The Amazing Dr. Funkenstein and the Mind-altering burrito

I was in the Saint Francis Prep (high school) auditorium like I used to back in the day. We were there, calmly rehearsing a play.
Suddenly there's been a murder. I don't know exactly who was murdered, but Bruce Willis (who was also the assistant director Mr. Hafker) was a suspect. I couldn't believe it. They had Bruce Willis roped off in the middle of the auditorium for questioning. They were running tests and stuff. I went to talk to him in jail. We stood across the police hazard tape. I expressed my outrage and disbelief that the police would arrest him. He seemed very cool about it, in a characteristic Bruce Willis way.
Then the DNA tests came in. All of the sudden it was like a computer screen popped up over my eyes. The screen had a blue background, watermarked with a design I couldn't quite make out, and yellow lettering. The tests displayed an 18% probability that the killer's DNA was Bruce Willis', but displayed a 58% likelyhood that the killer was Asian. The police let Bruce Willis go; I was relieved.

Then it was like nothing had happened. There was no trace of the police, no mention of the murder. Bruce Willis and me were walking down the center aisle of the auditorium during rehearsals, talking. I don't remember verbatium of what we talked about, but Bruce Willis was pretty laid back. I mentioned how I played four parts in our previous production of A Christmas Carol (which was the only play Mr. Hafker assistant directed) and how, in turn, I would like to play

- five of six parts in this one. Really go all out.

Bruce Willis chuckled and said how great that would be.

To go Medieval, or to get Biblical on someone: that is the question. T'whether tis nobler to go Medieval on some honky or to get Biblical on some heathen bastard I find both similiar in their allegory.
From the examples we've been given, of both Medieval and Biblical dreams, the common mediating factor, or the point of condensation, between the two is allegory. Has anyone else noticed how both have this allergorical connection to their world? "The Dream of the Rood" is meant to tell you something directly about the world, Nebudchadnezzar's dream stated that his rule was coming to an end (you can't be a leader if people can't spell your name anyhow).
This was a fact I used to find annoying when I encountered a dream in one of these ancient tomes, prior to this class. It was just so damn obvious. Dreams aren't like that, are they? ... But, in fact, when you review the major dream theories we covered, Freud, Jung, Hartmann, and Hobson seem to agree (albeit in different ways) that dreams do deal with your life and concerns. It's just that it shouldn't be so obvious. So now when I read some account of a dream in ancient literature I don't complain that it's unrealistic; now I complain that my head hurts and I go to bed.

I had a dream a few years back that was extremely vivid. It was like a two hour movie with a dark color scheme and dialogue and creative camera work. I wish I remembered it better so that I could give a better account of it here, but I will do the best I can.




I entered the scientist's office. It was like a basement laboratory of Frankenstein's from Universal Studios. There was strange machinery and equipment everywhere, including those big electrical towers that have sparks riding up and down them for no apparent reason. The colors were all in the pallet of green, yellow, brown, black, grey, and flesh colors. The doctor and his assistant, a cute blonde girl in a short skirt, were there in white lab coats. They seemed sane.
The doctor explained how to get at the root of my bad dreams we would need to do an experiment which would project my visual thoughts onto a screen for us to see. To do this I had to get naked (which was not a problem because my self imago at the time was very attractive), put this electrode headband on my head, and walk, neck deep, into a pool of green water built level with the floor. I started into the pool and walked in from where the water was just at my toes to where it was at my ears. I tilted my head back. The doctor goaded me to remember.
My thoughts proceeded to tell the story of how I got to this point. I remember hearing myself lead into the flashback in a voiceover, like it was a film noir.

There were exact thoughts and images I went through, because I remember remembering them when I woke up, and thinking I should make a movie script out of it, but time has faded my memory a bit.

My thoughts revolved around some recent murders that had been going on in the community I was in. I knew these people. I was apparently a suspect. Also I had been seeing this doctor before this moment. Apparently he was a psychoanalyist. (I can remember coming in and out of his office; the dugeon led to a normal looking hallway, office, waiting room, etc.) People had been ripped open at the neck and drained of blood.
I can vaguely remember one incident where I had gone to see a victim before she died. Her name was Jenna. She was a cute girl I went to highschool with. I had left her apartment (we all had apartments like we were adults, but we were not in real life) after a normal conversation. Then the camera took on a different perspective of someone floating on the ceiling of the apartment hallway. Presumably this was supposed to be me, afterall, it was my brain doing the camera work. This thing floated via the ceiling, into Jenna's apartment and attacked her in bed.

The rest is unclear to me. But it involved me remembering being interogated by the police, talking to this really hot girl, Alex, who was my friend, and other revealing murder sequences of a similar nature.

I came out of the machine's control. I was understandibly upset. I came out of the water and asked the doctor about patient-doctor privilage.

- I'm sorry, he said, but it is my duty to report you to the police.
- But that wasn't me! I exclaimed. The machine made up memories--
- I'm afraid not. The machine only can show what's in your head.
- ... It was you! You murdered those people! Then you used this machine to pin this thing on me. Well I'm not gonna let you get away with this, you monster!

I turned into this hulking beast (metaphorically, not literally). As much as the doctor and his assistant tried to dissuade me, my rage could not be stopped. I killed the doctor with my bare hands, squeezing his neck until his head partially exploded. I ripped all the machines in the laboratory to pieces. I do not think I killed the girl (I am not in the habit of killing pretty young women)-- she might have killed by machinery. I don't think anyone was alive when I left the room.
Hastilly dressing, I scurried down the hall, still wet from the pool. I managed to avoid the police and get to my apartment.
The perspective of the floating thing popped in again. Alex flew in my window. Aparently she was the vampire and she killed all those people. It boiled down to jealousy. Those people occupied me away from her, so she chose to feed on them. She killed Jenna because I was dating her and not Alex.
She offered me a chance to join her and live forever. I was uncertain: I did want to be with her, but I had also wanted to be with Jenna (which was why I wasn't dating Alex in the first place. And believe me, if you saw her, that wouldn't stop you.) She expressed awareness of my concern and revealed that she had not killed Jenna but made her a vampire as well, to be another bride to please me. Jenna flew in my window now as a vampire. I decided to join with them.
I became a vampire. I wasn't thinking of the morality of eating people, being a wanted man and all. I was just thinking of the sex (as I normally am). Becoming a vampire solved my moral problem of loving multiple women.
We proceeded to live forever, eating people and having wild orgies.




I LOVE happy endings.

I'm in some sort of military complex. It's dark and there are a lot of green colors. I'm playing hide and seek with my girlfriend (which is weird because I haven't been seeing anyone in quite some time). I find her in an outclave behind this yellow electric fence which only covered three-quarters of the opening. It's this girl from a class I'm taking this semester (who I actually don't like at all).

- C'mon, get out of there, I say.
- I'm trapped.
- Just climb out over the hole in the fence.
- I can't.
- Fine, I say, becoming annoyed with her.

I know what I have to do. I run up to the guard's desk. I do a funky Matrix flip through the air over the guard and his desk. I hit the light switch on my way down. The guard is bewildered by all of this, and now is unable to see me. I do a backflip and kick him in the head, rendering him unconscious.
I look over the control panel at the guard's desk.

- Now, what lever do I have to throw?
- That one, my girlfriend responds.
- Wait! How did you get out of there?
- I climbed out.
- Thanks a lot. Now let's get out of here.

I grab her hand and we run out of there.

We always link art, literature, even music to dreams. Why is that? A painting is never quite a dream. A dream is three-dimensional, and, yet, subject to tunnel vision. The gap is representational resources. The dream has all the advantages of, one, being inside our brains, and, two, not being subject to logic. The painting, the song, and the short story (etc.) usually have to be restricted by some type of waking logic to want to be seen by other people. And even if they do break the conventional bounds of logic, they're still subject to one medium. A dream can be a painting and then switch to a narrative and then bounce between little motifs of lyricism and visual and then, all of the sudden, become an athletic competition. So, justly, we call those works of dream "works of dream" or "dreamlike" and not "dreams" themselves because they represent an altered state of reality.
Of course not every song, painting, and poem is dreamlike. Those that are share two things in common with dreams.

sublime
non-literal

Sublime meaning having a lofty and unexplainable quality (aka bizzare). Non-literal meaning not to be taken for literal (aka hidden meanings, metaphor).

Certainly the dream is sublime and non-literal-- (that's a granted fact in our class). But the same applies to the works of art, literature, and music we call dreamlike as well. Think back to Bob Dylan's "115th Dream." That certainly was sublime (extremely bizzare) and not meant to be taken literally. Or look at the picture I've provided at the top of this entry, Louise Bourgeoise's "La Peine" ("The Sorrow"). The drawing is sublime and definately cannot be taken literally (there's quite a few ways to interpret the metaphor of this drawing). Or take Kafka's "The Judgment". Kafka is bizarre as bizarre can be (sublime) and certainly is chock full of hidden meanings (not literal).
The works of dreams are composed of metaphor. Their situations are not literal and therfore are subject to the same interpretion a dream is. However, in some cases, you can never be sure if your interpretation is correct. You try your best to use a logical formula to divine meaning from the entity but you can never be 100% sure (as is the case in dreams) due to its mysterious, sublime qualities. However, one should note, that the works of dreams are not dreams themselves but rather portals into the other state of consciousness that is "dreaming." We hold them both so esteemed because they are sublime and beyond our logic.

I was not feeling well. Friday was my birthday and I must have eaten too much cake and Chinese food. (It couldn't have been the giant-sized "flaming virgin" I had.) I fell into an unrestful sleep, and dreamt...
I was dreaming but I didn't see anything. I heard my mind saying words out loud, like a chain of thoughts.

- Shawn Michaels- Triple H- Stream of Consciousness- Henry James- "The Beast in the Jungle"- vomit!

I suddenly woke up with a bad taste in my mouth. I washed it out and went back to bed.

Later I was dreaming again. It was like the same dream I had before, only this time it was actually in dream format.
I was walking along Maple street in Asian Minor (that's my term for Main street Flushing, because "Chinatown" was already taken) with Shawn Michaels and Triple H (professional wrestlers, and damn good ones too). It was dawn and we were going to open our stores for the day. We were talking about Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," for some reason.
There was actual dialogue between us that I remembered when I had my eyes closed, but instantly forgot when I opened them.
We unlocked and lifted the steel gates from our shops and left each other.



Have I, in this incident, uncovered the secret to dreaming? We take for granted that dreaming is a "hyper-associative state." What if, through my unease, I was able to strip off the dream surface and look at the dream skeleton? All it I heard was the association of ideas-- that's all. Later it became visualized. Maybe this is how dreaming works. Basically your brain is free-associating ideas and another part of your brain puts them into a sensory scenario.

What do you say guys: have I done it? Am I crazy? or, Have I just primed myself to have this experience somehow?

The following is my reaction to the concept of "The Lucid Dream."

I consider the lucid dream to be a primed experience. What I mean by that is that we get the idea this can happen into our consciousness, during waking life, and therefore prime ourselves to have this experience in dreams.
You cannot imput your conscious logic onto a dream. It is an impossibility. We have learned, and must take as a fact, that dreams are a place outside the dreamer's waking logic. Any sort of small intrusion of logic, like the realization of the dream, is secondary revision-- and is so bizarre that the two cannot reconcile themselves and the dream must end.
We do not have our own desires or logic in the dream world. The dream world is essentially a Naturalistic state because our thoughts and actions are entirely determined by the dream process. To further prove this I will use Steven Leberge's The Waking Life as a good representation of dreaming that disproves the notion of lucid dreaming.
Let's say that the protagonist already has the idea of lucid dreaming in his head. (We can say this without reproach because the entire movie is his dream and someone in the dream brings up the idea to him. And, as we all know, all the people and ideas in the dream are projections of your own identity and ideas.) Even though he has the idea of lucid dreaming in his head, what control does the protagonist really have over the dream? The concept of the lucid dream is like Neo in The Matrix in that you can do anything, physically, you can think of. The protagonist has none of Neo's control. He does not consciously chose where he goes, who he will talk to when he gets there, and when he will float or have a false awakening (or a real one). This proves there is no such thing as a lucid dream.
And even if he was somehow in control of the dream world, being asleep would rob him of his normal desires and he would be left to the whim of his unconscious-- and without choice the control would mean nothing.

I'm in my living room, sitting, possibly watching a TV I can't really see. Out of the doorway closet comes a big, black rat with glowing, red eyes. I pull my legs up in my chair as the rat passes by calmly. I notice the sliding door to the closet is broken unnaturally and is tilted back into the closet.
The rat goes into the kitchen. It looks like it doesn't have feet that move, as if it was just rolling on wheels. I follow it, half frightened, half curious, and another half outraged by the rat's presence.
It crawls up a leg of a table that's there, onto a wooden stool next to it, and up onto the counter top. I decide I can't have a dirty rat on my kitchen counters. I call my cat, Milkdud, and she comes running over.

- Get the rat, I tell her.

She sees what I'm talking about instantly. She jumps up on the stool and gets a closer look at the rat. But she stops there. She's extremely fascinated by this creature but has no desire to attack it like she would in real life. It's as if she sees something I cannot see.
The rat rolls off the counter and makes a large horseshoe on the kitchen floor. I am overwhelmed by disgust but still a little entralled.
The rat starts coming at me. I grab the wooden stool and try to fend it off like a lion tamer.

Still it comes.

I run into the living room, thinking it does not actually seek me but was just traveling in my direction. I stand at the edge of the living room and look back to the kitchen.

Still it comes.

It's crawling at me and already halfway down the hall from the kitchen. I run further into the living room, thinking if I could get out of its line of sight it would loose interest in me. I turned the corner and stood on the easy chair again, wooden stool in hand. I look around the bend.

Still it comes.

It rolls into the living room like a demented windup toy.

- Bill! Come quick, I call out to my brother.

He runs down the stairs into the living room. He sees the rat and is speechless, not knowing what to do.

It gets right next to the chair I'm standing on. I screech and jump from the chair into the adjacent hallway. I stand on top of the wooden stool, which I place right in front of the broken closet door. I think that the the height of the stool is too steep for the rat to climb. Of course, I'm wrong. The rat slowly climbs up the leg of the stool. I am petrified. There is no escape.
The rat reaches my platform. I see a red fire burning in its eyes. The rat touches my bare foot. I am compeled backwards by my own fear. I wobble at the edge of the stool's seat. The rat watches on. I fall backwards into the dark closet, screaming.
From my perspective I can see the rat on the stool, standing there, pleased.


I fall into the closet but I do not hit the bottom. I travel through the darkness like a portal. I fall out of the dark tunnel and go through some grey misty fog. It is daylight and the contrast between this and the tunnel hurts my eyes.

I fall from the misty sky like a sack of potatoes, into the direct center of a large, circular lake. I am encased by water and float downwards. Everything fades to darkness.

I awake. I am in a rowboat on the lake. Standing over me is a beautiful girl with short red hair and green eyes. She has a child-like or pixie-like quality but I know she's an adult.

- You're lucky I was out here to save you. You might have drowned.

I looked around at the scenery. Everything was rendered in grey and brown, (any other color, like her hair, was muted). The lake was grey which reflected the sky. The lake was a nearly perfect circle, with only one small dock. There were brown trees surrounding the lake, with very few green leaves. Everything else beyond that was encapsulated by white mist.

- Where am I? What year is it?
- Year? There is no time here.
- Who are you?
- I'm the one who brought you here.
- Why?
- Because I want you. I've been watching you for some time now, and I decided that we should be together.

She kissed me.

We had a sexual relationship, and we did have relations (unfortunately I did not experience them first hand).

She brought the boat to dock and we got off. She took me through the mist. (In the mist time and location elapsed without actually having to physically do so. The mist was a blinding place outside of time which connected the snipets of a village) Just like that we were approaching her hut.

(Time passed. I am unclear on whether I forgot what happened or whether this was a narrative device.)

The whole village was comprised of pixies like this girl who were all dressed in rural colonial garb. It was like the Shire from Lord of the Rings. She brought me to the village elder to introduce me as her lover. The elder was an old woman, the only one with any age in this community outside of time and space. She ran this town because she was the oldest resident there. I called her Mother Goose.
She explained that I was welcome here, but after three months I could never go back to my world again. I was happy here with this beautiful girl, living in paridise without work, only sex. But the desire to go back home festered within me. My resentment for this girl grew gradually.
The day before my three months was up I decide to leave. The girl tried to stop me.

- Don't leave! I can make you happy.
She dropped to her knees and started undoing my belt.
- It's no use. I must go.
- Why? Aren't you happy here?
- Of course I am. But this isn't my place. I wasn't meant for this kind of heaven, I was meant to labor and hope and die unfurfilled. This just isn't natural. There's no challenge to it.
- But why?
- Because everything else inside of me wants to! But I can't.
- Don't leave!
- Goodbye.
- You can't leave.

With that I run out of her cabin and into the mist.

I'm running up to the school house. The little red-headed girl is there with Mother Goose. They see me. I turn and run.

I'm in the school yard. All the children are there pleading with me not to go. I run through their grabbing hands and into the mist.

I'm at Mother Goose's hut, and I'm staring her right in the face. She tells me not to go. That I can have eternal youth if I stay. I evade her grasp and run into the mist.

I'm back at the girl's hut. She stading in the doorway pleading with me.

- Don't you love me? she asks.

I do not answer. I feel like I'm being chased. I run into the unending mist. I run through all the places in the village looking for a way out.

Then I come to the lake. The townspeople are following me through the mist, I can hear them coming. I figure the lake is my only way out. I dive off the dock and start swimming to the center. The townsfolk line up on the shore, yelling after me.

I swim downwards into the water. I search the depths, deeper and deeper still for a door or an opening. I'm running out of air. My lungs burn with a red fire. My hand's kinetic motion makes a white mist of bubbles in front of my eyes as I paddle. The mist becomes a wall I pass through, and pass through, and keep moving through until it's no longer water only the grey mist.
My lungs are relieved. I start to bullet forward through the grey until it becomes a black tunnel I am flying through, and then my closet. I burst out of the closet back home as if I was lauched up into it by a cannon. I'm still wearing the rustic clothes of the land of the unending mist. There is still smoke surrounding me that disapates in the air of the living room. I am bewildered and shocked.
My brother is sitting on the couch and he gets up when I was launched into the hallway. Three months have passed and everyone had given up on finding me.

My brother, my sister, and I were getting on the train to go to downtown Jamaica. We had to get tested for drugs, though I'm not sure why. We got on the F train (which is weird because it would be a lot more convient to take the bus from where we live).
This was certainly not your ordinary subway. The car was big and luxurious; it looked like something out of the heyday of train travel. Everything was made in dark mahogany and green felt. It was darker than would be expected and there were a lot of greys in the color scheme.
The conductor ripped our tickets as we entered the car. We were standing by the bar in the front of the car, looking through the rows for empty seats, when a group of black people leaned out into the aisle, sizing us up. (My recollection of the exact dialogue in this dream is vague, at best, but our conversation went something like this.)

- Hey, Whities! You're not afraid of us because we're black, are you?
- No. Why would we?

The black guy had this smirk on his face, like he was having a joke on our behalf. I knew they were harmless from the get-go. The group was dressed in regular, modern clothes (so were we for that matter)-- just as if the thing really did take place on the subway.

- You could be from Manhattan...
- Naw, man. We're from Queens.
- Well, alright then!

They called us over and we proceeded to sit down next to them and have a rip-roarin' good time. They were drinking, and we all were talking loudly about wussy Manhattanites, the New York Mets, and all sorts of groovy things.

I excused myself and stepped over to the bar. I ordered myself a Guinness. This beer was even more delicious than usual. With dark beers, sometimes, you get hints of chocolate in the taste, but this beer tasted like chocolate beer. It was creamy and thick, like a milkshake, but it had the rich full body of a Guinness. It was like someone mixed beer into chocolate ice cream.

I walked back over to my group drinking it, experiencing the euphoria only a magic Guinness can provide. Then the detective who's supposed to test us for drugs downtown appears out of nowhere. He's dressed in something Sam Spade might wear, only sloppier. He corners us three (my brother, my sister, and me) by the bathroom at the back of the car. He seems reprehensive of us.
We find out that he's just now traveling down to the station to drug test us. He tells us that, as we're all right here, the drug test will be right now, in the train bathroom. We're more than a little put off by this, but agree, mostly because he could crack our skulls open. He says, after we ask him, that the beers my sister and I have been drinking won't count because we're over twenty one.
My sister goes first.
I am asked to go next but ask to finish my beer first.
My brother demands to have the drug test put off to next month. The detective threatens to break his skull open, but I convince him to do it because he's got nothing to hide.

My bottle of beer is almost empty. I hold the bottle up to the light. It looks like there's hot chocolate powder at the bottom. I swirl the bottle around in my hand and drink it down, tilting my head back so I get all of the chocolate powder in the bottom. I finish it and go take my drug test.

We've all mentioned, Hobson too, about the effect of drugs on the process and results of dreaming. What about Thanksgiving day turkey? There's triptofan in there. Anybody have any good turkey coma dreams?