whoa, trippy

yeah, well, i just wrote that other entry last night/early this morning, and i am not the type to fill this thing with info every chance i get, but if i got something on my mind, then might as well, eh? Okay, so this requires a little bit of setup, this is certainly one of the weirder things i will write, that's for sure. I've been under a bit of stress lately (heh what else is new!) about all things in my life, i've been keeping VERY erratic hours and either sleeping way too much (not THAT often!) or not nearly enough.. case in point, I think I went to be a little over 3 hours ago. And, American Movie Channel seems to keep playing Back to the Future at odd times, and i have caught the very beginning/end more than a couple of times over the past week. All that being said, then...

I am a "strange dreamer," I have written entries into this journal previously recounting some of the episodes, lately in particular. Usually when I am in my dream state, it's like most of my brain is turned off - logic is completely thrown out the window, often I will spend much of the dream with a different identity altogether, sometimes being different people during different parts of the dream. the logic is often that this is not "unnatural" in that world, and never seems unusual to me at the time. Also it's not bizarre for my dreams to just be out and out, uhh how to put this, "fuckin' crazy-nuts," yeah.

Furthermore, once in awhile (a GREAT while.. to the tune of like 3 or 4 times, in my life) I will have some sort of dream that's just so lucid, so bizarre, that it effects me on a slightly deeper and more profound level, not quite like that of an actual experience but when I wake up it will definitely make me feel as if i have almost sort of been "elsewhere," or literally been in an altered state of mind (wth no artificial influences, anyway.. perhaps the stress/poor sleeping habits contribute). i've never taken any psychedelic drug or any of that sort of thing, but a slight few of these dreams I will consider to possibly be approaching what i'd expect to be a similar state -- i know I've written of this all before, so I will just get on with the damn dream then, 'specially before more of the details start slipping from my grasp.

Alright, so to dive right in.. in this particular dream, it was not quite the future, not quite the past - definitely a mix of both, but overall it felt like the 1960s or 70s or something, I was this kinda rocker/partier/gangster guy or something. I hung out with this band of ne'er-do-wells, all we would do was party with lots of crazy gals, lots of stoners, and uh.. maybe a few criminals, I guess it basically felt like Boogie Nights without the Porn Business, if you get my drift. Anyway i was some sort of down-on-his-luck Has Been at a get-together with my friends, we were getting messed up at a party with the plan to commit some act of burglary later in the evening. We (3 or 4 of us) ducked out, hopped into a car and made over to some local high school or something, I forget what it was that we'd been burglarizing/stealing but at some point we were past the act and there was a bad scene in a locker room or bathroom. there was the ringleader guy, me, some other very weak/whiny/wimpy guy, a no-name, and like.. Dicky Barrett from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (yeah, for real). Something had gone wrong, or this was part of the plan, but for some reason - either me or the wimpy guy had to die at the other's hand, or our own, right now. I was very calm about it - not wanting to die, but i accepted my fate. the wimpy guy was absolutely hysterical breaking down, he kept saying "yeah yeah yeah I will do it" but he couldn't bring himself to use te gun on either himself or me (I might mention that the whole thing was a rigged set-up to bring about this situation and, hopefully, kill that guy - previously known to all but but himself). This poor SOB, though constantly falling apart and crying, had all the power in the world as he actually had the gun - but the last time he broke down, I grabbed the gun and shot him dead. The rest of us were relieved but we knew that we hadda get the hell out of there, ASAP. We torched the place and blew it up, or something.. anyway my buddy (ringleader) and I were fleeing the scene late in the night, he was driving some old Camaro or something, with this like... Old black waitress seated beside him, i forget if she was a transient or hitcher or something, either way she was innocent and not keen to what was up. We'd been away from the explosion all of a minute and there were hordes of cops already all over us, so the wheelman was tearing down the neighborhood streets like a man possessed. The roads were treacherously icy, it was not long before we spun horrifically out of control and into worse condition - I think we had a head-on with a snowplow and then set spiraling into some house's garage, which we just smashed nearly completely THROUGH, the car shot half-out the other side and the other half perniciously dangling over a long-drop cliff edge. MANY police cars were pursuing us, and they all apparently met the same fate, but as they had more speed/mass then we did, their fate was worse, as they'd each careen into us and then right past us and down the cliff's steep chasm, to bury far beneath in the snow somewhere.

this part of the dream was very frightening, I felt this primitive and very real fright of "is this it, am i about to die?" Each time another car hit us I could feel our own car's frame being mangled more tightly around me, crushing me - and looking into the front seat I could see my two accomplices were already done for. So basically everyone was screwed except me, cops/fellow criminals/whiny guy, everyone. I was sure I was gonna buy the farm as well, but somehow there was JUST ENOUGH room to squeeze out of the car, and just enough of the garage left for me to escape from. So I made out into the snowy night and the whole thing pretty much burned up behind me, secure in the knowledge that i would be preetty much taken for dead and therefore free to wander as a fugitive without fear of being looked for (due to the dubious activities I had just been involved with).

this is where more of the fucked-up dream logic kicked in.. I was no longer quite "me," i was watching the scene on a TV or something, the burning house.. .it pulled back ad the scene rotated the entire image to show the perspective as some weird, abstract, formless painting. the painting then shifted and rotated back into a "real scene," and though the place was the same, the time seemed not to be.. nor were the characters. Overlayed over the scene after this rotation were simple icons of the characters (me, the waitress, the wheelman, some others), kind of like a "character select screen" for a videogame, you knew it was coming, haha. Anyway so the scene shifts and I am back inside as this same guy, but now the world is different. i am walking in the same area (near the garage we'd just smashed into) only none of that had happened in this world yet, it felt like some 20 years would have to pass first or so. Might i also mention that this street "felt" like the street I lived on when I was born and for the first 4 years of my life. I was wandering around, cognizant of this, and that i had been the part of some terrible thing which would not happen for a long time, if at all. I realized, also, that my body had changed with this timeshift, I was now a little kid though with my memories (mostly) intact. I'd look in the miror and see my usual adult self, and speak and likewise talk like normal, but to others they would only see the kid version, and hear me speak likewise. It was sort of frustrating, but a good enough disguise I guess.

Anyway, the following segment was a little blurry, but somehow I came under the care of an ex-girlfriend of mine (from real-life, and now I was sort of my Real Self mixed with this Dream identity). I stayed with her and she considered me to be some kid she had to look after, which sort of bothered me but at the same time I hadn't much choice so i went along with it. I was trying to figure out what year it was (which turned out to be VERY difficult, as things were hard to read.. they often are, in dreams) but I didn't want to come out and say it to anyone as they'd think I was truly nuts "what year is it?" Eventually I decided to confide in my ex-girlfriend, who in this time period I would not even meet for many years yet anyway (though, strangely, she was already an adult by now). She had found some notes I had written about the crash/etc and thought I was just being an imaginative child, but then I started telling her about all sorts of things I couldn't possibly know had I not dated her, and this started to convince her (though she generally seemed to take all of this with a grain of salt). As I'd been a failed rockstar in the future period, I planned to use my knowledge of what'd happened in the world before that/after now to get rich (predicting fads, that sort of thing.. I could write music that I'd know would eventually get popular, etc).

But as I relayed my story to my ex, the perspective of the dream changed again, pulling out to the TV/abstract canvas/character select screen. The reality shifted again, upsettingly, only now I was back at the part from the opening act of the dream, earlier in the same night just before the big crime drama took place.. and I was once again my original self, with one thing to notice, there were now TWO of me. The me that was.. well, me starring in the dream, and the other, time-appropriae me, that had been there partying in the first place, oblivious of all that was to come (death and car crashes, etc). I decided two things - I had to warn my cohorts not to go ahead with the plan as they'd all die, and 2. that I should DEFINITELY not come into contact with my earlier-version self, or bad things would probably happen. This was pretty funny, as I kept nearly knocking elbows with him/me, except I kept a low enough profile that he never realized we were wearing the exact same clothes and had the same face. Anyway I found the stoner/ringleader guy, and tried to coerce him away from the rest of the party to another room (which was very difficult!) to try to warn him about the future, call the whole thing off. It was pretty hard to drag him away/get him to settle down as he was in full-on party mode.. anyway I got his attention at last and started to try to explain just what had been going on, when i realized that if I changed the future, I would cancel out the events that led me to appear here in the past, and probably paradoxically remove myself from existence? I stated to warn him that i didn't know the rules, i might suddenly disappear, etc. but that he should call off the whole plan for tonight, it was gonna go all wrong and we'd all die - he started to sob and then, VERY strangely, i woke up. Not a sudden shocking wake like always happens to me, but just a like a very quick scene-change "oh, i am Ron again" -- my eyes carefully opened and my bedrom faded in around me, and I in a cold sweat to boot, and the fleeting feeling that I'd just had one bizarre goddamn timewarp dream, wihich I'd better write down before I forget.

As I get to committing the end of this, I realize it just looks like another "weird dream" as I'd said, but the fact is that there's some things which can not be properly conveyed with only words, and that's the extra bizarre feeling I had throughout the entire dream till the point where I woke up. And now, i gotta eat something and get to work, so pardon me.