More writings.

Here's the second assignment I wrote for my Advanced Writing class. It's a little woo, but I like it. Now all I have to do is write another full assignment from start to finish in the rest of the day. Blergh.

Dreamscrape

            It occurred to me recently that I don’t dream. Well, that’s probably not true – you’d have to have an exceptionally debased psyche to literally not dream – but if asked to recount one of my dreams, I can offer nothing but a blank stare. My practical side wants to say that this is an effect of how much I sleep – I sleep entirely too much, and it seems that dreams manifest themselves in our conscious memories easiest if we’re woken early, which in this day and age is almost always. I’ve imagined, from time to time, that my inability to remember my dreams past the point where they’re useful could actually be an improvement on the baseline human mind, similar to how lactose intolerance is caused by a person lacking an enzyme-altering mutation common in most of the population rather than technically being an affliction itself. Or perhaps this is the result of some symbolic manifestation? By noting that I never remember my dreams from each night, could The Narrator be suggesting that my head is so deeply in the clouds I may as well be dreaming while awake? Or to signify that I don’t have a purpose in life? Well, probably not.

            Recently, however, I did have a dream. It came after a very long period of being trapped in my room, staring at the monitor, trying desperately to think of something, anything, I had to say. I dreamt I was navigating a sailing ship through a shimmering, starry sea. I stood at the prow, a much younger I, dressed in auspicious purple finery, holding a gleaming sextant. I still don’t know what a sextant is even for, much less how to use one, but it didn’t matter – I was a being of pure sensation, still on good enough terms with the world to survive just by standing there.

            There was a twisting sensation, as if someone spun my inner ear about like a globe, taking my consciousness with it. Suddenly I was lying at the outskirts of a car crash, or a collapsed building – something grey and twisted, flecked with red. There were paramedics there, frantically doing very, very medical things to me. It was no use, I thought, it was like arguing with a physicist. The whole scene struck me as terribly sorrowful and melancholy, depressing enough to merit some sort of award, though at least this time I had the decency to admit I don’t actually know anything about the paramedic’s craft. The camera blurred and panned, frantic stock phrases were shouted, and as one of the doctors stuck an enormous hypodermic into my grey matter, I felt that mental shifting again.

            Now I was in a desert. Or a badland. Whatever the specific term may be. A ghost town, most of it burnt, charred timbers stretching towards the sky. The blackened, craggy textures of the burnt buildings struck me as curiously organic. As I wandered through the town I felt a curious awareness, a sense of self-determination. I’ve heard of lucid dreaming before, but no one has ever given me an acceptable definition of “lucid,” so it must suffice to say I felt I was actually living this moment, rather than just remembering it. I came across one of the few standing buildings. A man, wild hair and beard the same color as the ancient boards behind him, slumped in a fragile white rocking chair, a shotgun or fishing rod or something leaning on one leg. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was trying to figure out where all my dreams went.

            “Ain’t no use for dreams around here, boy.” He said, hacking and wheezing. I told him that, while they aren’t exactly in fashion anymore, I thought dreams were valuable nonetheless.

            “Well, think in one hand, and shit in the other,” he said, between a cough and a spit, “and see which fills up first.” I silently took my leave, past his house towards the distant fence.

            “A fool and his honey are soon parted!” I heard him shout over my shoulder, “Love is an insanity curable by marriage! One hundred percent of everything is crap! I’m not prejudiced, I hate everyone equally!”

            “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” I thought to myself as I passed the fence, little more than random wood held together with wire, “The definition of a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

            The desert was wide, a great plain of rolling dunes broken only by the occasional cactus (I was aware enough to rage at my subconscious for this botanical oversight). Soon, the town had completely disappeared, empty desert as far as the eye could see. Was it Dali, if I remember, who popularized the image of a desert as a metaphor for the human imagination? Somewhat inept, I thought, as deserts have very little to build with in them. Still, as I walked through the great desert, stretching hundreds of imaginary miles, I decided I’d like to take it with me when I awoke, if I could. Desert flowers bloom but rarely, but they do bloom.