Dream

I've retreated to google docs and article writing for the last month +++, but I thought I would share a free form reflection of last night's dream. Penned (keyed) this morning at work:

Dreaming about myself in a society in which I am part of a caste, a working class. That is to say: a group whose mental limitations are set, determined people who do a certain kind of work. This is sort of how the dream begins, with this knowledge that I am lesser, which makes sense considering I begin underground. There are several numbered subway like cars, it’s basically a metro station. Each platform has a large number above it. The subway trains themselves are unusual, very small, lacking a top, think a convertible mixed with one of those see-saw like railway carts from Historic Western US Trains, think bugs bunny. These little convertible like trains hold one person at a time. The person steps off the platform and onto the little cart, the cart zooms away. This whole boarding and zooming off to another station routine is quite the commotion. There are people everywhere, the little carts seem alive, quivering with energy, as though charging up, wiggling their butts before they pounce off down the rails. Everyone getting on the trains belongs to the same low grade worker class I belong to; we all appear to be wearing gray-ish jumpsuits, a blend between prison wear and the running jackets of the recently read Meeks. This is sort of when the dream starts to inhabit the Meeks themes, which I am unaware of until I wake. The rails that the carts ride upon aren’t really visible, instead they are like grooves of a moat filled with candy. Yes candy. The cart’s platform seems to hover above a river of candy, its wheels buried in the candy, perhaps driving along the bottom or just motoring through the candy channel. I approach the cart I know is designated for me, I seem to now recall that it is platform #10...maybe. As I board, I stare down at the candy surrounding the cart. I seem to lose my balance and my leg plunges into the candy. The texture of the candy is glistening, I am focusing on it. Cellophane style wrapping seems to cover most of what I see, transparent wrap revealing anonymous (i.e. brand-less), multicolored balls of hard candy flavor, or deep and bright wrapped up candies, bold colors like a general’s navy blue, Oz green, Sunny D yellow. You know. My leg sinks in and I am startled. The cart should burst off any second. I seem to get my leg out of the candy and right myself in time for the cart to take me where I need to go. I have no memory of the actual journey or my arrival in the place. Yet suddenly I am where I need to be. An old empty mansion. The kind of place that is faded in every way, where nothing appears dry; that is, everything resembles wetness, the air offering your breath the chunky taste of mold. I move through the rooms. This is my job, I sluggishly start to understand, to walk around the emptiness of our old civilization and to look for things, life, objects, just something to collect or even just to notice, to be there and to witness some inkling of the living past with my own eyes. That would be recording enough, that is what my society has assigned the lower class to do; become witnesses, memory-bearers. It is a strange feeling, I know this is the first time I have understood my function; I don’t seem that intrigued by the ramifications of this knowing and instead wander through room after room of this dreary place. I come into a bedroom. There is a man and a woman having sex on the bed, they are both naked. They appear to be ever so slightly Asian in their facial features. They are both fit and young. The woman has long black/brown hair. The sex is kind of missionary, the man is on top, but he is also holding the woman’s foot, fully stretching out her leg while he leans into her. I am sort of aroused, but at the same time, there isn’t anything amazingly vivid or erotic about these two. I almost feel like it is expected that I encounter this sex here in this mansion, I at least know these are the only two in here. They notice me. The man withdraws from the woman and looks right at me. He tells me that I can have sex with her if I like. He says something about them waiting here. He says something about her being ready to have sex with someone like me. What he means by someone like me is someone from my mentally inferior class. I make a few connections from this in the dream. I realize that these two are part of the society’s elite, privileged group, and I also realize that there are very few people left who are not considered part of my cart-hopping group, regardless these are the people I’ve been told to identify, these are the ones who told me to do it in the first place, maybe not these exact people, but they are part of the controlling group that built the carts, the candied river, the purpose behind the task that lead me here to this dingy house and room and to their fucking. They sort of seem amused with me, perhaps watching these connections furrowing all over my face. I don’t really know what happens after that. I may or may not have had sex with the woman, I don’t think I did...I know I didn’t want to, I know I felt disturbed by these people and what their being here indicated. I knew that finding theme was all there was to what I was doing, that was it, find them. My brain in the dream felt impossibly slumped, reduced to a trickle of thinking. I really did feel mentally inferior, fogged out. I don’t know where I ended up after that, I think I just drifted into the blankness of a dream ending, of sleep whiting out anything else there may have been to remember. As the distance from that blankness to waking consciousness closed, I could hear the faint scratching of Binky’s paw against the door of the bathroom, where I locked him in that night. It was one of the deeper sleeps I’ve had since living with the annoying cat.