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Cerebral Contents: Update for 05.13.08: Backsliding by Cynthia Ruth Lewis 05.05.08: Five Feet and Building by Joel Van Noord Grocery Aisle by Richard Lighthouse Cross the Road by Ashok Niyogi 04.29.08: The Modern Covenant by Daniel E. Wilcox Death by Onions by Michael Frissore 04.21.08: Future's Children by Kimberly Raiser Identity Theft by George Anderson A Great Deal of Money by Justin Hyde 04.14.08: Mr. Papaya and Dale by Eric Suhem California by Caroline Imreibe Aftermath of Vehement Argument #1,068 by Cynthia Ruth Lewis Trip-Hammer Vitality by Lisa Nickerson 04.07.08: The Florence of Basel, or Why Readers of Nietzsche Need to Read Burckhardt by Jeff Crouch Friends of the Poet by Sean C. Bowen Picture Perfect by Leah Baldwin 03.24.08: Staring Down a White-Tailed Doe by Aleathia Drehmer 03.17.08: The Hairbrush by Vernard Kennedy Dog Days of Winter by Niall Berkeley Poem From My Grave by Michael Lee Johnson Mashed Potatoes and Hamburgers by Matt Finney 03.10.08: Hard Work by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Jetty Cake Pigs by J.D. Nelson |
by Joseph L. Conty, Jr. #17: June 4, 2007 Plane-Train Crashes and Texas-Sized Gashes The taste of the brew is still warm on my lips as I type this. I made double digits tonight. Only coffee this time; it's a sober weekend. Most of my weekends lately have been sober, and while it's not exactly the best way to go, it does have its advantages. Like, I won't go to sleep for another ten hours or so, and I can edit this piece over and over again (or rewrite and rewrite again). Or, I can stop every five minutes and take my pulse, expecting my heart to explode. If it does, I won't be able to finish this column. If it doesn't, you will have to read on. That being said, I had the most bizarre dream last night. Yes, all the classic themes were involved: flying, imminent death, mass hysteria, uncontrollable vomiting. I should preface this by saying I have never been on a plane in my life, and I am deathly afraid of roller coasters. When I was four years old, as a birthday present my mother had one of her friends from work take me up in his Cessna plane. I was terrified. I swear that door wasn't closed. I remember the smell of rubber and gasoline and how old that man was. They called him Red, but everything on him was white. Crotchety old man aside, the view was pretty amazing if you didn't look down. My mom went up with us the second time. "The trees look like broccoli," I remember her saying. That did not help. I hated broccoli. "The cars look like Hot Wheels." Well, why don't you buy me one then and get me out of this death rocket? I had my fair share of Hot Wheels and I could have used a few more stalks of broccoli in my diet. But, back to the dream. In this dream, the plane was closer to a Pittsburgh transit bus; the seats were very close together, and there was hardly any room at all. No different from an airplane I assume, but most airplanes don't carry the inimitable stench of bums fresh from taking a dump in someone's lawn. The captain was a wiseacre, I remember. There was a sense that I knew some of the people on the plane, but I could make out no faces. The whole thing had a twisting kaleidoscope effect; once I made out a face, it would fade back into the swirl of colors. Somehow, the plane was launched off of tracks, there was some sort of "wind-up" involved, and this is where I felt physically sick. In the dream, I stepped outside of my body and I could see me heaving and retching a yellow liquid. Everyone started screaming, and the pilot was cracking jokes. At this point, I woke up in my bed and went to the kitchen. The room was spinning, and there was a horrible taste in my mouth, like I had gargled moose nuggets and washed it down with Milk of Magnesia pudding pops. The peach made it a bit better. Eat a peach, as they say. I went back to sleep. And like a little miracle that has happened millions and millions of times before (say, childbirth) my dream continued. We were back in flight, and the interior looked more like a plane. Red velvet seats, decent spacing in the rows. I don't remember anything about the people. Things are fine for about a minute, then we collide with a train. How did I know it was a train? The pilot screamed out, "A fucking train!" I can't say if those were the exact words, but it would be some pretty cool shit to say before you die. State the obvious. There's no time to be poetic when a train rips your body apart in less than three seconds. But it's only a dream. You can be sadistic like that in your brain. So there is a flash of white, you know, like you see in near death experiences before you reach the pearly gates and grandma is there with her homemade instant from flakes potatoes with extra powder cheese. I end up on my couch with a gash the size of Texas in my leg (more like Florida, with the way it ran from my ankle up to my knee) and I run to the bathroom to get some floss, because that is clearly the only way to sew a wound the size of any state up. When I grab the floss, I find that I am in an emergency room, and everyone is looking at me. They are always looking at you, even in dreams. But let's be honest, what are they looking at, really? They are looking at my stomach. They are looking at my chin. They hate fat people, and I do too. Don't you? Anyway, I get my leg patched up, and I'm back on the plane. Except this time, it's a train. This freaks me out, given that we just crashed into a train. This train has no conductor. There are no people on it. Just me. And it starts chug chug chugging along. I put on my headphones and slump down in the seat. I wish I had something to read. I get motion sickness anyway. And that was it. End of the dream. And for the analysis? I don't know. They say most dreams about flying signify change. And if the plane crashes in your dreams, it means your expectations are too high. And if you dream you are on a train, it means you are on the "right track" in life. So I take this dream to be a positive one, if it wasn't just leftover brain farts, which it most certainly was. What gets me is that I am alone at the end. You always end up alone.
It's not a bad state to be in. Then you know you can survive with just
you. Human beings are social creatures, yes. But you and you alone are
the only one who can answer the questions. That's what my brain is trying
to do. And if it takes the idiocy of creating these fucked up dreams and
the pointlessness of trying to interpret them to make me feel better about
the little journey I have to take in life, then so be it. Anything to
pass the time. That's a good way to think about it. Don't take anything
too seriously. That's something I've been told before and I try to tell
myself that. How is it possible not to? I don't expect to live my life
over again, and I don't expect to regret anything, I just find it hard
to take sometimes, that you only get one chance, and that you can't really
make the best of that chance, because you don't know what to expect. This
point was illustrated much more beautifully in The Unbearable Lightness
of Being by Milan Kundera. But sometimes no matter how awkward it
may seem, it's better to find these things out and express them in your
own voice. This is what I choose to do (it is good to make choices), and
this is why I choose to write this column. You can take it or you can
leave it, don't look at that statement as a slap in the face, rather,
see it as a warm embrace from your Captain without a first mate. Visit Captain Fun's Swarthy Archives. ______________________________________ posted 06.04.07. |
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