Tag: conspiracy

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Dream Journal

Distract for the Cause, All the Way to Celebration Point

Excited to soon be flying back to Australia after so many years, for a school trip. Compared to last time there’s much more structure but many more people to do things with. A long gap follows this part of the dream, yet though forgotten seems connected to later parts.

My assigned male activity partner sits on the corner wall of a lot where the school group has gathered. He’s hefty, and the loose dirt crumbles. He falls into rushing water — the one thing that was stressed about him was that he’s (really, actually) allergic to water. Immediately this feels like some sort of test. I swim frantically after him though I don’t hold much hope. Yet I’m able to catch up, then heave his immobile body onto the inside curve of a sandbar to hopefully dry and recover. I pull myself onto the shore further down the bend. By then he’s recovered — more like been revealed — to be a powerful muscular young Zeus-like figure.

We expropriate a neglected academic area, a bit like single story underground dorms. Surveying the cramped little warren of rooms I spot an Austrian flag hanging on a darkened wall. Satisfied, we begin planning a takeover. Our small group of like-minded rebels improvises a space, repurposing walls and making a few rows of chairs. We view and discuss ideas presented from a stage.

One such dramatization of an idea is like a subdream featuring stop-motion bundles of sticks: a Subaru hatchback driven by a pair of 50-somethings backs into a barn near a lakeshore; the barn catches fire and explodes inexplicably. In the chair next to me sits an old man I don’t know very well. I’m sitting at the end of a row, having thought I’d be further from people. I’m now uncomfortably aware that I’m naked from the waist down, and adjust my posture and shirt in a futile effort to compensate.

Events take a twist when a college girl wearing a Lakers cheerleader uniform returns from a bender. It’s her space in which we’ve been squatting, and she has many pointed questions. We’d prepared for this eventuality; quickly I snap into the role of distracting and misdirecting her. (Especially from a disturbed patch of wood at the foot of my seat — a relic from before our takeover, uninvestigated and best forgotten). I talk and play friendly with her, giving a tour which surreptitiously avoids the group’s more sensitive aspects. It’s tricky, but I lean toward providing truthful explanations wherever possible — without any group plan it seems likely we could easily be caught in a lie. This would be a greater risk than tiring out her questions and slowly earning her trust, though I worry if my compatriots might think I’ve betrayed them. Thankfully during my ramblings on our tour I spot one of my conspirators and, while her back is turned, signal with my hand to give the companion opportunity to take action. It’s acknowledged with a subtle head shake, showing me that while they’re not ready to move forward they also recognize the part I’m playing.

Soon she asks to go into an especially sensitive five-story building, to the top floor. There’s a library located in the center of that floor which would be disastrous if our interests in it were revealed. There are also two balcony rooms flanking it where students often congregate, known as “Celebration Point”. As the library comes into view I deploy a powerful strategem: I act bashful and say “The thing is… and I’m not sure you knew this… Celebration Point is where a lot of students traditionally go for a first date.” I managed to say this twice in different ways, proud of my brilliant acting, while realizing if any companion were witness to it I’d appear highly suspect. The stakes are increasing but I’ve pulled it off so far.

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Dream Journal

12 Elements, 12 Deities, 12 Powers

Heritage church out forgotten in the desert of my hometown. A screen of tamarisk trees hides it between my middle school and the mountains beyond. No one has visited in years. I climb the rafters inside, feeling transported to an earlier time. Perhaps the reason I wasn’t reported to the authorities exploring such a place is because I was just a lone kid. I hope they preserve this place, even though no one seems to love it but me.

An airplane journey, within a strange morphing and expanding fuselage. At the beginning several portal-making objects of power are released to 12 special passengers, forming the side of good. They are hunted by an evil master witch with broods of alien slave dogs, zergling-like. Some good-siders hide behind doors, some in hidden passageways, some in other time periods, some in other realities, all enduring attacks from the witch and her brood.

Each object they are blessed with are aligned with certain elements of the periodic table, and certain deities of the Greek Pantheon, granting them unique powers. They learn to wield them one by one — the dream is broken into chapters and has an unusually sophisticated structure.

Finally in the last chapter it’s revealed that Element № 1, aligned to Zeus king of the gods, has all the while been overseeing events unfold with their sublime omniscience. The left side of the movie theater inside the main fuselage has remained mysteriously empty during the pitched battles. It turns out to be a staging area for those special objects-holders who reach the last step in their training, now hiding in plain sight. They take their seats wordlessly, building anticipation one by one with each assembled conspirator, and finally together open the small sealed chamber to the right of the screen — that the witch and her hunters never even noticed. The supreme holder is revealed, having learned his training instantly, observing all, but withholding his omnipotence until the time was ripe.

The witch is gobsmacked, the energy in the room electric. She is defeated without a battle, finally seeing what has played out.

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Dream Journal

Grandma Australian PM tours Medieval Monument Valley

Slept at a couple friends’ home in Oxnard, CA

In a familiar communal velvet plush gathering space, chairs and windows in an oval, I talk with Patrick who is a week out from graduating high school, very bright and proud. The building is long, with conveyor belts in the workshop/basement open to the air, reminiscent of the Acme Bread Co. Unfortunately an old sorceress grandma has recently put herself in charge. I’ve no recollection of why she was evil, but my co-conspirators and I concoct a plan to overthrow and kill her. I shapeshift and sneak over the back fence. My disguise seems to fail on the way down, and I land naked in a puddle. Luckily the enchantment only gives me the illusion of failure, and to others I appear as a football (the most similar object that would make sense coming over a fence and landing in a puddle). I’m thrown by a conspirator to nearby the witch/sorceress/grandma and successfully trap her face in a plastic bag.

My wife’s late grandfather, Pa, sitting peacefully on a chair in the middle of his old living room. Grams sits on his lap, both gazing at something I can’t see. They’re having a fond conversation, and although I watch their lips move, I hear nothing.

Malaysian news crew leaves a 200 ft. folding ladder in our student news studio. Of course, this is a great temptation for my lads and I. Later, on my way somewhere else, I climb a similar fire escape ladder. A bubbly, distressed blonde runs up and hugs me, surprisingly warm, then effusively apologizes for mistaking me for her close friend who regularly climbs that fire escape.

On the city’s jagged, street-level highway there’s a single minivan going the wrong way, but the cars manage to drive around it as though it were an extremely temporary one-way lane. Later the same thing happens while I’m riding a scooter on a one-way street, an entire line of cars that were diverted, with no notice from our direction.

Australian PM has a special rule, 612, where she can reject things based on being a grandmother. A door displaying the news is marked 612. Sitting around a table, Lynae gets up and a made-up but world-weary Asian girl sits in her chair. Despite the possible tension from bringing up politics, I solicit opinions by sharing the analogy of an internet response code, ‘4xx – machine on fire’. The Aussies seem properly amused. A newsstand reports “PM unhurt by nip dip”, and I learn this refers to the particulars of temporarily banning high-priced smart devices. Australia, after all, is the country exporting the raw materials to make them. Unbeknownst, the PM was sitting at the next table over, appreciates my gab, and takes me on a local tour.

The semi-arid town seems generic — there’s a central roundabout, off to the left is the industry, upslope to the right are short flat houses with fenced-in yards. In the distance is a chunky green promontory, much like Monument Valley USA. As we drive closer I see stunning medieval-imitation towers, ramparts, and fortifications. I can’t even fathom such artistic means, or their intent. This is what the area is famous for. I’m so awed by the beauty I begin to doubt its realness, even telling the PM it looks like a Myst game. This only exacerbates it’s majestic quality. Against the golden dusk light, the elegant stone buttresses on the far side of the hill spout waterfalls, the leafless trees clutching spherical mud-daub treehouses. Yet nothing degrades into unreality, it simply remains repentantly beautiful.