Thursday, September 07, 2006

dream interpreters?

I dreamt two nights ago (two mornings ago) that my middle-school scoutmaster was driving me somewhere, and I made him stop because I saw two boys on the side of the road, and one of them was beating the other with a flail. He finally agreed to stop, and I ran over and snatched the flail from the boy. This kid was really, really evil, and so was his friend, and they danced around me, and told me that even if I could take their flail away, I couldn't get them to take the mime out of their box. I now saw that the box that the flailed boy had been leaning over was indeed big enough to fit a mime, a la the gimp in pulp fiction. I called out to the box "If you're in there, make some noise!" because I didn't believe the evil boys. The box moved. I tried to convince the boys to let the mime out, whom they had taken prisoner some time ago. I wrote them a check for twenty dollars as an attempt to ransom the mime. They would have none of it, but someone who might have been my friend Gracie showed up. Finally, sick of it, I tore the lid off the box with my bare hands, and a grateful mime achingly climbed out. He thanked me (even though he didn't talk, I suppose still faithful to his mime-ness.) As me and the mime were about to get the hell out of there, I noticed that the person who might have been Gracie was standing by the box. The boy were trying to convince her to get in, and I called to her, but slowly realized that I wouldn't be able to stop them from trapping Gracie in the box.

Then I woke up.

I don't know what this dream is all about, but it's the scariest one I've had in recent memory. I don't often have nightmares, at least ones I remember, and this one was striking and disturbing. Maybe it's about the whole "you can't save them all" thing, or about frustration about the sheer amount of evil in the world, or something.

Weird.

1 comment:

Beth said...

Wow. A couple of thoughts that came to me.

Sometimes boxes feel safe and defined and easier than dealing with the rest of the world. At the moment, I'm having trouble wanting to engage with the world. It's kind of nice to hide out in my house...but also at the same time it's much less real and live-giving to be in a box.

We're strong enough to tear open boxes with our hands!

Maybe the mime will tear open the box for someone else.

Sorry you had a scary dream!