Monday, March 10, 2008

I had a really bad dream last night. It wasn't even funny-bad. I was at H&L's old apartment, at a party, when suddenly an airplane screamed by the window, way too close to the ground. Its engines were wailing and the whine of them kept ascending and descending, like the pilots were trying to keep the plane up but were failing. We all ran out to the porch but it was soon out of view. Then we heard a huge boom. We knew it had crashed, but we were too scared to turn on the TV for a while. Somehow the rumor got around that someone had sabotaged the plane from the inside while someone else on the ground had shot at it with a surface-to-air missile. We were all sickened and terrified and feeling deeply sad. Then I was back on the porch, sitting there with H and a couple of other people. The view from the porch was an Iraq checkpoint. As we watched, a desperate man climbed one of the guard towers, and as he almost reached the top, the guard shot him in the head and the man fell to the pavement below. I started talking about how horrible it was that things like this happen in front of us every day, and what is the world coming to? How can we continue our normal lives amidst this constant violence and death? And H cut me off and said, "Can we not talk politics, please?" Like I was being a total downer.

(OK, that bit is kind of funny.)

There was more that was gross and scary (and not involving any of my friends) but people don't really like hearing other peoples' dreams so I won't share. Plus, it disturbs me to even remember it. So I've been kind of weird all day. I blame the dream, and Daylight Savings Time, which I don't like having while it's nowhere near spring. (How can we "spring forward"? We should be "wintering over" or "frost biting" or "snowplowing through.") I have no idea where the dream came from, or why my brain cast H in the role of asshole. (So random. You could be next, reader!) My stomach must have been a little upset, so my mind blamed it on terrorism.

4 comments:

Jennifer Myszkowski said...

I had a similar kind of dream about two years ago with Barak Obama manning a tank up Suffolk Street in Holyoke, shouting stuff I couldn't understand, but I knew the bombs were coming. I tried to make it to the bomb shelter, but they just started raining down on me. I didn't blow up, but everything else did.

It was so upsetting. I can see it in my head like I had the dream yesterday.

S-Way said...

Jennifer, you should submit your dream to the Metaphysical Poll: http://idreamofhillaryidreamofbarack.com/

Context/background here: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/03/10/080310ta_talk_mcgrath

debl said...

J,
And we live lives of relative comfort and ease. Imagine if we actually lived in places where tanks and gunfights were regular occurances!

Jennifer Myszkowski said...

Sometimes when I think about the kids that grow up in war zones or mine fields, it gives me the panic. I've had a lot of stupid bullshit to put up with, but nothing at all like that, thankfully.

My dad was drafted into Vietnam, but ended up being rejected by the draft board for high blood pressure. When I think about what an incredible near miss it was, I'm flooded with gratefulness. If he had gone to Vietnam, he very well might not have made it out alive, certainly wouldn't have met my mother, I wouldn't have been born. And he would have been changed, so changed, from the gentle-hearted, easy-going guy he is. The part where he never even had high blood pressure and, indeed, has low blood pressure now just underscores the sheer luck.

I mention it because Vietnam is an ugly chapter in history, but life is like that for people all over the world all the time and somehow they go on. Some of them are even gentle hearted and easy going. It blows my mind.

I've recently become acquainted with a man whose father was killed in a Soviet gulag. This is the reality of the world.

What am I dreaming about bombs for?