DREAM
I was sleeping so well and I didn’t want to wake up and do this, but the dream I just had was just a little too vivid and strange and INTERESTING not to get the gist of it down.
It stars me, Matt Damon, and Julie Andrews. Those are the faces I distinctly remember.
There is this organization that is able to access your mind through its channels. Remember that short “story” I wrote about entering the right and left sides of my brain and how each one worked visually? This is kind of how that works. They can enter into your mind and figure out how it works to remove certain memories and certain thoughts. I think it’s kind of a combination of “The Adjustment Bureau” and “Inception”. For some people, their minds are like a maze, others it’s like doorways into two different rooms, and for some it’s a big expansive wasteland.
I don’t think I work for this organization. I think that for some reason I am being forced to enter this certain mans mind and remove a memory or an idea. My life is being threatened. It’s not clear to me exactly WHY I have to do this or why I am the only one who can. But I am.
I am in a man's mind and currently it’s a scene of where he first fell in love with his wife. It's a lake on a cloudy day. Into this lake pours a waterfall-one of a modest size. I find myself caught in a kind of loop with this waterfall. I jump into the lake down the waterfall and then swim to the bottom of the lake where there is an entrance to a series of large pipes. I have to navigate these pipes. There are grates and dead ends. I am looking for an exit that will take me to the memory or the thought in his brain that I need to get rid of/modify. So I swim through this series of underwater pipes. Since I am only in a brain reality, I can breathe underwater. I find an exit from the labyrinth. But all it does is take me to the base of the cliffs from which the waterfall pours into this same lake. In order to get to the the pipe maze to look for a new exit I have to go to the top of the cliffs and jump down the waterfall AGAIN. To get to the top I ride this large boulder which runs on a track-kind of like a roller coaster car. It takes me up and up. Since there is no actual seat (it's just this HUGE BOULDER), I am clinging onto the rock with all my might so I don't fall. There is always someone else with me on the rock. I think it is the consciousness of this man, Ryan. We get to the top and dive once more into the depths of the lake. Once there, more of his memory of this moment becomes clear. I watch underwater as he and the woman he will some day marry kiss passionately. I leave the scene and make my way once again to the twists and turns of the pipes that represent the synapses of his brain. Since they represent his thought processes and channels, they are constantly changing, so I have to take a completely different route each time. Somehow, this time, I manage to find an exit to a new scene. It's a city at dusk. I exit the pipes and emerge, dry, onto an empty street. The buildings look familiar. They are the buildings of the University of Missouri campus.
I know now that I have found the one way I could exit this mans mind and find my way back into my OWN reality. They only way you can do that (unless you work for the organization and they retrieve you) is to share a memory or a similar event or experience with the persons mind you are in. Ryan and I have both been to the University of Missouri campus. I decide to take this opportunity to try and leave this mans brain without the organization knowing. The only problem is they have their OWN agents prowling this mans mind, making sure I am doing my job. As long as I keep on task/remain inconspicuous, they just think I am another manifestation of Ryan's mind and don't bother me. But the second they realize that I am not supposed to be in that part of his brain, they come after me. Kind of like Inception, right?
I enter one of the many parking garages. I am on the ground level and I keep my eyes out for their agents. I see one. A handsome and arrogant looking young man with dark hair. He is sucking on a lollypop, the stick dangling casually out of his mouth. I avoid eye contact and make my way to a stair well. But he has noticed me. He stares. In an instant, there are more agents identical to him as well as over a dozen blonde women all dressed in severe looking business attire (kind of like The Matrix). They begin to converge on me so I do the only thing I can think of. I run. Here is the problem. Often when you are trying to run from something in dreams, you cant. You find that your legs are suddenly sluggish and full of lead. It's the same when you are a foreign being in someone else's mind and other people are running the controls. So I don't get far until I am grabbed on either side by the dark haired agents. One of the blonde women steps forward and tells them to let me go. They comply, but I know I cant get anywhere.
"You've made a huge mistake" she says.
"I had to try." I tell her.
"Come with me now."
Because I know I don't really have a choice, I follow her. She takes me to an elevator in the parking garage. Except it's more like a rope pulley system with a sturdy piece of plywood as the floor of the elevator hanging in an empty shaft. It has no walls. She steps onto the floor and it dips backwards. Before it can spill her down the shaft, she places her other foot on the opposite side of the wood board. Balancing there, holding the rope. I, too, step onto the board and flounder for a bit until I manage to find my footing. Of It's own accord, the rope pulley system moves us upwards. As we move up, the elevator morphs and becomes a fancy red velvet lined elevator you might find at a nice hotel. The doors open on a hallway that seems to belong to a skyscraper filled with offices. I follow the blond woman to a room. When I enter, if feels crowded. There is a woman sitting in a plastic chair. It's Julie Andrews. She is not smiling. The Blonde woman leaves and Julie motions for me to sit. I take the only other seat. A pearl and gold trimmed swivel computer chair. It's comfortable. The room we are in is TINY and cramped. It's filled with filing cabinets, papers, folders, etc. The mans mind that I am in is a writer and this represents a cluttered corner of his mind.
"I should just kill you now," Julie says softly.
"But then who will do your work for you?" I recline in the chair. I feel relaxed and casual. I know she won't kill me. I know they NEED me.
She nods and suddenly I find myself flying through different scenes. Julie's voice is disembodied through the experience. The scenes change from a man trying to jump from a cliff into water, to him trying to sink a boat, trying to rig dynamite to a seal and have it follow him into the water. All the same man, trying to kill himself in this lake where I was in the first part of the dream. This is what Julie is saying:
"This is Ryan's character in his new book. The character is trying to kill himself. But no matter how Ryan thinks it out, it never works. He never dies properly. We need you to rid him of this idea. By any means possible."
Then I am in a new scene. I am standing on the rocky shore of a lake looking up at a house made of windows. Standing in front of me is Ryan. Next to Ryan is his character. Both men are of average height, about in their mid 40's. Graying hair. The character next to Ryan looks like Matt Damon. Between the two men is a seal with dynamite strapped to it. It is in this moment that I realize that Ryan and his character are the same. Ryan is trying to kill the character because he himself wants to die. Even though he has a family and kids, the writing isn't coming along and he feels he has failed his family and would rather die than face the shame.
I a soft voice, I say "Ryan and his character are the same". This has an immediate effect. The Matt Damon character begins to dissolve and Ryan starts to vomit. Black vomit that looks like a strange manifestation of a digital code of some kind. The more he vomits, the more the character begins to disappear-or rather obliterate. Ryan vomits until there is nothing left and Matt Damon explodes in shiny sparkles-I don't know how it worked but I know that I have managed to eliminate the idea of suicide and the Matt Damon character from Ryan's mind. The second he is done vomiting, I change perspective and I AM Ryan, but with my own mind. I walk up to the house. There are boxes all around. He must be just moving in. On the first floor is a little girl with sandy hair unpacking dolls in a room made of glass walls. Her new bedroom. She smiles at me/Ryan/her father. The daughter is his first child. That is why she got first pick of the rooms and she wanted the glass room.
I go up the stairs to the room where the mother is helping the little boy unpack things in his new NORMAL room. They look just like a mother and son I helped during my program on geocaching. The son is whining because HE wanted the glass room. Mother tells him life isn't always fair. His whines become great screams of despair as he throws a tantrum. The mother takes him and spanks his bare bottom. Not hard, but to a child, spanking feels like the worst pain in the world. The mother looks at me and tells me to tell the boy that it's not that bad. It doesn't really hurt and he will be just fine. I feel weird, being in Ryan's body, but I comply.
And then the rain woke me up and I am in reality again. I try to go back to sleep, but I can't. The dream is sticking and my brain is SCREAMING at me to write it all down before I forget.
