Sunday, May 6, 2012

Endless Work Ending and A Weird Dream

Sunday, May 6, 2012—Long Beach, CA

I can almost see the light. By tomorrow evening I’ll be down to just having to grade one more big stack of papers and then my finals next week—after that it will be freedom. It’s going to be so weird—and so cool!—to finally not have a million things to do, to not work all week and then all weekend as well. I have so many things I want to do; I’ve been feeling like my life’s been on hold for months and months. I want to finally get out Edgewater, get my new website up, turn all the BSP books into e-books, and hopefully do some readings. And I of course still want to get to Greece (if I ever hear about my schedule for IVC and know if I have a decent income in the fall). Hell, I almost forgot—I want to write! I really want to sink my teeth in Sunshine Seas, plus I have other ideas I’d like to explore. Being able to finally see daylight has got me really straining at the leash, to the point where these last two weeks are going hard to get thru without my going a little nuts.

Still reading Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. I’m not sure what I’m looking for in it. So far it’s interesting, but not earth shattering. It seems like a decent stating point, though—but for what? This turn in my reading coincides with my growing interest in my dreams (I know there are clues there as to what I’m looking for).

Last night I had an odd one. I should have written it down when I got up this morning (but I literally woke up way behind in my work), because a lot of the details have faded. I remember I was with my childhood friends Eric and Steve. I’m not sure how old we were in the dream, but I think we were more or less our age now (though, my age at least seemed to be changing slightly thru the dream’s course). I remember driving down strange dirt roads near some beach in the beginning of the dream, though I don’t think Steve and Eric were there at that point. I can’t remember much about that part of the dream. At some point after that, though, the three of us are wandering thru surf shops. I’m looking to buy a new board, but all the shops have stopped selling decent boards and mostly just sell clothes. Later we’re all at a hotel room Eric rented (he apparently doesn’t live where Steve and I live in the dream). I remember telling him how cool it was that he got a room so close to the beach. Then Steve put peroxide in my hair, as a joke, I think. I remember looking in a mirror and watching my hair lighten. I also remember it curling into a kind of eighties hairdo where it was short on the back and sides and long in the front and on top. Then the hotel room Eric had rented morphed into a house, maybe my house. I remember looking in the backyard and seeing my Ford Ranger truck, which I got rid of in 2009. Then a bit later I looked back there again and saw that someone had stolen all four of its wheels; it was sitting on wood blocks. (I used to have lots of dreams about the truck getting stolen and or stripped the last few years I owned it). A bit later I looked out the window again and the truck had been stripped until there was nothing left but its frame. I vaguely remember going outside (into the backyard?) and confronting someone about it. I don’t remember what came of that.

Later the house morphed into my grandparents old house on Pine Street in Los Alamitos. In the dream, though, the house was empty, no furniture or anything; somehow I had come into possession of the house after they’d died. I remember at some point going out to the front porch and seeing that kids from the neighborhood—between the ages of maybe eight or nine to about fourteen—were stealing plaques, knickknacks, and various other similar type things of my grandparents that for some reason were on the porch, hanging from the outside of the house, or in the drive. I remember confronting them, trying to get them to stop. I think they may have argued a bit, maybe made fun of me. Later one of the kids, a girl of fourteen, was clinging to my back as I rode a bike near some sort of canal or ditch. I remember thinking we shouldn’t be doing that, that she was too young to be going away with me. Other stuff happened but it’s all just shadows and fragments I can’t make much of. I do remember finding a wet suit somewhere near the end of the dream. I picked it up and it was incredibly heavy, like it was partially made out of lead. I remember thinking how dangerous and tiring it would be to surf in it. When I got up this morning I thought how strange it was that I had the wet suit part of the dream long after the part where Eric, Steve, and I were in the surf shops. I don’t remember where Eric and Steve went after the house had morphed into my grandparent’s house. I think Steve might have been around for part of that.

I have little idea what to make of this dream. I think I’ll just live with it for a while and see how I feel about it later. Maybe a future dream will build on it and give me some more insight (parts of my dreams often reappear in other dreams, sometimes quite often, over many years).

Again, other than my weird dream it’s mostly been work. I’m fighting a sinus infection too, which is slowing me down and making my teeth and jaw hurt and sometimes my head too. Went to the Angels game last night. They beat Toronto 6-2, I think. I took my nephew and Vic for my nephew’s birthday. It was fun. I needed to break; I haven’t done anything of note on a weekend in months. Listening to an album called Music of the Crusades at the moment. I picked it up a month or so ago. I’m not sure I like it. I was looking for instrumental stuff from that era and it’s turned out to have a lot of vocal pieces.

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