2001-05-14 - 8:47 a.m.

Nightmares

It is amazing that people often willingly go to sleep, when they know that they may have nightmares which range from troubling to terrifying.

Last night I awoke a few times, but realized a theme of my recent dreams: anxiety.

I suspect that I feel as though I've let myself down and failed to do some of the things I've promised myself lately. For example, for the past few weeks I've told myself that a weekend goal would be to purchase new spark plugs and points for my Cougar. Basically I've let the car just rust, and I would love for somebody (maybe my dad) to come up on a weekend and help me get it fixed up. I eventually plan to sell the car and use the money to pay off my Mustang.

My nightmare about the Cougar is part of a reoccuring dream. I'm in Houston, at my old home, and when I'm sleeping people are walking onto our driveway (which ran the length of the year in Texas ... my family had a nice big yard and house). These people are teen agers, about 12 of them, drive around in a Ford Bronco, and steal parts of my car while my family is asleep. I always wake up and confront them, and they usually beat me up while continuing to tear apart my car. The nightmare is always the same, nobody hears or sees them, and when I ask for help they don't stay up or phone the police.

Last night that changed a little bit. I had two friends (neither of whom I really could remember who they were) who did actually stay up with me, but instead of a dozen teen agers (large football player sized teens) about two dozen showed up. Despite the larger number of advesaries, I confronted the one who was their "gang" leader, grabbed him by the neck and quoted $1500 worth of damage he did to my car the night before. He just laughed and said he didn't do it. I threatened to call the police, but he said he had two dozen witnesses that I grabbed and beat him (which is odd, as he was so much larger than myself).

They ended up leaving, but I recorded his license plate number. Oddly it had something to do with the state of Georgia. I believe it was a Georgia Tech plate.

I was once told that people can't actually read or write in their dreams. Something about the fact that you are using a different part of your brain while you sleep. However, I most certainly read license plate numbers off what was a generic state plate. It was odd, but I can always read small things like that in my dreams.

I went in my home again, but couldn't sleep. A few hours later than came back and put fireworks / firecrackers all around my family's yard. The Police happened to be driving by and I had seen the car, so I told them. They said there wasn't anything they could do, so I went around putting out all the burning firecrackers. Some of them went off as I tried to stomp the life out of them, and it hurt. There was a sharp hot pain associated with stomping them out, but I was worried they would do serious damage to the house.

I awoke from that dream and didn't stay up long before falling asleep again, and having a similar dream.

This one had me at work, however, instead of being in my office, people from work (including those who left for other jobs and other people who never worked here) were all in a one story building with a skylight. The building had just one room and looked more like an undergraduate computer lab. Each of us had a workstation area, but we had no bookshelves or desk drawers. No real personal space.

Essentially we were all working in what I described in the dream as, "A telemarketers workshop." I'm trying to describe the kind of place that you've seen in maybe a Millenium or X-Files episode where a corporation would hire a bunch of people, set up a cheap office, and give the a bunch of grudge computer based assignments. The key is that I was unhappy in my work environment (and this is a common theme in my dreams).

It started to thunder and lightening outside right at lunch time. This is where the skylight becomes so important, because we could see the storm from above. Having grown up in south Texas I've seen so many storms, so I have a good idea of what nasty storms look like. Hmmm, I've been through hurricanes, which the howling wind really did seem like something straight from hell.

Our bosses told us we had better eat now (we had no choice of when to eat) and we forcing us out into the rain, wind, and lightening. I started to grab an umbrella, but then stopped. I did not want to get struck by lightening.

They say that before ligthening hits you, that your hair will stand up on end and you'll know. In my dream I started to walk outside and saw a guy I knew standing and smoking near a trash can. The hair on my arms (hehehe, arm hair and the hair on my head is about all I've got) stood up, so I knew something bad was about to happen. I ran as fas as I could, and sure enough lightening came down and struck the guy. Wow! I was surprised I escaped and immediate ran to this girl from the SF clubs. Why she was in my dream I don't know, but she is a fixture at one of the clubs I frequent. She works there, so naturally she is always there. What she does I don't know, and I still find it curious that she was there to "save" me from the storm. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I saw her grab a punk by his neck once after he punched her boyfriend in the face. She had lifted the guy off the ground by his neck!

She wasn't very kind or supportive and told me I had to eat lunch. So I braved the storm and had my lunch. Fortunately my alarm went off ... and end of the dreams.

It was while I was sitting awake, about to jump into the shower, that I realized there are common threads and not common threads to my dreams. Lately I've been having the normal amount of dreams of my cars being torn apart or damaged while I was not with them. I guess it could be said that I'm worried about something, something that I care about.

But I've had other common images. Elevators. It sounds irrational, but I've had lots of dreams where the buildings I am in have multiple stories and people have to go up and down to move around. Escalators and Elevators are always there, but I tend to like using stairs. Both in real life and in my dreams. Well, actually I don't mind escalators in real life, as they are open.

But I do wonder if my issues are about being enclosed in small spaces. I do have problems with that when I'm with strangers.

Lonely

I don't want to sound unhappy, but I did see and chat with the CyberGirl while at Shrine on Saturday. The nice thing was she remembered me and was polite. The depressing thing was she brought her boyfriend there. I talked to him, but really wasn't too impressed with him.

She is actually a good dancer. While her boyfriend ... well, he wore jeans and a silly black t-shirt and looked pretty normal. Which is a stark contrast to her. She had strippedies on, painted her face with glow in the dark colours (yummy!) and had bright green sleeves on under a black and flourescent dress. The girl was one of the most interesting people I've seen. And yet her boyfriend just didn't strike me as somebody who cared about his own appearance at all!

And when I talked to him, I really wondered what she saw in him. He was pretty fucking opinionated. Everybody is, but I don't like to bounce my opinions off of people I don't know yet. He was telling me that while Covenant is good, that he blamed them for the decline of all industrial music.

WTF?!?!

Yes, he went on this long winded rant about how everybody was trying to copy Covenant's sound and influence. And that they had their own problems.

OK, let me explain. I was wearing a VNV Nation shirt. I obviously had been dancing most of the night on a largely empty floor to EBM music and some synth pop. Anybody paying attention would guess that I liked EBM.

You don't impress strangers by going up and saying,

"That thing you like, well it sucks."

Strange. Also strange was that he called CyberGirl his girlfriend, and I could swear that she called him her cousin. Maybe I was just not hearing one of them right. CyberGirl's boy did have a thick accent, but I will say this, although his opinions struck me as not well thought out and kinda rude, he wasn't trying to be rude. He was friendly and happy to listen.

But I don't like talking a lot to new people. Believe it or not, but I'm shy that way. I also like to not say things if I think it might hurt somebody's feelings (there are exceptions, like when somebody has hurt my own feelings and that unfortunately happens). For Shrine was the last night for a couple whom went to Shrine the night after their wedding. Talk about devotion to a club!

Creative Wedding Gift

A year ago, to do something special, I brought a writting journal and had everybody at Shrine sign it for the newly weds. A few months later I gave the book to them as a gift from the San Francisco Goth community.

I'm actually proud that I did this, and for a year only a few people knew I did this.

Anyway, this couple is leaving the Bay Area. Lots of people are. Rent is high, and the jobs are quickly disappearing. My sister and mother both lost their jobs in the same week, and I know tons of people with similar stories.

The couple leaving is moving to Seattle and I'll be sad to see them go, but I didn't tell them what my own personal opinion of Seattle is. It amounts to, "Nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there." The weather was actually to my liking, as I like cold, damp, and wet. My issue is the lack of cultural diversity.

This is a large problem I have with the Midwest. People segregate and don't integrate. And while I'm critical of this, I must admit that I have my own problems dealing with people that aren't "underground" or "altnerative" or at the very least freaks / strange.

-=-

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