runnin' down a dream

I found this unbelievable video and have decided that they are my new favorite band.



I thought it was kind of relative about the dream. Considering that I woke up this morning after having had another interesting dream and thought that I should try and write it down as well. It was weird though, because I believe I realized that I had had an interesting dream while I was still asleep and was trying to go over it again in my mind so that I'd be sure to remember it - all while I was still asleep. It brings in the idea of how the act of recording your dreams for posterity might have an effect on your dreams. If I'm already thinking about how I'm going to retell a strange dream, it probably plays a part in how the dream unfolds. no? And one last point: recording a dream into writing is fundamentally different than the actual experience of dreaming the dream. I am happy with what I wrote down when retelling the butt corn grinding, crime and punishment mission, mourning over dead loved ones dream. However, writing the dream down/the dream in written form and dreaming the dream were two different and completely separate experiences all together. And in some way, they don't really have much to do with eachother on an emotional level. Perhaps that's what Tom Petty was hinting at with "runnin' down a dream".

Anyway, on to the dream.

I had been drafted and employed to a war zone. We were in a flat non-populated valley and had all arrived recently via air travel. We had not gone through any training at all, but knew that we were there to fight and were all fairly resigned to that fact. The first mission was setting up camp which consisted of setting the framework for our bunks which would be in a square grid that had to be drawn out on the ground. There were no materials for construction yet. We were only using our bodies to establish where each person's bunk would be. I was a member of the higher ranking officials or perhaps the group whose responsibility depended on decision-making capabilities, and our designated bunk locations were in a row on the left most side of the grid. I ended up having a bunk between my old biology lab boss at UM, Mark Grimes, and someone else that I knew but can't remember right now. Somehow, there was some sort of an engagement with the enemy which consisted of robot-like tanks (or better described as tank-like robots) with multiple machine guns that could destroy even very robust machinery. Not sure if they were the enemy or just a sample of the capabilities of the enemy, because we didn't fight against them and they didn't target us either. Anyway, once the 2 commanders arrived and started to give orders, I (naturally) begged to differ with one of their decisions and got in trouble for trying to say that my idea about how something should be done was better. This unleashed their fury and they started to attack me with axes and hatchets. I was inside a wooden box, although the view from the 1st person of the dream was from outside the box. I saw them going apeshit with their axes on the wooden box. The next thing that happened was I was able to escape just in time before the box could be completely demolished, and via some sort of distraction, I was able to go AWOL. I also remember that getting out of that situation was in my best interest because 1. it was war and 2. my bunk had been located on the outer edge of the battalion and that was the most vulnerable position of any army formation as I remembered my grandfather telling me. I got out of there with the help of my basketball teammate Lino who drove me away from the valley and up into the mountains. We were really doing some evasive driving to make sure we weren't being tailed. The plan was to get me up and out into the wilderness where I could survive in the woods for at least a year or until the war was over. There was no way they would find me out in the woods, and I knew that I could survive. My primary preoccupation was with obtaining a shelter of some sort and we kept heading up and up towards the treeline which was very close to the top of the mountain. I asked Lino why we were going so high. he said that he had thought the woods would provide me with more shelter, but I told him that that might be true, but the higher we went up the colder it was going to be. In fact, we were getting up into where there were still patches of snow. I had around a month before it would be pretty late in the summer and the weather would start changing so I needed to establish myself in a short amount of time. As we were driving through a field, a small herd of deer were in our path and were not wary of us at all. I got very excited and told Lino that when he went back, he should pick up my rifle from my dad and bring it back to me so I could more easily survive in the wild. Lino thought this was funny, but it was a nervous laugh, because he obviously didn't feel safe with the idea of a gun. He was sure that it would misfire or that the bullets would be in the gun wrong because he had no idea how to load it or anything. I laughed quite a bit and told him not to worry. All he had to do was go to my parents house and my dad would give him the rifle and a box of bullets. He needn't do anything with them except bring them to me. The gun wouldn't be loaded as we never loaded a gun unless we were getting ready to shoot. I'm pretty sure he didn't buy it. Next, he dropped me off just at the treeline and I proceeded to wander around looking for a suitable shelter/hiding place, although there were no trees anywhere, only grass and bushes close to the ground. It didn't provide much opportunity for getting under something in order to stay warm. Next, I wandered higher up on the mountain very close to the top and discovered a refuge that I easily got into. There were many cars around and plenty of people who had come up to this point for a daytime visit, but when they left I started to discover that the refuge was under the supervision of some sort of camp counselor who was monitoring runaway children who were living in the mountains. He was very nice to me and took me in, telling me to come with him in his van as he went around the mountain roads to gather the children. He and his wife were in the front seat and we went around picking up these teenage runaways who all got in the van and didn't resist whatsoever, but it was like they were in some sort of youth prison. All the kids were nice and outgoing and about half of them were of Latino descent (including the camp counselors) and spoke fluent spanish which I had been waiting for the opportunity to use. However, because of their accent I had a difficult time understanding several of them. One girl was particularly interested in me and asked me many questions and was basically trying to flirt with me. Her older sister and sister's boyfriend were good people and made fun of her in a playful manner. They all spoke spanish and thought I was basically a runaway teenager, too. I felt that keeping the fact of my having escaped from the war a secret was a good idea and I felt witty about making that decision. They asked me how old I was and I asked them how old they thought I was. They guessed 20 and I smirked and eventually told the truth which was that I was 33 (I'm actually 31). It was night time now and everyone had been picked up and we needed to try and get some sleep while we were driven back to the refuge. Once back at the refuge, we were to spend the night in the parked van (not the refuge, because we didn't have permission to use it). We were all pretty packed into the van (there were probably 5 or 6 other kids of all different ages) but, they somehow arranged themselves so that I had an entire seat to stretch myself out to try and get to sleep. At some point, I decided this was foolish (I don't know if because felt guilty about taking up so much space...), and decided to sneak into the refuge to sleep. I easily went in through the window and curled up in a bed around the corner. A short time later, the counselor man came in to get me as he knew I had sneaked into the refuge and that wasn't allowed. But, before kicking me out, he sat down to have a heart-to-heart. Real typical camp counselor type stuff. I remember bonding with him, but I'm not sure if I told him about my escape from the war, plans to live in the wilderness all winter or if I just told him about my childhood. Anyway, since the van was parked outside the refuge, I had to get back in the van so they could take us all away from there. They turned the lights off in the van because we really needed to get some sleep which I was happy to finally do after such a long day, and as it was already the middle of the night. With the lights off I felt the hand of the girl who had been flirting with me reaching under my blanket and touch my hand and leg. I thought she was trying to secretly let me know that she liked me and I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but I had misgivings about it because 1. I'm married and 2. she was pretty young. Based on her age, I assumed she was only looking to hold my hand or something, but I rapidly found out she had something else in mind. I won't go into the details, but I assure you that what happened next could be in an american R rated movie and not an X rated movie. Despite my misgivings, I didn't prevent her, and began to relax/fall asleep. Next thing I knew, the light on the van was switched on and she was waking me up whispering for me to put my pants back on because the woman counselor was on her way into the back of the van to see what was going on. She caught us and I didn't deny anything, but only tried to reason (above all with the guy counselor) that I hadn't wanted to do anything with her, but how could I be blamed for not refusing to allow her to do what she was interested in doing. I was very ashamed.

That was the horrifying end of my dream.

I'm sorry to everyone involved (especially me.)