joeseph

I've been neglecting to write down the dreams that make me feel bad.

A few nights ago there was one where I carried my mom around. A railroad track that went around the coast of San Francisco, like that Mario Party game. I rode my bike around it, and she was drunk, needed help, couldn't control herself. We rode it around to the bottom, and going back uphill the tracks came apart in disrepair. I ended up climbing up the tracks, her holding onto my leg. It got steeper and steeper, and I started climbing hand over hand. I couldn't do it. We fell into the water.

This morning I had one about not being able to do my job. Staring at the menu screen again, wondering what everything was. Except I'm more aware of it this time, and I try to actually explore it a little more. Meanwhile this annoying redheaded kid is ordering a fucking hamburger and wants me to find it on the menu.

I went for a long break, thinking I had a lunch because it was my birthday. But that wasn't the case. I came back late as Robert called my phone. He needed my help. I try to find the store in the middle of a health club. I was late. Time edit log. My bad.

I was warming up with the hockey team, helping them out. Weighing them. But I wasn't part of the team, just an average-ass dude. I walk down the field and see a krumping class. The instructor asks what I'm doing, says I should come and krump. Girls in the class are giving me looks. When I come back and decide to do it, one is naked, but she puts her leotard back on. Really hot. We start to do plyometrics, but then everybody disappears. It's just me and another girl, who I'm not interested in. We go over to a bar on the mirror. I try to do a handstand on it, following her movements, but the instructor says "Don't hurt yourself, you can't do it." That's fine.

I am at a playground. This is some kind of festival, a radio show. I stand on a bench. Someone acting like a dinosaur looks up and roars at someone much taller than him, also on the bench next to me. The announcer quips that this seems a bad idea. The tall dark hairy man looms over the dino-man menacingly. And then the attention is on me. "And Mr. Galactico over here..." I am taller than everyone. "Come down!" I act my part. I do a weird twisting flip and land on the floor. I make up a silly kind of salute where I brush my hair back. Mr. galactico.

Later I do a handstand on the bench. I can hold it really well. I decide to take a leap of faith and plop my feet down. They land on planks instead of thin air, so I don't get hurt. I say "Whoa!" to my dad. "Check it out!" I'm also so flexible that I can see through my legs, bending my head way back. He is nonplussed.

I'm playing on the playground, swinging around on different things. Handles get sharper and sharper, coming down into a V of different sizes and angles as I swing out over space. I hear someone scream. A commotion. He has been fighting with my mom. She is drunk, hysterical. She lets out a horrible shriek. My dad has hit the retarded kid who comes into my work. William is unconscious and naked. He rolls around on the floor like he's dead. Fuck my parents, dude.

Another brief dream where I'm being pulled out to sea from a beach. Very vivid blues. It's beautiful. I feel the vast tug of the ocean, of oblivion, taking hold of me. I think about the forces at work, the mechanics of waves, people washing ashore. I envision the forces pulling me like exhaust from a vast jet engine, and I turn the thrusters around. Gradually the forces equalize, under the waves where I've imagined them to be working. I can feel them behind me. I wash up on shore, but the sand is sharp and it hurts my arms where I roll in from the waves. I dig through the sand and find shark teeth of all different shapes and sizes.

And I'm sick of all of these dreams. All the imagery, the attention directed AT me but not GIVEN to me, I'm sick of it. I probably could have become lucid during the ocean dream, but I didn't have the drive to. I thought I liked being physically strong, but it seems like it's just something for people to take advantage of in me, or some cry for attention that never really pans out. Check out this COOL TRICK. FUCKING WOW, nobody cares. Nobody cares about me.

The worst dreams for me aren't nightmares; even when there are zombies or some menace I think it's really interesting in a morbid way. At least I'm doing something, and there's a movie narrative I can latch onto. The worst dreams for me are those with an inescapable air of depression, of inevitable failure. My energy is directed somewhere unimportant, and so bad things happen around me. Nothing is fresh, just the same patterns of despair. I hate bad dreams.