I had a dream recently wherein I want to say "an old boyfriend" but that wouldn't exactly be right... let's say instead a fascinator from my old co-ed days had gotten married and I found myself at an informal reception held in the happy couple's honor in a sprawling southern style mansion with creeping vines and a wide verranda. The house was the at the end of a country road that I often travel on in dreams that are going to include alien feelings and a party that I'm trying to leave. This union came as quite a shock to me, for when I knew him this fellow was more the rambling type that Joni Mitchell would have written a song about, embittered, after a brief but memorable affair (and here I am, too, with pen in hand) than the sort to go tying the knot. As he chatted amiably with guests and barbecued, I combed the house for a Sega Genesis where I spent the remainder of the dream playing a made-up, side-scrolling dream game comprised of blurry little ghosts with blurry objectives.
The video game portion of the dream was probably a gift from my boyfriend's subconscious to mine as we slept. The earlier portion was probably brought on by a meeting with a high school friend who told me he was living in an honest to goodness house in a neighborhood inhabited mainly of parents. He then introduced me to his fiancee. We were at the grocery store. I was probably wearing a big wooly nightmare and clutching something like a $12 homeopathic ointment for fungal itching, I don't really remember and it isn't important. "Are we really that age?" I kept thinking for the rest of the day and any other time friends of mine seem to be accepting adult responsibility for the direction of their lives with confidence and grace. Could it be that I'm holding myself back by subscribing to a limiting myth of myself as possessing an attractiveness as a member of society and a general set of abilities akin to those possessed by a urine-soaked lunatic? And yet, subscribing to this myth is deliberate in the sense that being viewed as capable and successful in the eyes of a society with which I often have trouble identifying holds little appeal. I'd like to believe that it is possible to achieve success by a definition more intrinsically human (more humanistic?) than what is currently offered by society... some sense of satisfaction brought on by finally becoming what you always were...or something? I was going to launch into the movie Slacker and why I had a hard time watching it (because I identified with it) but on second thought I think that review would be a redundant addition to this topic.
See you in my dreams,
R.
1 comment:
I'm not sure what the last comment is implying, haha.
Maybe the slacker review is a little redundant, ha! but! I know what you mean. Recently I applied for a job at Liberty Mutual. What soulless existence that leads to, I hope I never find out. I don't want a neighborhood with parents, and I don't want useless skills that make me useful to a useless job that pays me bills. Good lord, what gives? BTW, I think us Catholic kids need to read Patti Smith's, Just Kids, so we can figure to get along in this life as the odd men out.
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