dreams

dreams: part two (myth buster)

so you know that story about how if you die in a dream that you die in real life? well, i hate to break it to you folks but that myth is completely untrue.

yes, you heard it here first, from the dream expert (at bullshitting) jenna.

how can i make such a preposterous claim you might wonder?

because i have been there. i have seen death in my dreams. i have faced it. i have felt my life ebbing away. i have (you guessed it) died in a dream. really died. and look- i'm still here to tell the tale. take that jason or freddy krueger or whatever scary movie monster used to kill people in their sleep. it just doesn't work and that's all there is to it.

so that's the good news. the cooler news is that i have felt what it's like to die and yet i'm still alive. sure it was a dream, but my dreams are quite vivid and intense. i mean, i really feel every physical sensation, good and bad, that occur in my dreams. the dreams i like best are the ones where i encounter sensations that i've never felt in real life. like the time i was a man (stay tuned for an upcoming entry) or like the dream where i died. in both cases, i'm glad that the physical implications didn't carry over into my real life, but they are still quite interesting to look back on. not that i can say for sure that the sensations i feel while asleep are legitimate, but i can say that i have experienced things while dreaming that i have never felt while awake which is cool enough for me.

anyway, i can't remember how i died anymore but i think i was shot. what i can remember is lying on the ground and feeling a unique sensation that i recognized at once as death as it progressed and my body shut down. i can't explain it very well, but let's just say that everything was fading. i was fading. it wasn't pleasant but it wasn't awful. i was more curious than frightened because it seemed stupid to fear the inevitable. so instead of fearing death, i felt it. the sensation of death, that dreaded but unavoidable accompaniment of life. i knew that i couldn't escape so i just lay there as it took over and i became less and less me and more and more a part of some great nothing and then there was nothing and that was it. i was nothing. i was dead.

some time later i woke up and thought, "damn, i just died. that was pretty fucking crazy." then i went back to sleep.

dreams: part one (mirror, mirror)

i have this one recurring dream. actually, it's just a recurring theme really as the dream usually starts out differently every time.

eventually, however, it comes to this: i find myself in front of or passing by a mirror and i see my reflection. something seems a little off and i start to feel nervous but i stop for a better look in the mirror anyway. i move my head a little. my reflection moves with me. i make another small movement and my reflection follows suit but something is still wrong and i'm scared at this point. something about my eyes in the mirror or maybe it's that my reflection seems to somehow be smirking at me in a very mocking and sinister way. i can't figure it out and i'm really frightened by now but i can't bring myself to look away from the damn mirror.

i make another movement and this time the strangeness is more apparent. the movement of my reflection is a little out of synch and there's still that odd malicious glint in my eyes when i look at them. but maybe it's only in my head? i make a move to turn away and can't because it's not in my head. my reflection has decided to give up all pretenses of simply being a reflection and is now mocking my movements.

it sees how freaked out i am and smiles. now it's not even bothering to mock me- all of it's motions are completely it's own. i really want to get the hell out of there by this point because it is very obvious to me that jenna-the-reflection has something not very nice planned for me that she thinks is pretty fucking amusing and i am not interested in finding out what it is. but i can't leave. part of me is too terrified to turn my back on her and part of me is curious to see what she/i will do next.

unless i wake up first, the next part of the dream involves my reflection somehow getting me to approach the mirror either by beckoning me closer or by breaking free from the mirror plane and physically pulling me towards her. it seems that she wants to pull me into the land of reflections and i am panicking by this point because, from what i can tell, that place is seriously evil.

i can't remember if i've ever actually made it through to the other side of the mirror, but i don't think i have. i must either wake up or manage to escape before that happens. in any case, i have a complaint to make about this dream. why the fuck can't i have a recurring dream about drinking margaritas on the beach or some shit? what's this crap about evil reflections!?

don't worry, i don't need you to analyze it's meaning for me. that much is obvious enough. what i do want to figure out is how to turn my dream around so that i can beat the crap out of that evil refection bitch when she tries to pull that "ha,ha, you can't even control your own refection shit". now that would be cool. i'd teach her a lesson in how a reflection should properly behave and afterwards i could wander down to the beach and drink some margaritas and reflect on how cool and in control i am. which, of course, i am in real life. totally in control. right.

the oddities of odd street

i didn't even know that a place known as "odd street" existed in athens but, i can now assure you, it does and it seems to be appropriately named. it is very odd indeed.

so, how does one end up in the vicinity of odd street? with a little help from your (drunk) friends of course.

it all started out as a regular saturday night out on the town involving such athens staples as large quantities of pbr, shots of whiskey, and some bad music thrown in for good measure. actually, i think the bad music was the night before and i missed the good music on saturday because i was too busy getting drunk. anyway, the entire weekend seems to blur together at this point which is not important and is really not the point of this story. refer to my previous entry "binge drinking in your late twenties" if you are in the mood for a story centered around my exploits with alcoholic beverages.

as is the case on most weekend nights, you can always find a few adventurous (i.e. too drunk to know better) souls willing to continue the party past the requisite 2 a.m. closing time. yes, i was one of them on this evening. nothing unusual there. what was unusual was the arrival of a strange woman with a wooden flute. at first i didn't know who the fuck she was until i recalled her from earlier in the night when i had seen her wandering around the caledonia and playing her weird flute thing. i vaguely remember noting the oddity of such a thing at the caledonia where, in general, the weirdoes usually still manage to fall into the hipster category. clearly, this woman leaned more towards the hippie side. in fact, i think she might not be aware that 1965 is 40 years in the past.

in any case, this woman showing up at a small, after-hours get together was quite unexpected. i'm still not sure who to blame but i have my suspicions. she was nice but i couldn't understand what she said. i mean, i could understand it, but i had no idea what the hell she meant. she was far out, dude. in the stratosphere somewhere. eventually i think we all gave up trying to include her in the conversation which was just as well because the next time i checked she had fallen asleep.

i'll skip through the rest of the evening as it was long and involved many prank calls, some beer and cigarettes, and drinking from an open bottle of wine (i gave up on the wine glass by 5 a.m.). the important thing to note is that the woman drifted from my consciousness. i simply forgot she was there.

now i might have left well before 6 a.m. if i hadn't (wisely) chosen to leave my car downtown. since i couldn't leave and i was tired and getting a little bored with all of the prank calling i busied myself with consuming as much alcohol as i could and even managed to thrown in a few drags on a cigarette for good measure. hence, due to my inebriated and annoying state, i was completely unprepared when flute lady roused herself and started requesting rides home. i can't say for certain but i'm pretty sure that's when all of the caledonia boys high-tailed it out of there in quick succession. thanks a lot kiddos. since the only people left that weren't staying the night were myself (carless), my ride home, and flute lady it seems that we were to be stuck with the wooden flute. and the lady that went along with it.

fine, ok. it's 6 in the morning. at this point time has become surreal and i can stay up long enough to get this woman to her residence before i pass out cold. besides, since i wasn't driving i didn't really have much say in the matter. after all, taking someone home shouldn't take too long unless, of course, they have no idea where the hell they live and they live in some never-never sub-world in athens whose only directions include a hand drawn map and instructions to go to the trestle bridge and look for odd avenue. she had to be kidding right? odd avenue? and a trestle bridge? i've never heard of odd avenue and the name struck me as a little too apt to be coincidence. as for the "trestle bridge", what the hell is a trestle bridge anyway and why would that be the only directional information that this woman is capable of producing!? wtf!!!??

somehow i managed to hold my temper with this vague-talking 1960's throwback, but just barely. who was this odd woman with her wooden flute and crazy speak involving troll bridges and odd streets and maps drawn on little pieces of cardboard with red pen marking her house that, by the way, has a yard full of shrines? yes, shrines. or so she said although when i pressed her for information on what was being worshipped at the shrines she became more vague and looked confused. i told her that for something to be considered a shrine that it had to be built in honor of something or someone. she looked more confused and just kept repeating that they were built by her landlord and that they were his shrines. ok, whatever.

all the while i'm trying to direct j. to odd street which i think neither one of us really believed was real. real in flute lady's imagination perhaps, but not real in the real world.

then we saw it. the little green rectangular sign with the magical words "odd avenue" written on it. i almost cried with joy at the sight. ok, not really, but i was very, very happy. still not sure if it was for real but happy nonetheless. so we turned onto odd avenue, found the house with the enshrined yard (which, in the light of early morning, seemed to involve a red volkswagon camper, some giant flowers, and some metal stuff), and dropped the lady and her flute off at home. finally.

i still can't say for sure where the fuck we were or how exactly we got there, but odd avenue seemed real (or surreal) enough. i think. keep in mind that i was drunk and had been up for close to 24 hours. but whatever, the flute lady had been correct about a number of questionable points. my only remaining point of contention is that i never got to see the famous trestle bridge. looks as though i'll have to save that for another night.