dreams, scary and hilarious.

Hoi hoi, lowly mortals!

First I want to say to Michelle that I specifically said I felt conspicuously young, not that they seemed old to me. It's a maturity thing, rather than an age thing. But I will say that my comment about Calgary being cultureless is more to do with the lack of atmosphere around the city than a lack of culturally exciting events. Obviously there's more happening here, event-wise, but I'm talking more about the feel of the place. This city is composed primarily of highways and stripmalls. You (Michelle) are living in the core of Kensington; perhaps the most interesting place (atmospherically) to be in all the city. Maybe I'm confusing atmosphere with the feeling of community in Fton.

And yes, Shaggz, I am the lead vocalist for the pseudoband "Warthog". It goes well with both my position as "frontman", and with the fact that I can't sing.

It's been an interesting week, with the parents and sister visiting. We went skiing at Fernie, which was amazing on Saturday, and short-lived on Sunday as the soft/heavy melting snow is the likely cause for Mum's torn ACL. She may have to have reconstructive surgery, and cannot walk without a brace, or even drive. It's so ironic since she's by far the most cautious skier I know, yet also very experienced and skilled. Here I am throwing myself off near cliffs, and she messed up her leg avoiding a tumbling snowboarder on a green run. Mum has had no pain at all associated with this injury, however, which is really weird. She just cannot put any weight at all on her leg (it gives way immediately).

Since they left it's been a week of telecommuting, with all that implies. So now that I'm caught up on Top Gear, Lost, House, and My Name is Earl for the last couple of weeks, I can really get my head down and do some work tomorrow (Friday). Except that a birthday party I'm supposed to get trashed at starts at 2pm. I guess I won't go until 6 or 7 though; I enjoy playing catch-up.

Did I ever relate the tale of the dream I had five years ago that is still crystal clear in my memory? When I tell most people about it they joke (or do they?) that I should seek professional help. It was the summer I was in the field with Paul McNeill, and while in that remote desolate camp under the Saturday Glacier I had the most incredible, bizarre, and terrifying dreams of my life. The one in particular began simply enough: we were preparing to go into the field and needed some empty boxes/crates to put stuff in. Our search began at a hospital (obviously). Entry to the hospital was by a 45-degree glass elevator, not unlike the funicular in Québec City, however it went down from street level to the entrace, which would have been the second basement level.

Inside, the windowless concrete hallways were painted nursing-home green, and all the staff were (literally) faceless, 8 feet tall, and very menacing, wearing green hospital smocks. I entered a room to search it for boxes to steal. The room was a cube about six or seven metres to a side. It was unfinished concrete except for green padding covering the walls to about halfway up. There was no furniture, but there was a clock high on the wall, ticking backwards. There was one occupant. He was of indeterminate age and extremely frail, in a white hospital gown and with shaven head, he was huddled in the corner of this empty space, staring at nothing. With complete horror I realised that this was a hospital for the terminally ill, and the clock ticked backwards showing exactly how much time he had left. He was kept in this empty concrete cell (for that is what it was) by the enforcers, the cell was padded so he couldn't try to hurt himself by running into the walls, and worst of all, the only object in the room - the dreadful clock - was well out of reach so it couldn't be disabled.

Paul had found some first aid boxes and tipped out their contents so we could use them. We walked past the ghastly faceless enforcers, who only realised what we had done as we reached the elevator. They ran towards us as I hammered on the 'door close' button. It closed just in time, of course.

The next night, as I slept, we returned to that hospital for the medical supplies Paul had ditched, making this the only repeat dream I've ever had. Again we made it to the elevator just in time, but this time it stopped halfway up the track and started to go back down. Paul smashed a window (remember it was glass) and ran up the track and I followed. At the top was a decidedly more down-to-earth (and anti-climactic, in a way) scene, as two or three dozen cops demanded from behind their flashing cars, with guns drawn, that we lie down etc.

It ended there, but it's the cell that stays with me... and particularly that clock. No nightmare before or since has been so terrifying, even the one when I was five when my family was turned into skittles by a horrible machine. There are a hundred ways to analyse it if you're into dream interpretation, which I am not. I think it's about my own fear of death, which is something I never think about. However, it's hard to see what each element symbolises; the clock is clearly the countdown to the inevitable... what made it so frightening was that it actually knew the moment, and was unstoppably counting down to it. Am I the frail lonely patient, trapped in the cell with that clock? Who are the faceless enforcers? I'm thinking that the plot of 'me and Paul trying to prepare the field' is not relevant to the deeper meaning, since that's exactly what we'd been doing for the days before we flew in. But then again, what do I know.

I routinely get vivid dreams, often very plot-driven adventures, and usually involving protagonists and antagonists, the latter are generally frustratingly impossible to overcome. I only have one experience with dream interpretation. Once a lady from the church of a girl I dated tried to interpret some of my dreams as "God dreams". I did not relate the above dream, but a comical one I had had the previous night, which was Star Wars based and involved me flying around a city with kilometre-height buildings suspended in the sky, on a flying bicycle. I went down to a lower level for lunch, and while I ate Luke Skywalker stole my bike and flew away upwards. I found an elevator to follow him up, and saw a hovering platform full of stormtroopers. I slaughtered them all of them mercilessly with some sort of blaster gun (I left that bit out of my description to this woman) and got on the platform. Then Luke showed up on my bike to congratulate me on taking out the stormtroopers. Without a word I shoved him off the platform for stealing my bike. He fell several kilometres to his death. Bastard.

Anyway she apparently did not know much about Star Wars because she decided that Luke represented the devil, the bike represented Jesus, and the city represented Heaven. I neglected to ask what it meant that Satan was riding Jesus around Heaven. I personally believe that my life over the preceeding days, which involved getting my bike seat stolen, and playing a lot of Jedi Knight II, was the real inspiration for the dream. I also believe that the dream was inherently hilarious. All I know for certain is that it felt really good to shove that annoying whining pansy off that platform to a horrible death.

I haven't had any memorable ones lately, fieldwork often triggers them, though. We'll see in the summer.

Cheers for now.