Monday, July 16, 2007

california dreaming part ii...

a dream?

I JUST had a dream that I was walking around the streets of New York and there was this younger girl who came out of her apartment quite tipsy so my friend and I stopped her from getting into her car. She began to throw a fit but I held onto her until we could call the cops. As I was grabbing for her keys she slipped away and ran into a twisted maze of alleys and dark streets but I was able to catch up to her once or twice. She ran into her kid brother while I was chasing her and they managed to slip away, but I still had her keys and knew she wouldn't be driving anytime soon. For some reason I also had a poster that I took from her which was from the National History Museum so instead of going to the police I went to a security guard in the NHM and gave him the poster and the keys. As I was leaving the museum I realized that for some reason I wasn't wearing a shirt and to get out of the building faster in order not to get in trouble I jumped into a small opening of an office which just happened to be the security guards office. Not only that, but there was a pane of hard plastic covering the opening so I smashed my face into it. I tried to laugh as I pushed myself away from the quasi-window to humor the guards, but their looks were far from amused. As I made my way to a nearby table to sit down and feel my hurting mouth, I saw my friend Alvin taking a security guard exam for the museum. Just then, I was surrounded by a half a dozen guards who demanded I show them my shirt which had miraculously appeared and so I did. It was a European soccer jersey and they were getting mad at me for having it. I was trying to convince the guard not to arrest me and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to tell him my mum was from South Africa. That did not go over well at all, he said that was probably the worst thing I could have told him, and he began questioning me. I was still feeling quite sore from my jaw hitting that pane but was able to remember enough to show him I wasn't some kind of terrorist or something. I really don't know what I was going to convince him of, but I thought anything could work. I told him what the date was and around what time it was and as I did that I thought in my head - I should open my eyes and see what's really going on. (This was the part of the dream where I thought I could snap out of it and be awake for a split second to make sure everything was fine and then go back to sleep). I opened my eyes to my dad asking me the same questions as the security guard was - what day it was, what my name was; and I asked him what was wrong. He and my mom kept murmuring in my room and all I could catch was "that plate should be enough to catch all of the blood." My mouth was in pain still and I felt for blood around my face and there was none so I wondered what they were talking about. I was angry because they weren't telling me what was wrong, and I wasn't finding out what had happened to my face. I thought I had gotten into a scooter accident and was angry at myself for allowing that to happen. I grabbed my scooter from outside and drove it out to a place where I could push it off a cliff. As I gave it just enough gas to roll off the cliff I realized that it wasn't going to fall far (I must have picked a bad cliff) and so it barely got damaged but it still satisfied me a little - if only for consolation of my jaw. My dad came driving up and my mom yelled at me to look over the other side of the cliff. She kept saying, "your sister!, your sister!" Sure enough there was Kate's old car lying hundreds of yards below us. I looked over just in time to see her friends pulling her out of the car and setting her down to keep her calm. I had no idea if she was okay or if her friends were okay or what the heck was going on. I saw my brother Ethan in the car with my parents with just a dumbfounded look on his face, as if he were imagining this as much as I was. I also saw a two year-old I recognized and he said "hi" to me and I said "hi" back, and there was another smaller baby there as well. I went over to my mom and noticed she was bleeding, hence the blood they were talking about earlier, and she mentioned something about pills of some sort but I was too confused to listen. I asked her, "mom, am I dreaming? Am I dreaming, because this is way too real, slap me, please slap me." And as she slapped me, I think that's about the time I woke up. I sat up in my bed and said - "that. was. horrible."

I thought I should write this down. It's not too often when I have dreams that are so vivid and clear. I swore to myself when I opened my eyes that first time, to hear my dad trying to bring me back to comprehension, that I was awake; and that it was just a bad dream and my jaw would stop hurting. When the pain didn't go away I was even more confused; I thought something had fallen on my head while I was sleeping and that my parents were doing the best they could to calm me. I didn't get why all this was happening, and all so fast. It didn't make sense but I didn't have time to be rational about anything and I began blaming anything and everything I could think of to blame. It was REAL - I've never had a dream feel so real before that when I finally did question it as I was dreaming, my answer was given to me in another dream (consequently the same one) and my fear of it being real was calmed for a brief second until the pain in my face came back. And for now, that's really all I have to say.

Good night.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

next contestant please...

It'd be interesting to see how much I'd have to make in order to rent an apartment and successfully live here in Orange County.

Sometimes I wonder how in the world I'm going to get by - with what I do and how much I get paid and where I live. I think if maybe I moved to Montana or Nebraska I might just have a chance at sleeping in my own apartment at night. Yet at the same time I know God is in control and He will provide for me. But do I feel that he will provide or do I truly know it?

I've been reading Screwtape Letters with guys from my church and C.S. Lewis was certainly a brilliant man. He speaks about us feeling forgiven and feeling courageous, but not truly knowing that we are. He also brings up the subject of our knowledge of who God is and who we have conceived him to be in our own minds....

Chew, chew, chew....

And in the wise words of Winnie the Pooh - "Think, think, think..."