Thursday, July 20, 2006

The mountain

I was in a place that I'd seen before in a previous dream. I don't remember what happened in the previous dream, but I remember that I had gotten a good idea of the way the place was laid out. As best as I can figure, I was driving a lot in my last dream about this place.

If I had the skills, I would draw you a map of this place. Before anyone asks, yes, I remember it, and, no, I'm not making it up.

In this dream, I was driving my dad's old Ford Bronco around (the same one I wreaked the second time I drove it). I was driving it along the road towards a large mountain.

The road I was on wound around through trees and smaller hills, but you could see this mountain over it. This one mountain was part of a mountain range. The road was positioned in such a way that from the angle that I was coming at, you couldn't really see the mountain range, you only saw what you thought was one huge mountain.

Well, as I got nearer, and the road continued to wind, the other mountains in the range became much more apparent. The roads on the mountain itself did not rest immediately on the mountain, either. They were all supported by large posts, which then rested on the mountain. (Think of a traffic interchange between two major highways. You know those bridges that go over the highways that allow travelers to get from one highway to another? Think of supports like that.)

I was going on a tour of the inside of the mountain. When I drove inside, I met with a number of people there all going on this same tour. Since this mountain was so large, the idea was the everyone would drive around in their vehicles and tune their radios to an AM frequency, so that they could hear the tour announcer. That's exactly what I did. I tuned my radio to the AM frequency, and we followed the tour guide.

There was a lot of what you would expect in a mountain, but there was one thing you would not expect. Inside this mountain was the world's largest natural deep fat frier. You can't really imagine how big this was. This was the bulk of the tour, showing off this deep fat frier.

--"History"--
The mountain was, in fact, completely natural. No man had built it. A mining expedition had discovered it, and, in discovering it, had discovered one of the products of the mountain, namely something you would cook in a deep fat frier: potato chips. As the original mining expedition was going, after digging a tunnel into the mountain, they discovered a natural cavern. This natural cavern led to another room, and this room was filled with new, crispy, golden potato chips. The miners all tried one, and sure enough they were real -- it wasn't a mirage of anything. They continued exploring in the mountain, and they discovered the an immense pool of golden liquid. It was cool, so they went to investigate. They discovered that it was 100% pure, and after monitoring it for some time, discovered what it did. Needless to say, it became a tourist attraction like no one has ever seen before.
--End "History"--

As the tour continued on past this immense lake (you're probably still not imagining a deep fat frier lake big enough), we were shown the products of this mountain. At that moment, the lake was producing some sort of cheesy cracker--along the lines of the Ritz cracker, but cheesy instead of buttery. I was very interested, because I'm a big fan of stuff like this. They were offering samples of what the mountain makes, so I gladly took some. Imagine the best cheesy cracker you've ever had, then think of ways to improve on it. That's how good this was.

I left quite happy and also intrigued as to how this thing came to be. As I drove away, there was a slight rumble. I figured it was the mountain settling, or perhaps beginning to prepare another batch.

As I drove out of the mountain, a separate mountain in the chain suddenly erupted. It was spouting the cheesy goodness that I had just praised. The problem was the this yumminess was wiping out everything in its path, exactly like lava. I watched in horrored fascination as a forest was quickly buried.

My mind quickly flew back to my family living on the other side of the range. I pulled a quick U-turn in the truck and sped out of there as quickly as I could, but unfortunately, it was not quickly enough. The mountain that I had just been in joined in the fray immediately in front of me. I was caught up in the wave of crackers and swept away.

The next thing I knew, I was alone. The eruption had happened, and I was still alive. The truck still ran, but it had sustained some body damage. I got out of the truck and looked around. Trees were snapped in half, forests were partially flattened. I looked where my family's house would have been, and it was gone. There was hardly any sign of life anywhere, aside from a few birds. Since there was nothing left here, I decided to hunt around for other possible survivors.

My house was gone. The good thing was that there were no bodies, so I had hope that they had all gotten away in time. There was no sign of tracks, but then again, should there be? I think not. It would be odd indeed of forests were wiped out and tracks were left...

I continued searched, and I found a refugee hideout in Best Buy. Or what I thought was a hideout. It was actually no hideout. It was business as usual at Best Buy. They were having a clearance sale, and stragglers from the wreck outside were coming inside to spend possibly their last dollar on cool new toys for themselves. Anywhere from video games to laptops to appliances: it was all on sale. I recognized several employees: Big Brad, Zack R., and a few others who I knew in passing. They didn't recognize me off hand. I applied for a job there -- I had to make money to begin rebuilding, right?

I still had my uniform, so I threw it on, and began working. For some reason, there were a lot of customers who all needed help, but aside from a select few, the employees were all too busy chatting with each other to help out any of the customers. This affected me very oddly -- it really disturbed me that these people were spending their last bit of money on useless technology that would not help them in rebuilding, which they couldn't even use anyway, because of the lack of electricity. I wept for them inside, but I did nothing to stop them, because this is what they wanted to do.

The dream finished up with me being done with closing the store down after a short day, getting back out to my truck, and seeing a very sorrowful sight. All the people who had just made these purchases were barely alive enough to use them. They did not have money for the necessities of life, and were starving. It was very apocalyptic...

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Dad

I got word that Dad was back home. Shocked, I flew home, and sure enough he was. He was sitting at the dining room table, looking more-or-less normal as anything. He was a lot bigger than the last time I saw him, and a lot stronger. He had more energy, and he breathed a lot easier. I did do a double-take when I saw him though, but it wasn't because of all that.

He had hair. His receding hairline was still present, but he had enough hair to do a flat-top. Keep in mind that, aside from photographs, Dad with hair is something I have never seen before.

His congestive heart failure was completely gone. His need for medication was out the window. He did have to use a cane, and that was simply because he had been dead long enough that he was still stiff, but even that was going away.

The next thing I remember, Dad and I were walking towards Town East Mall (a local shopping mall in Mesquite). I had two obvious questions welling up inside of me, but, out of respect, and because I didn't want to sound like some sort of freak-o medium, I held off. When I couldn't take it anymore, I asked the first one.

I asked him if he could tell me anything from beyond the grave. What was death like? Had he gone to heaven? If so, why did he come back (not to sound cruel, but I imagine that heaven is a lot better than earth)? What was judgment like?

--SIDE NOTE--
One thing that I remember from all the way back when I was really young: I've always been afraid of Dad. He was the punisher of the family, the really strict one. Up until I went to college, I was always afraid of him, and even when I came back from college, he had a very commanding presence, one that I always feared.

In retrospect, up until I went to college, I never really knew how much Dad loved me, or how much I returned that love. Nothing changed before I went to college, during my time at Christendom, nor post-graduation. He was always Dad. I just began to take notice of the fact that Dad was strict because he loved me, instead of being strict just for the sake of it.
--END SIDE NOTE--

He looked at me with his normal look. In my youth, I would have been scared that I had said something wrong. Now I didn't see anything like that. He told me very plainly that he will not reveal to me what is not my place to know. When I die is when I will find out what death is like, what judgment is like, and then where I will go.

He also told me that I'm not doing what I need to do. What it is I need to do, he didn't say.

The third thing he told me was a bit of a kicker: Stop drinking soda. It'll kill you.

I laughed out loud at the third one. Although I didn't doubt it, I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it was one of the things that he had to tell me.

My second question was this: How is it that he came back to life and got out of his casket? "Well, son, you see, there are motion sensors and life sensors within any coffin. Mine was equipped with them as well. As soon as I started moving, the alert was sent out, and the casket was brought back up in less time than I had to realize my situation and start panicking." I was surprised by this answer, because I didn't see any sensors, or anything else that could do such a job, and I did get a decently good look at the casket. I was about to ask him to get into the scientific details of how they could place a sensor inside a coffin like that, and then get it to transmit a signal through that much earth, but then I woke up.

I'm such a geek, even in my dreams...

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

"Superhero" is a career option...

...or at least, that's what my subconscious thinks. This was a very odd dream, and it's doesn't make sense, but part of it was cool, anyway...

The first part: I was at Mass (Mass of Paul VI), sitting front and center with a large group of people. The priest announced the Kiss of Peace, and while everyone else in the church shook hands and made a big commotion, the large group of us did it the more-or-less traditional way: my hands went to the shoulders of the person next to me, his hands went under my elbows, we bowed towards each other. "Pax tecum. Et cum spiritu tuo." After doing that to the person on both the left and the right, we faced front again. Quick, clean, smooth, done. We weren't diving over pews to shake hands with people, unlike the rest of the people in the church.

The next thing that I recall, this same group I was with at Mass were all in a very large field. The part we were in was wide open. I looked around, and some of us were dressed oddly. Very oddly. Some people had tights, some people had masks, some people had capes, etc. Others, including me, were dressed in their normal attire to blend in.

Now, I don't know how this part follows. If you hadn't noticed, we were all superheroes. I don't know if our powers came from the Mass (which is a really cool thought), or if because we had our powers, we had to show the common folk how to behave at Mass. Anyway...

In any case, we were all gathered to have a showdown with the local bad guy. It was obvious that very few of us had any idea how best to use our powers. Some were showing off, some were unsure of themselves, few were acting normal.

The local bad guy was on top of a hill. He had done something which had made him the bad guy. For all I know, he could have leveled a city, or he might have simply bought an SUV and the green peace people called him a murderer. In any case, he challenged us.

"Since you are all obviously very green with your powers, I'll give you a fighting chance. I'll give you 15 seconds. You have until then to hide wherever you can. If I find and catch you -- and I'll find and catch every single one of you -- you're out of commission. Agreed?" Somehow or another, we got the idea that we wouldn't want to go up against him in a full-scale assault, so we all agreed.

(Yes, it was superhero hide-and-seek.)
(I can hear you laughing. Shut up.)

We agreed by splitting up in every possible direction. Some people went into the trees, some turned invisible, some burrowed underground. I looked at the LBG. He wasn't looking away. He was watching us as we all hid. Well, he is the local bad guy...

I took off running. I sped up as fast as I could go (which is a lot faster than I can run in real life -- even faster than TJ), and then thought that it would be better if he could see where I was going, so I took off flying. I looked down to see where everyone was going. I put my hands out under me to give fives as I passed by. Everyone dodged, thinking I was going to hit them. Elizabeth McG. was up ahead. She turned around and held her hand out. I dipped low enough and gave her five as I zipped by.

At this point, I really took off. I didn't want LBG to watch me too easily. My plan was to get past a hill at the ten second mark (which I was in no danger of missing), and then use all my speed to hide in a completely different direction. Genius, huh? Well, just after giving Liz a five and really turning up the juice, I woke up. Mom had walked into the room and reminded me that I had wanted to get up early to get some work done today...