Sacrifice of a Song

I'm in a supermarket and I'm walking down the aisle with the cereal. There's boxes and boxes to each side of me, but when I look, they're not cereal boxes. They have faces on the front. One I distinctly remember was my ex-boss's face, and I think another of them was my aunt. I hear the overhead announce say that they're having a deal, and that you need proof of purchases to redeem.

I knock down a bunch of boxes and sit down in the middle of the aisle and break out a box cutter. I start cutting out the serials, but they're not where they usually are but in the middle of the front of the box. They're smack dab in the center of the faces' foreheads. But I just keep cutting and cutting, until I have a whole stack. Then I reach up and I think I begin to start cutting into my own forehead but that's where I woke up.

I've been thinking about barcodes a lot lately, and reading up on tattoos for something I'm writing, which is where this might come from. And partially from Dark Angel, if anyone knows the show.

I hate speaking in public, especially when there are strangers in the audience. Even in class, I hate giving presentations because really, I'd be happier just being the wallpaper. Not the wallflower, but actually the wallpaper, except that, of course, classrooms just have paint so that's sorta a moot point.

Anyway, so I'm sure that it's obvious that the conference makes me nervous. Simply the idea of it has made me nervous since I signed up for the seminar. I feel like I'm just going to make a complete fool of myself, and... oh, I don't know, babble my head off and then afterward, I will want to dig a ditch, throw myself into it and then somehow bury myself. I *really* hate speaking in public. I'm okay in classrooms with little kids but once people are my age or older, my brain just makes it all worse even if people are telling me that it'll all be perfectly all right.

So. Nervous to all hell. Hopefully, the dress rehearsal that we're having makes it all somewhat less of "oh my god, I'm going to mess up... this is going to be a disaster" feeling situation.

Reading through the course website makes me see how much work we've really done over the course of the semester, and the variety of subjects our research covered. It's kind of amazing how they all group together in some way as well, but then, I'm not entirely sure why that amazes me so much. We really bucked down when it came to doing the sites, it seems. Because we've really packed a lot of information into the pages. But I also think we could have done better (at least, I do personally) had we all not been tired of it all at the end (again, that might just be me speaking).

Aesthetically, if we'd had some sort of color scheme per section of the site, it might have gone better but then, we all have different tastes so I don't know how well a pre-made format, besides the MovableType one, would have gone across. And all our projects are different enough that no color scheme would match everything.

Well, the website's done and... I can only hope the conference goes okay.

I'm in a crowded bar and after I order a beer, I take it and sit at a corner table. I drink and drink, and the beers keep going. Before I realize, I'm on my fourth bottle and there are four shots on the table in front of me. I don't even remember ordering them. Then someone asks if they can join me, because all the other tables are full. That's when I realize I've got weapons on me, because I almost pull out a gun on the guy but manage to restrain myself (I think it's because I was surprised?). And we drink together, but the other guy doesn't pay at all and neither do I, but the shots keep coming. Then I'm in a hotel room, staring down at the hotel stationary, and my cell phone is vibrating against my leg but I'm ignoring it.

I know there's more to this dream but that's all I remember. Odd points for me- I don't drink. I hate crowded places. I hardly ever have my cell phone with me (which annoys people trying to call me, haha). I feel like I should offer analysis so... this might come from my conversation with a friend a few days ago about how we should go out more, and try to meet people. And actually have conversations, because the two of us are rather... bad at small talk and whatnot. But that wouldn't be this dream because I don't think I really ever talked. Also, my subconscious has always been a bit twisted so it might not be about that convo at all.

This is a dream that I had a couple of days ago but I didn't have a chance to write about it until now. And, well, now even the details I did remember are sort of hazy so I guess this is just the lasting impressions of the dream?

I'm in the sports field of an academy in a dueling ring. The weapons aren't actually weapons, though I do have a staff in my hand, but willpower. It's a matter of whose order tops the other, and I manage to win. But I'm left with this horrible feeling after my opponent leaves. I get the feeling that I have a lot of responsibilities, and that I wish I didn't have to duel nor have the power to order other people to do what I want. And I say that "when I have time, classes are easy because they're fun. But they're no fun when I have no time" and then I head back into the school.

This was actually quite a "long" dream in that a lot of stuff happened but I only remember the tail-end because that's when I woke up. But that stupid line at the end stuck with me, even more than the fact that hey, I can order people around! I do wish I had more control over my life but I would never want to control other people. Or maybe my subconscious is letting me know that, actually, I would. I'm writing this after reading about that "honor killing" of Dua Khalil on a forum a friend linked me to and... if I did have the power in my dream, I'd sure be doing some tinkering. But of course I don't so... Well, I'll just leave off here.

There's a guy in an office, talking on the phone. It's all secretive and coded, but after he hangs up, he shoves a gun into his pants at the small of his back before he leaves the office. The scene shifts to some apartment, where he's standing over a blood-stained bed. There's a loud sound, and then stomping footsteps. The door to the room bursts open to show guys in SWAT team get-up. The guy is already moving toward the balcony, realizing he's been set up. He fights past the agents and jumps off.

This is one of my friend's dreams and that's as much as she can remember. She actually dreams about this guy pretty often, often in a cinematic way where she watches him, and each dream is like a section of his life. The guy is actually an assassin character that she used to RP a couple of years ago and in a way, I guess he's still active in her brain because she's making up cases and stuff for him.

My dreams tend to be disjointed but... has anyone ever had continuous dreams of the same person like my friend? I've had maybe one or two that are set in the same "world" where I'm the same person but I know she's had at least... 5 or so about this one guy, which I find interesting.

I'm in some park in the middle of the night, standing in a circle of salt. There are black candles lit everywhere and there's some chanting that I can't quite hear. Kinda like if you were hearing things from underwater. There are maybe 10-20 people there, and then one guy whips out a laptop from out of nowhere, and starts to give a sex ed lecture. He pulls out a bunch of bananas and cucumbers and I'm staring, until he pulls out a whole other bunch of fruits and vegetables and proceeds to make some sort of mixed fruit/veggie salad out of everything, chopping with one hell of a big knife.

Uh... so, yeah. I wonder what the heck that was about. Don't remember much else but I woke up with a craving for yogurt, haha.

Before the semester started, I hardly ever remembered my dreams. The ones I did recall were mostly emotional ones, or ones where I "died" and things like that. Or, well, more personal ones. Now, I recall quite a bit more, and actually, it's quite a relief to know that not all my dreams are horrible ones. Except that I couldn't really keep my brain on a schedule of dreaming, so all those blog entry assignments where it said "A dream" made me wince and hit up people like a druggie for dreams they'd had.

It was fun to read other people's blogs and see what their subconscious had been cooking up for them. Some of them made me feel that, hey, I'm relatively normal *laughs* Anyway, the dream blogs have been fun. Made me feel like I've gotten better at articulating some things. At others, I think I may have grown worse but this was an experience, to say the least. Never really thought I'd be blogging for school.

I've been doing a lot of reading on different legends/myths surrounding dreams in a few cultures and a lot of them bring up how our dreams come from a hidden self that gets some freedom when our waking selves are asleep. Sort of like Jung's concept of a darker self that was mentioned sometime last semester. And re-reading my blog entries and the entries of others, it makes me wonder which ones were the result of that possible "darker self" coming to the surface. I'm inclined to believe that my darker self is not all due to repressed sexual wishes (Freud, you closet perv, lol), but there's probably a lot of repression going on and if dreams are the steam being let off, I'm all for it. Sometimes I wish I remembered more but maybe the dreams are therapeutic, as Hobson would believe, just by being let out and I really shouldn't try to recall them.

Anyway, cheers to the closing of the blogs! It's definitely been an experience.

I don't know if anyone else on the blogs watches Supernatural on the CW, but it's one of my favorite shows because c'mon, demons and ghosts and stuff. I love that kind of genre thing. Anyway, I started trying to get my friends into it and uh... I succeeded with a couple of them. One of them had a crossover dream of Supernatural and Resident Evil 4 which I just felt like tossing on here.