pseydtonne | Decent weekend overall

Quick tip: don't clean your screen with a Swiffer sheet. It's surprisingly abrasive. I wound up with scratches in the anti-glare paint on my nice CRT. Just a heads' up.

I enjoyed my three days of vacation and subsequent weekend. Five days without punching in are nice days. I saw a lot of you and had good times all around. I also blew through some money, but nothing severe. I got bad news on Friday that my boss's boss was sacked. I liked him a lot and it bums me how quiet the office will be on Monday. However, let's think about less direct stuff.

I had these three dreams in one night. The first was the longest and thus will be discussed last.

All I remember of the last dream (they're all filmlike scenes, with rich backgrounds and specific color palettes) is a scene of a couple in the 1950s. They're at an English beach, standing near a top-down coupe. This is a rocky beach. Something has filled the coupe to the top with pebbles and stones. What remains uncovered are the top of the glove box, half of the steering wheel, some of the dash dials and the red fake-leather headstocks of the seats. The girl of the couple is talking as if there were no problem. The boy is full of angst and a whiny accent. I no longer recall the words.

The middle dream was about a friend from high school. I go home to visit during the spring. Before I get to see him, I find out from his recent ex-girlfriend that he is bereft. I go to see him and he is crying like he never has before. He tells me he just found out a girl he loved a long time ago and dated briefly had dumped him not because she went to college but because he'd knocked her up. She now had a six-year-old son by him but refused to let him meet the child. He felt the deception had left him without purpose. He felt guilty for being a playboy and wanted very badly to be a father to his son. Nothing I say can reassure him. For some reason, the dreams ends with him walking into a school locker and closing the door behind him.

Now for the big dream, one that could be a book. It seems to be a combination of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, some of the Gibson I'd been chomping, and the old folks episode of South Park. Think of this as a play-by-play of a movie.

The first scene is of people driving from all over to gather at what looks like a county fair. There are farm animals, but the scene starts to look more and more like a big-tent church revival. You can hear a man announcing through a PA that this gathering would be the beginning of a new America. The scene is overcast -- when it isn't raining, it's windy. We get focus on people in the crowd complaining that they have to be there, that it's nice to be out from pollution for a day in the country. Usually it's when someone gets out of a car that we hear dialogue other than the loudspeaker.

Soon we get the big pitch. "smokestack and sin have ruined this place. It is time for us to leave and take to another, pure realm. That realm has been found and the doorway is here!" Most of the people heading into the tent are elderly, many of them annoyed by the family members that drove them to the tent. The tent is full, but suddenly the place fills with bright light. When the light is gone, so is everyone in the tent. The remaining people drive home.

We focus on one couple driving home.
"Why does your mother get to go to the promised land? All she ever does is yell at us about not serving her."
"She's gone. Why talk about it?"
"Because I'm the one that has to figure it out."

The radio is on in the car. An announcer explains about people all over the country leaving for the parallel Earth to escape the horrors of our culture. Pollsters at the "Calling Ceremonies" have found that most people being taken up are elderly or unemployed.

We cut to some months later. Questions have been flying about the missing people -- are they alive? Why doesn't everyone get a chance to escape? Why have some people that didn't ask to go disappear? Our family from before becomes more worried and wants to cross over and see mother. "I may not like the beast, but I still don't want her dead. Besides, she still owns the house we live in."

Cut to a scene near the tent, in the pouring rain. Agents are dragging the wife to the tent. She is crying hysterically. We realize the agents (men in long rain slickers and wide-brimmed hats) are not government agents but more like older farm hands. They don't speak.

Cut to the Other Side. These people are alive, but they have no idea what to do. Entire buildings have been brought over to the other side, but they sit in the middle of open fields and thickets of forest. All the crossovers want the comforts from the old world. Some of them came over to be cured of new diseases that arose from pollution; their diseases ameliorated until the buildings came back.

There was a lot more to the dream, but I've been having a hard time piecing anything else logically. After all, a dream is the attempt by the reasoning side of one's brian to understand the random neural firings that fill a sleeping brain. Making another set of conclusions is the construction of new material. All I know is that the story overwhelmed me. I couldn't believe my mind has synthesized all of that. The imagery was grand. I wish I could download straight from my brain.

Please give comments. Thanks!

-new worlds, Dante