It's hard to remember my dream in its entirety because what I remember from it starts with my waking up. So, I know I started off dreaming of something, then falling asleep in that dream, at which point having ANOTHER dream. I don't remember what either was about. What I do know is that upon waking up (in my dream), I find myself in a fast food place with some guy friends. The guys are chatting about something I don't really follow so I get up and wait on the line to order food with some other friends, who in the dream I recognized but in reality don't know at all. As I'm on line, I really can't decide what I want; I'm being picky about my choice because although I'm hungry, I don't want to eat unhealthily or too expensively. I go over to where the food is being prepared, and while someone isn't looking, I take some sandwich that has pasta in it and eat it ravishingly even though it's gross. I stop and look at what I'm doing and see how dishonorable it is to a) take the food without paying for it and b) eat like a pig. I discard it. Then, I look around and realize that everyone has already made their choices and left, so before the place closes, I spot some plain pizza and decide that that will be alright because I've become so hungry it hurts. I order one slice, and the guy looks at me, smiles and puts three in a container. He motions me to come to him around the counter, as if we're going to tell secrets. He says he will give me all of these pizza slices since it's closing time, and I think how nice he is and hand him what I would have paid for the one slice I ordered, a dollar. He frowns and tells me that all three add up to ten dollars. I tell him then to forget the other slices since I had only wanted one to begin with. We argue for a while because he will only sell me the three because he's packaged them already, while my argument is that I don't want to pay more for something I didn't even want. I walk away hungry and decide I'll go home and eat. I pass a friend (another who in real life I don't know) and, in a really concerned way, asks me why I'm leaving because her birthday party is about to begin. I tell her I'm going to come back quickly, but as I walk away I think of how it's midnight and how absurd it is to throw a party in an eatery that's about to close. I look around the parking lot and become increasingly more frightened because as I search for my car in the nearly deserted parking lot, it's beginning to rain. I see a woman walking around the large building I was just in and figure she's looking for her car just as I am, so I follow her. The walkway is narrow because it expands from the building's wall to the fence that surrounds it, and it is very dark all the way down. I get to a lot at the end, but it is not a parking lot, just an empty, grassy space. At this point, the woman is gone and I've forgotten about my car. I see a stream of firefighters pouring in from the gate's entrance. They are all looking at me and telling me that I have to go right at that moment, and since they seem pressed for time and increasingly more angry has my presence there lengthens, I get my backpack and bike and begin to ride off in the grass, which is proving difficult. As I ride off, I hear them laugh at how many green things I own, which makes me more aware of the fact that I have a green bike, green backpack and a green outfit on (which is nearly all true in real life, minus the green outfit bit). At first I am embarrassed, but then realize how stupid they are to not notice that everything that they possess is all red. I'm riding as fast as I can through an open field of yellow, dry grass to get to a forrest, which I assume will fend off some rain. I get to the forrest and immediately make a right. I am then faced with a hill, which I attempt to ride. After a little, I get off and start to push the handle bars as I walk. The rain has not faltered and I see an older woman (maybe a little over middle-aged) and a young boy riding their bikes in my direction. They seem so small to me despite their ease at coming down the hill and my struggle to reach them going up it. A quote goes through my head about the virtue between mother and son, but by the way they are acting so cooly and indifferent about the other's presence it seems that they aren't related. I wonder why the two don't work together to get through the rain, looking at them with both pity and jealousy as I so badly wish I were home and with my own family. By now, I'm so close to reaching the two, but I come to a patch in the forest where the continuity of the tree canopy breaks, and there is a warm yellow light coming from the opening. I look to the sky, but the light becomes too white to stare at anymore and so I look back at the pair of bikers, and then just at the woman; she smiles at me. I ask myself what use is it to have firemen in a rainstorm? and then I wake up.
I see so much of myself and the trueness of the life I lead in this dream alone. I'm looking now at the spot where my blanket and pillow are all disheveled, and it seems amazing to me how I could have unpackaged so much about myself that I was hiding from my consciousness without even getting up and moving. No one but me could have had that dream, and isn't the individuality and specificity of a dream telling of the importance we should put to them? I've been trying to make more obvious to myself all the nuances of my latest dream, but I can't help but to stop and analyze my own act of analyzing a dream.
The idea that death might be the awakening from the dream of daily living is not a new one, but I'm considering it now. If I am now dreaming, will this dream/life become something later on for me to analyze in a new, more stable life later on? After coming out of a dream, it becomes apparent how silly it was. Though, however cryptic, a dream can help to bring something to surface level. Dreams can help us get to the core of a problem, and thus the core of our beings. So, if a dream helps me to understand who I am in a reality that I perceive to be the "home base" to all of my other realities (i.e. dream life, alternative mind frames, etc..), does this "home base" of a life become my main article of analysis when I die and hypothetically awaken to another reality?
Is existence more than this life, in that we live as though we are Russian dolls, starting off large but easily broken, having each realm of being become smaller and smaller until our essence becomes something solid and impenetrable? Is this life just an outer protecting layer to something more that we inevitably will unleash? In each layer of life we are living , does the sifter we use to analyze our existence become more and more selective until we are left with a tiny rock?
Or maybe it's like what Benoit Mandelbrot was saying when trying to convey what he had found while trying to determine 'roughness'... He made simpler the explanation by bringing to mind a cauliflower. He said that when he looked at a cauliflower, everything seemed rough and irregular, so he picked a little piece of it off to see if the patterns would become more clear, but he realized that what he'd picked was only a smaller version of the larger cauliflower as a whole. Maybe no matter how much we sift, a grain of sand will look like a smaller rock; no matter how long you play with a Russian doll, the smallest one and the biggest one are nearly identical versions of the same thing.
Maybe by the time I determine which theory I'd like to believe, all of the friends I can't seem to remember may already have chosen and left me to be alone and hungry still.
*Just as a note (and to no surprise) everything that I've posted so far this summer in terms of images has been taken on mac photobooth. This means that what is shown here is a backwards version of the true piece, that is unless it is something that could have only been produced by the program itself. This post, for example, shows images of images, while other posts may just show images of myself/various things in reality. I don't think this makes a difference as far as verity in my work, but I just thought I'd let it be known.
