Dream Log: March 18, 2000

One of the most interesting dreams I've ever had. Some background: Recently I broke up with my girlfriend after 2 and a half years. I still love her, but...well, you can read about it in my overly personal node. So, on to my dream:

We (my ex and I) were going to a movie store to find something to watch. As if to torture me, she holds my hand for a short time and gives me a kiss, then for the rest of the dream we act like "friends." We pick out a movie, and as we're walking back to the car, she says, "Isn't this nice? We *can* be together as friends." And I just want to scream at her, "No! It isn't okay! This is horribly painful!"

It's as if my subconscious is telling me how it will be if we meet as friends, as she wants to.

I am awoken AGAIN by the person playing an alchemist (Al Chemical's the name, since you asked) playing a part in this year's Fool's Day Parade - she requires some sort of mystic gum as a prop for her character at rehearsal today and if it wouldn't be too much trouble could I go out and look at acquiring some for her? Always a sucker for such things, I do a spot of research on the web and find that they're most likely to be found in the Jewish neighbourhood. So there I am in the "Jew supply store", looking for this gummy stuff, where I am informed by the shopkeeper there that what I'm seeking is not only used in a Jewish freezing process (the binding of what you want to freeze to a tin of kosher meat) but it is also an integral component in the formation of a dybbuk. Dybbuk? I ask. A friend's mother replies: Hans Moleman! I'm not convinced, so I ask for elaboration. According to this source, a dybbuk is the spirit of a man who is cremated in a hallucinatory or psychotic state (drug- or religion-induced) and cremated, his insane spirit bound, still living, to the spot where his ashes are located, only dying when they're widely dispersed. I am shown a picture of a mausoleum somewhere in The Holy Land where a dybbuk is rumoured to abide. It looks like a Mahjong set marked with the names and icons of major nations, ideologies and corporations. (Note that this description of a dybbuk is neither consistant with the mention of Hans Moleman nor with how it is conventionally known in kabalist circles or in the Monster Manual.)

So it seems that Robin Williams is starring with Brendan Fraser in a sequel to the less-than-critically-acclaimed Bicentennial Man, entitled a.c.i. containing a riotous scene in which Robin's robotic nose is detached and used as a combination smoke- and stink bomb, causing a stock market crash by disrupting the olfactory detectors of the small droids which buzz and hover above all the traders, picking up whether or not they want to buy or sell from sudden shifts in body chemistry.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, looking like a very pissed-off Gypsy drag queen, appears in a number of televised shorts protesting and physically attacking a video game simulating the piloting experience of the particular make of tank which rolled over his people's (?) freedom so many decades before. He punches and kicks the arcade cabinets and produces very amusing CLANK CLANG sounds, eventually moving on to also attack unrelated game cabinets made by the same company.

Dybbuk-gum is easier to come by than I'd suspected - pots of it are arranged, bowling pin-style, blocking the main entrance to a local supermarket, and what's more - it's on special!

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, READ THE SHADOWRUN SOURCEBOOK JUST BEFORE GOING TO SLEEP.
it's strange that I seem to recall many aspects of my dreams quite quite vividly only when I am asleep for periods of 12 hours or more with intermittent interruptions. Hm.

- / +

Two trains parallel, jumping and pausing along the track. What is keeping them back? Then I saw - each was pushing skulls up the track, a neverending line of green and purple skulls. I understood why LSD could be a potentially dangerous thing.

"And so, in the end, it was this way. He was sorry to see it go."

HQ of a talk show, but more than that, the genesis point of vital ideas. A round, revolving glass studio. I put my face to the window and looked out and down to the swimming pool crammed full of people in their clothes. They saw my silhouette and cheered, thinking I was someone famous.

Conan was frustrated and angry.

Perspective wheeled around to show me everyone important at this moment. Two old women on the couch. The stars spiraled out behind them. The women were frozen in space and time but able to explain themselves. They cuddled. They were looking forward to a trip to New Mexico. One said they'd like to invite Roberta to come along - she'd put out. I was angry. Roberta was a tool but there was no need to be rude. Everyone knew John Stamos really loved her.

The stars burst out and hung in pieces. Every motion frozen, amplified. The room wheeled. Conan was still sad and frustrated. Everyone expected something.

Holograms appeared beside me. Probably from Pete, I thought, and they were. As the signal filtered through I held the first one, waiting for it to clarify. He'd sent me a hologram of his face, pretty standard, no joke. I clicked to the next one. His foot. Again, nothing different that I could see. I wondered if he had been high when he sent them. Click to number three. His foot again. I looked at it from all angles, seeing nothing new, then almost screamed as it suddenly developed weight and was a real foot lying heavy in my hand. To get away from it I clicked to the final hologram, which was almost worse than the foot - Pete's head again, but heavy in my hands, and talking. Laughing, completely pleased with himself.

"You're probably all freaked out, I can just imagine . . . " he fell into laughter again and I wished I knew where the fast forward was. "Ok. By now you know what I've done here. I didn't want to tell you until I could prove it. I figured out how to make them appear to have mass and carry an audio signal. The only thing is, I don't know where to look, since I don't know where your eyes are, and it's got to be pretty creepy for you right now. Sorry." and he was off laughing again, thrilled.