Wednesday, October 05, 2005
haunted channeling
You visit in a dream.
Why? Why now? I do not know.
This time is more surreal than the times before.
I am outside an apartment building. Where? How tall? I do not know. It’s dark. There is yellow police crime scene tape at the curbside going around the building. Parked cars block the street as handfuls of curious neighbors and bystanders mill around the parked cars. There is a small yard in front. I seem to recall children’s toys, a ball, maybe a trike. Perhaps it is not that large a building. The interplay of the streetlights with the changing rhythms and colors of emergency vehicle lights illuminates the exterior of the building like the inside of a strip club. I think this odd, almost ironic given that I don’t recall you sharing my enthusiasm for that type of establishment in our wilder younger days.
The whole dream has the look and feel of a “Law and Order” episode. Like I am both in one and watching one at the same time in that weird alternating first and third person perspective I frequently experience in dreams.
The police have brought me there. You have already done the deed.
For some reason they need me to identify the body. I walk up a narrow staircase, dark stairs with dirty once white walls. I am lead into an apartment. The door enters into a small kitchen, almost blindingly bright and with fluorescent lights when compared to the dim and dingy stairwell I just exited. A countertop juts from the far wall and separates the kitchen from the living room.
There is a television on. I didn’t look at what channel you probably spent your last moments watching. I just didn’t want to. Knowing you, it was probably VH1 Classic. I see the back of a recliner, black or dark gray.
I am lead past the counter into the living room. A firm yet gentle hand on my shoulder turns me as I walk past the chair into the middle of the living room. The only light comes from the television at one end of the room and the lights from the kitchen at the other.
I stand in the middle of the room, backlit by the television, facing towards the kitchen I just walked through. Knee level on my right there is an old coffee table, overflowing with dirty ashtrays and empty cans of The Beast, like from the 1805 days.
You are there, sitting in a worn recliner.
At first it looks as though you are sitting on a knitted yarn afghan blanket, like the funky ones my grandmothers made in the ‘70s with great ‘70s yarn shades of red, pink, gray and brown.
Then I realize it’s not a knitted blanket. The left side of your head is missing. You still hold a gun in your right hand.
I say nothing. I just stand there, dumbfounded and numb.
I see your face move slightly, a subtle wrinkled grin. I have seen this face hundreds of times before when waking up on someone’s floor amidst the wreckage of an all night party. Your eyes open, your mouth moves, “Hey dude, what’s up?”
I awake with a startle, feeling very unstuck in space and time.
A moment’s chaos, then all is calm. I’m in bed. It’s the middle of the night. The Wife sleeps soundly beside me. To help get my bearings and to reconnect with this reality I get up and check on The Boy. He is fine.
All is well in my world.
Possibly even a little better. . .
This morning, during a lull in my classroom activities, I grabbed my classroom guitar.
I spontaneously played without pause or missing a chord change, “Working Man” minus the long jam part in the middle and then several sections of “Xanadu”.
Which was really weird, because I don’t know how to play those songs.
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Why? Why now? I do not know.
This time is more surreal than the times before.
I am outside an apartment building. Where? How tall? I do not know. It’s dark. There is yellow police crime scene tape at the curbside going around the building. Parked cars block the street as handfuls of curious neighbors and bystanders mill around the parked cars. There is a small yard in front. I seem to recall children’s toys, a ball, maybe a trike. Perhaps it is not that large a building. The interplay of the streetlights with the changing rhythms and colors of emergency vehicle lights illuminates the exterior of the building like the inside of a strip club. I think this odd, almost ironic given that I don’t recall you sharing my enthusiasm for that type of establishment in our wilder younger days.
The whole dream has the look and feel of a “Law and Order” episode. Like I am both in one and watching one at the same time in that weird alternating first and third person perspective I frequently experience in dreams.
The police have brought me there. You have already done the deed.
For some reason they need me to identify the body. I walk up a narrow staircase, dark stairs with dirty once white walls. I am lead into an apartment. The door enters into a small kitchen, almost blindingly bright and with fluorescent lights when compared to the dim and dingy stairwell I just exited. A countertop juts from the far wall and separates the kitchen from the living room.
There is a television on. I didn’t look at what channel you probably spent your last moments watching. I just didn’t want to. Knowing you, it was probably VH1 Classic. I see the back of a recliner, black or dark gray.
I am lead past the counter into the living room. A firm yet gentle hand on my shoulder turns me as I walk past the chair into the middle of the living room. The only light comes from the television at one end of the room and the lights from the kitchen at the other.
I stand in the middle of the room, backlit by the television, facing towards the kitchen I just walked through. Knee level on my right there is an old coffee table, overflowing with dirty ashtrays and empty cans of The Beast, like from the 1805 days.
You are there, sitting in a worn recliner.
At first it looks as though you are sitting on a knitted yarn afghan blanket, like the funky ones my grandmothers made in the ‘70s with great ‘70s yarn shades of red, pink, gray and brown.
Then I realize it’s not a knitted blanket. The left side of your head is missing. You still hold a gun in your right hand.
I say nothing. I just stand there, dumbfounded and numb.
I see your face move slightly, a subtle wrinkled grin. I have seen this face hundreds of times before when waking up on someone’s floor amidst the wreckage of an all night party. Your eyes open, your mouth moves, “Hey dude, what’s up?”
I awake with a startle, feeling very unstuck in space and time.
A moment’s chaos, then all is calm. I’m in bed. It’s the middle of the night. The Wife sleeps soundly beside me. To help get my bearings and to reconnect with this reality I get up and check on The Boy. He is fine.
All is well in my world.
Possibly even a little better. . .
This morning, during a lull in my classroom activities, I grabbed my classroom guitar.
I spontaneously played without pause or missing a chord change, “Working Man” minus the long jam part in the middle and then several sections of “Xanadu”.
Which was really weird, because I don’t know how to play those songs.
"Nevermore shall I return
Escape these caves of ice
For I have dined on honeydew
And drunk the milk of Paradise"
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