Off to the woods

$3,436.50. That is what all my worldly belongings are worth. It feels a lot lighter to have it all in my pocket than lying around my house as chairs and table lamps. I like it better this way.

Of course, that is misleading. I kept my car, a laptop and the furniture at the cabin. Plus a ton of groceries. I wonder how long it will be before the canned peaches run out. I find it unlikely I’ll be able to grow a peach tree out there, and I’m sure I’ll miss them when I’m gone.

But I do have seeds for just about everything else: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, watermelon, grains, herbs and on and on. I also bought a little grape vine, olive tree and apple tree. I don’t feel like messing with feed for animals, so I guess I’ll be a vegetarian when the canned stuff runs out. I’ve never much liked the idea of having animals killed for my dinner, anyways. And if I change my mind, I can go fishing.

It’ll be a couple days and a few more trips to the cabin before I’m ready to completely drop off the map. Hopefully I can get it all done before the weather gets nasty again. I’m a little scared about being alone all that time. But once I deposit today’s earnings, I’ll have more than $25,000 in the bank. So I can keep the Internet running until The Time comes.

A couple people have e-mailed and urged me to reconsider my flight to the woods. It's important to note that I'm not running from the Sliver Woman. I just feel like I've been asked to be some sort of narrator, and I need to be removed from the story to properly fill that role. 

On an unrelated note, this is a great website for exploring the world of dream. There are several people there who have had similar experiences. I thing they manifest differently to different people, but they are the same characters. And the same vague prophecy.

The Black Dog

OK. There’s more to my two-year absence. I didn’t just get distracted.

I got shitfaced drunk.

Arguably, the main reason I never followed through with this blog was because I started drinking again, like I did before. Like after she left.

I distracted myself with work, an eight-hour shift just long enough for the wine/vodka/shooters to wear off. Then I went to the store and bought alchohol. Then I went home and drank it. Two years went by.

It caught up with me, the Black Dog.

Sometimes I would go to the park, sit in my car and nurse a thermometer of rum. I watched them in the summer of their lives, the human race. Joggers, plugging through life. Children, twirling in their innocence. Friends sharing a park bench. The druggies and perverts too. I rarely drove off before crying. Jesus, I loved them.

Sometimes I went to the Pub and talked to strangers. The small talk was always enjoyable, but by the end I know I freaked them out. I talk too much when I drink, when I have someone to talk to. I drink too much when I’m alone.

Maybe that’s why I need you. Maybe, in this sober sunshine, I can realize that the dreams are my subconscious trying to tell me something. Maybe it was meant only for me.

But that wouldn’t explain the others. So many I would talk to at the bar, they would loosen up after a few rounds. We would talk about dreams. Sure, there were differences.

But basically, the dreams were all the same.

Further reading

Still planning the move. More on that later when I have the time. 

A few things of interest I've come across in recent days:

1. This website possibly refutes a paradox that prevents time travel.

2. This website renders an artful, never-ending rendition of dream. It's quite beautiful what can be done with computer code.

3. This website speaks of our collective consciousness, of stories and dream and our genetic code. It's very well researched, and is fascinating for those with a classical bent.

4. Here is the blog of JM Debord, who I think might know something.

Anything I missed? Pass along anything you think it interesting or meaningful. I hope to post lists like this more often.

What to make of it?

The Taxi Driver never made it to his destination. But without realizing it, the Sliver Woman had overplayed her hand. She should have sent one of her minions. But her presence in my dream began peeling away the clouds. Maybe that’s what the Driver intended all along.

I have always been a rational man. I considered myself an atheist because I had seen no example of god in the natural world. I worked as a math teacher in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio.

But the dream was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It nagged at me.

Over the next week, I researched dreams and their meanings, and found little at first. But two small sparks lit embers in the back of my mind.

I say the Sliver Woman overplayed her hand because of this Web site. While Googling random terms from my dream, looking for some precedent, I stumbled upon theories of interdimensional beings, and the fact that two beings from different dimensions can’t touch one another.

This is interesting, but meaningless, I thought. It was a dream, not an alien abduction. But then I began to ask: what are dreams? Why are they necessary? What physiological function do they serve? 

What do you think?

The Taxi Driver

It was two years ago that the Taxi Driver first came to me. 

I was visiting an old friend in Florida and was sleeping on his couch. It was early fall, and I fell asleep listening to the wind rustle through the trees outside.

In my dream, I was in New York. I was wearing a tuxedo, and was apparently leaving some theater performance. Angela was at my side, still alive. She looked beautiful, in a black night gown that sparkled. 

Angela and I hailed a taxi cab, and as we got in, I ordered the driver to take us home. We smiled and laughed. I miss her, but I’ll get to that some other day. 

I’ve been to New York only once over a long weekend. I don’t know the geography. But in my dream I became aware that we weren’t driving the right direction. I asked the driver where we were going.

“There’s no time to explain,” he said, his voice quivering with fear as he glanced nervously in the rearview mirror. “I have to show you.”  

The driver looked old. In his sixties, perhaps. He wore a greasy cap with a short brim and had a grey beard. A cigar burned in the ashtray.  

Suddenly, everything outside the window looked very strange. It was a normal suburban street with trees and homes, but they seemed oddly foreign to me.  

I started to worry, and demanded to know where we were going. But the driver just shook his head.  

“I shouldn’t have done this,” he wailed, his eyes watering as he drove. “We’ve gone too far.”

“This isn’t your dream anymore,” he said.  

It was only then I realized I was dreaming. But I was captive and had no control.  

“I’ve gone too far, too fast,” he repeated over and over, looking in the rearview mirror time and again. Then he began repeating, “I have to show you. You have to see.”  

This is where the driver lost control of the vehicle. I don’t know why. It slid onto a curb and came to a stop. He climbed out and ran and I followed him. I don’t know what happened to Angela.  

As he ran, he looked behind him, and terror flashed into his eyes.  

I turned around and saw a figure, it had a female form but moved like liquid, all of its features oozing forward but in a halting pattern like stop-action photography. She was a blur.  

I ran as fast as I could but I suddenly felt as if I was on a treadmill. I turned around again and she was right there. She looked like she was made out of molten platinum. She lifted her forefinger and pointed it at me, and it extended like a baton until it touched my chest. 

I felt like I was falling, like my heart would stop and darkness would swallow me up.  

I bolted awake and shot off the couch. I was standing in my friend’s living room, heart racing, breath coming in shuddering spurts.

This lucid dream

I quit my job today, called to have my utilities turned off and closed all

my bank accounts but one. I’m going to Rogers Pawn tomorrow to sell what I can.

Then I’m off to the woods.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine there for at least a year. At least through

next year. By then, I’ll know what all of this means, and I’ll know if it’s

safe to come back. I only hope my wireless Internet equipment doesn’t break.

And I hope I hold together. I don’t want to die.

I haven’t heard her voice for a week now. I’m starting to get impatient,

though she told me it would be a while.

In the meantime, what was your strangest dream? What do you think it means?

The gun is not the weapon

Jared Loughner will have no disciples. 

That’s what the dream told me.

He lost himself in madness. He saw the Void, and it consumed him. He was unarmed.

Yes, my dreams are often laced with violence. I dream of terror. I dream of gunfire, knifeplay, blood and viscera.

But I know I am the victim of those dreams. They are trying to turn me. They are trying to make me temporal, tie me to this plane. You can’t fight the Void with projectile weapons. 

It’s like the ocean.

But they are winning. That’s what else I saw in my dream. That’s what stayed with me this time. The madness is spreading. The Sliver Woman is dancing. The children of chaos are sharpening their knives.

I must resume my mission.

Two years gone

I fell back asleep. Like hitting the snooze alarm.

That’s how dreams work, you know. You shoot awake, grasping desperately at your sheets. Then as quickly as the realization of safety sinks in, the memory of terror fades away. By lunch, you can’t even recall the details of the dream.

In this case, the details are still clear to me। It was the urgency that faded.

Until last night.

I saw it. I saw the whole thing. The blood, the horror. In my dream, I crawled on my hands and knees away from the gunfire and hid behind the bumper of a car. And watched it all unfold.

That sent me here. To the madman’s website. That’s where the message was waiting.

Conscious dreaming.

Do those words mean anything to you?