A few bits of media have sent me into near anxiety attacks without really having me make the connection. The basement scene in the end of the original “Amityville Horror” is one. Another was discovered tonight. I watched, for the first time, “There Will Be Blood”. The scenes of workers emerging from pools of black ooze got my heart racing and made me nearly have a panic attack. I always used to think the substance of my nightmares was ink, lacquer, or even liquid obsidian.. but now I think it is actually oil.

I am a firm believer that something from our ancestors is passed down which may help explain our dreams. I have often tried to explain the connection between dreams of teeth and worries over money is that our ancestors used teeth as currency. I am now starting to think that perhaps being drowned in tar pits was a major concern of my distant ancestors. Curiouser and curiouser.

Zombie VR Game 

The first dream was sorta funny and cool. I was involved in some sort of real life or VR zombie killing game ala Resident Evil.  I was on the team of zombie killers whose members included Rob and CJ from the podcaust, my buddy Jon and various other friends. We were all decked out in covert military gear with guns and such. It was pretty rad.

However, I suck at games in real life and sucked equally in the dreamworld game. I kept falling behind, but no one seemed to care. Rob was the team leader and seemed to not even address the fact I was on the team nor lagging behind (maybe an allusion as to how I want them to plug my podcast on theirs).  At some point we are running through this under ground base and someone is shooting at us, but I can’t seem to get a good angle. Then Rob walks out and the shooter walks out in a submissive manner (i think it was his girl friend).

After a bit more action, the rest of the team hopped in an elevator and goes up to the next stage, but I was still engaged and didn’t make it in time. Then there was a crazy  cinematic cut sequence with the elevator door opening into a large room full of zombies nashing and scrambling about. It was quite terrifying. After the sequence, I spawned right behind the rest of the team like some poor AI team member on a videogame  RPG or on Halo coop.

The room was pretty massive and along the edges were white faced “heckler” zombies that stuck to the sides, but would run out and grab you if you got too close to them. In the center were fast moving green faced zombies that were flailing about and chasing after us. I dropped my gun and pulled out some sort of laser bow/scythe weapon. The rest played out like one of the action scenes in the movie 300. There was a lot of staggered paced visuals of me slicing zombies in half. Then I got cocky and started slicing off parts just to be funny. I sliced one zombie along the edge of his arm like I was flaying him. Another one, I made a notch in his shoulder. Near the end of the battle, I ran across the zombie version of the cocky portly young coworker of Shawn in the movie Shawn of the Dead. He wasn’t chasing, but just standing around being snarky with his hands in his pockets. I went to go cut his arm off, but I hit a mass of barbed wire his wrists (which I apparently couldn’t cut through).  Then Jon, who is standing next to me, apparently also being snarky says, “Hey dude, why do you have barbed wire around your hands?” The zombie says in a thick British accent “Well, it certainly isn’t for doing this” at which point he throws his arms at me like someone would do to a baby saying “boooga boooga booga”. I then cut off his head. End of dream.

The Last AA Meeting

Then around 5am I woke up from another dream. This one was weird and cryptic. It started off with me driving around trying to pick people up for the final Adamantine Arts meeting. We ended up waiting around in the cold for one of Eli’s friends who was running late. Once he finally showed up, he was all excited about going on a ski trip later that evening and most everyone else wanted to go.

We finally, get to the space, which, at least in the dream, was this massive warehouse that was well lit and had pastel paint slopped all over the walls which was moving in a sort of hallucination type pattern. I’m not even sure how the meeting really went, but I know I was handing over papers and such and everyone seemed really anxious to get going to the ski trip. As I talked people were groaning to hurry things up. At some point I handed over a stack of flyers to Sarah and said “Here are the flyers for that show coming up, you should hand them out”. Then she said “You hand them out” in a little kid snarky comeback voice and tossed them at me.

Later, we were watching some sort of training video that no one was paying attention to. Sarah was sitting next to me and leaned in to say something and then pinched my ear. I disregarded it, and then she did it again so I grabbed her hand and heard a crunching noise like a bone breaking. Then she pinched me again, so I just got up and turned the video off and said meeting was over, but I wanted everyone to help clean up a bit before leaving. No one really did anything and just stood around talking about skiing. I was running about with the push broom sweeping up and then the dream ended. Wieeeerd.

Car Theft Dream

Next I had a dream that I don’t remember very well. However, I was home visiting my parents some weekend and my mom was in a really bad mood yelling at my little brother and dad about everything. I came outside for something and noticed my truck was stolen. I asked to barrow her car to drive into town to go look for my truck, and she got all pissed off and accused me of never doing any chores around the house. To this I replied that I don’t even live there anymore so why should I have to do chores when I come visit? Then she just flipped out and we really started yelling at each other. While arguing, my ears started bleeding due to this sonic scream radiating through the air. I yelled at my mom to turn it off, to which she yelled in response “Just open the goddamn garage door”. Apparently, the garage door opener was causing it? So I hit the button and it stopped, but a different one was ringing with a lower pitch. I woke up at that point with my alarm clock going off a 7am.

The Foreclosure from Hell 

I reset my alarm for 8:30 because I did not get a decent night sleep whatsoever. I fall back asleep and then have one final dream… My final dream this morning was somewhat like the first one, but waaaay more messed up. I had bought a new house, but it was a dump, and apparently had a bunch of paranormal activity going on. At some point in the dream some friends and I were discussing if the house were haunted or just full of monsters. Eitherway, some friends and I had to go through the home and kill all the creatures living in it before I could close on the house (I thought the bank was supposed to do this – hahah).

Anywho, I am running around with a pistol and a machete and a pocketful of soldering irons that I am throwing like throwing knives. We are systematically going room to room killing monsters who are hiding in dresser drawers, closets, and can apparently run through walls. At some point giant millipedes come falling out of the ceiling and climb down one friend’s throat. At some other point, some weird ceramic doll baby climbs out of a dresser drawer and bits a friend on the hand. There are lots of weird ghosts like out of the movie 13 Ghosts who we apparently can dispatch with machetes and guns. The dream  sorta ends with me waking up to my alarm again. I was drenched in sweat and absolutely terrified at the thought of having to do this for my home before my June 3rd closing. I honestly thought to myself, “there has got to be a way for the realty agent to get the seller to exterminate the ghosts before closing”…. then I realized that it was just a dream and that the place I am buying doesn’t isn’t haunted nor have lame B-Horror movie monsters living in the closets. I also believe the inspector found no signs of giant man eating millipedes in the ceiling.  whew.

God damn, I can’t wait until I have ZERO nicotine in my system, because I don’t know how long I can go with having nightmare ridden sleep…

The first one was seemingly similar to the movie  A Perfect World, but instead of Kevin Costner, I was kidnapped by Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood is becoming my hero as of late, and I think therefore, I didn’t mind him kidnapping me. I don’t remember much of the details, but I have a vivid memory of driving in his pickup truck (maybe the one out of Every Which Way But Loose) around dusk towards the city with the illuminated purple sky… which I had been thinking about before bed for a new painting series. Once we got back to the city, he dropped me off somewheres and a cop picked me up to take me home. I sat in the front with the cop and some crackhead that got picked up was in the back. The cop (who reminded me of Patrick Warburton in Big Trouble) thought it was pretty cool that I was hanging out with Clint Eastwood and we talked about our adventures together. The crackhead started heckling me about it and the cop gave me the nod and I punched out the crack head. hahah.

I think that dream probably had something to do with potential quarterlife crisis stuff. I have been getting lots of comments lately from people about the house buying like “Wow, you are such a good adult”. Perhaps, I slightly take offense in this since it is pretty removed from the hippy pirate lifestyle I used to live. Not that Clint Eastwood embodies that, but he has a different sensibility (at least from his characters in movies) that I admire. I think the punching scene at the end was a sort of self confidence boost from hanging out with Eastwood. This might be a sign that I need to do more things that I can take pride in and create my own self confidence. This might be an allusion to my failure in getting Adamantine Arts where it needed to be to be a success. bleh.

The next dream was bad ass. It made little sense. I was hanging out with Joe’s circle of friends and we were some sort of post apocalyptic  zombie/vampire/mutant hunters. One of the female friends got injured and so we took refuge in some abandon oil plant or something. A couple people and I stuck around to keep an eye on things while Joe, Charles, and some others went to go get fast food.  In the mean time, the girl wakes up as some sort of undead mutant thing and we engage in this epic battle. I’m running around dual wielding machetes  trying to eviscerate the girl before she can heal herself back up. However, she is going all bat shit crazy and doing flips and high kicks and beating our asses. Finally we get the upper hand and take her out. Then some other mutant zombie dude attacks and he is slow and lumbering, but cutting him up does nothing. It is almost like he was made of smoke or fog. He kills some of the other members of the team including Tim Cnossen and Tera LaPlante… which I distinctly remember for some reason. Meanwhile, someone else and me continue to engage him. Mid battle, a jeep pulls up and Charles and Joe and some others get out with Wendy’s bags and are talking. They see the fight going on and run into to join us. End. No idea what that means, but it was cool enough for me to turn off my alarm and finish the dream.

Finally, I had a dream where Sarah Jurenci and I were in a elementary school classroom (with the big tables instead of desks) and were serving the kids (who were noticeably all black) a sort of buffet style meal. One one side of the room were a bunch of steamer trays with some of the most delicious food I have seen. There was ham, and roast beef, and salads, and fruit, and  desserts.  I kept snitching food while I was serving and remember getting bloated, but kept eating. At some point I made a joke about ham, and a bunch of the kids got pissed off (I assume they were Muslim). Towards the end, the place started on fire or a tornado was hitting of something and all the kids ran out, but I kept eating. Wierd…  Honestly, I think this dream was caused by me having to fart really bad while sleeping. I think the chaos at the end was a signal from my body saying “You better wake up and fart or your colon is going to rupture”.