house. "Oh, that's just the air conditioner turning on." I said. It took a minute for the implications of this to hit me. Electricity! I ran to the huge stainless steel unit on the wall and franticly pressed the buttons. I pressed a large round power button. The unit had a giant tv attached to it, and it roared to life, showing only static. I pressed the button again, and suddenly we were being shown a professional football game.

"WHAT??" the man roared, enraged. He pushed me back against the refridgerator. "You didn't tell me what it was still like out there!"*** He put his hands around my throat. He was wide-eyed and savage. I was confused. I looked at the screen; most of the stadium was empty, but there were some people there, in the stands, and the game was happening. "I didn't know!" I cried. I managed to escape his grasp and ran out the door of the house. I ran alongside the porch and started into the pine forest behind it.

"You'll be back," shouted the man. "You'll come in through the window or something. You have to. And I'll be here waiting." I knew he was right.

--------------------

NOTES ABOUT THIS DREAM

* This is remarkable in that I very rarely have dreams in which there is strong sunlight. This might be because this was a midday nap dream and therefore my nap environment was sunnier than my usual sleep environment.

** The "I" in my dream was me, but it was not me in my actual, physical body. The "I" I identified with in the dream was a young caucasian male, late 20's to early 30's, living in the country. There's no "evidence" in the dream to prove this other than my own strong feeling that that is who I was.

***something to this effect. what he was referring to was the relatively 'normalcy' of people going to see a professional sporting event while we were essentially living as if society itself had completely crumbled

........

This weekend I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival. Korea has a "spring break," and this is it. It's the only time and place I have been since I moved here almost a year ago where so much flesh was so willingly shown without so much as a single eyelash batted. There was mud, there was the beach, there was drinking (oh was there drinking).

I met up with some people -- good people -- who live further south, in Changwon. I had a (relatively) good time. I think what outings like this just do for me, though, is reinforce the knowledge that I am, in fact, different. I can't nor do I want to go all night every night. It's hard for me to make light conversation out of nothing; I kept listening to what people were saying and found myself being able to predict what would come next. Everything -- the people, the words, what they did -- seemed contrived and self-aware. I had the uncanny feeling that I was surrounded by puppets, mere shadows acting out the ways in which they felt they were supposed to act. But I also felt like a shadow; my body felt loose and empty, as if everything that was "me" had been wrapped up tightly in a tiny black ball in my chest. I was seeing but not seeing.

I am ashamed at the disdain I have for my fellow human beings. But I'm also ashamed of their actions, though I feel I am no better. I pose and posture because it's easy. What I want, who I am -- I don't know these things, how to be these things, and I'm plagued by it. It goes away, sometimes, for twenty minutes or an hour or maybe several hours, but inevitably the feeling comes back -- that everything you say and do, and everything those around you say and do, is a lie, and we are all face-down choking in a puddle of our own mediocrity, gasping for air but too lazy to lift our heads.