The Meaning Of Dreams
7 October 2004

Friends... Countrymen... Beyonce... Lend me your ears... 

Do NOT eat a battered, deep-fried pork chop with onions and egg just before bedtime. 

I've always said that -- haven't I? -- and I say it again here. 

Now, having reiterated the gravity of this issue by restating what I (now) realize is obvious, let me move on to the issue of dreams. 

Do dreams mean anything? Surely we've all wondered that a bit. If you've read (as I have recently) about that old friend from the Bible, Daniel (he of "lion den" fame), you'll surely understand that dreams really CAN mean something. The issue at hand, however, is when, and what, and how do we tell the difference between pork-chop dreams and dreams that are supposed to really TELL you something. 

I had some doozies last night, and I am forced to use that word -- "doozies" -- even though I'm not exactly sure how to spell it. I'll look it up later. But the point being, why did I have such crazy dreams -- pork-chop aside -- and even more importantly, why are they still so vivid, hours later? 

So you're wondering what were these dreams... (sigh)... Okay, I'll try to explain it, though you know yourself that seldom do dreams make sense when you have them and trying to explain them is like... I started to say "dancing about architecture" but I think someone used that already... 

But if I tell you these dreams, and you think you know what they mean -- like, if this is supposed to be telling me something for REAL -- and you read this and you feel like God is revealing to you some significance, and you realize these aren't just pork-chop dreams -- if that happens, you let me know. 

Anyway, one part of the dream had me in Hong Kong, where I lived for three years until a week and a half ago. Of course, it wasn't the REAL HK, but this spacey, foggy, idealized HK... and interestingly, it wasn't even the CITY -- instead, it was the big mountain near Kam Tin (near the Tai Lam Tunnel) on top of which sits the HK Observatory. 

Now, for SOME reason, I was trying to get up that hill. But to get up that hill, I had to drive up a rainy, wet road, and the road looked EXACTLY like the interchange of I-71 and the Watterson in Louisville, KY (USA). Imagine if you are going northbound on I-71 (from downtown), and you get to that place ("the cut of the hill" they call it) where the northbound and southbound lanes separate -- but now imagine that entire section moving steeply -- VERY steeply -- uphill. And I'm driving that old blue '77 Cutlass Supreme we used to have, and it's got that big old stinking engine, and I mean, dude, I'm stepping on the gas and that thing MOVES, brother, and so I'm slipping and sliding all over the place... and big semi's are hemming me in all over, and I'm practically driving on the wrong side of the road because I can't control this big engine... And I mean, up ahead of me -- and this part scared me -- up ahead, there's this minivan, and this bozo is totally losing control, and he's spinning around on the wet pavement, and I mean, he's like totally sideways in the road, blocking the whole right lane, and I'm like, "Geez, this guy is gonna make us all crash!"

And, the way dreams often do, I suddenly jumped from speeding up that hill, to being inside the image I have of Macy's from The Miracle On 34th Street -- a huge department store, in other words. And NOW, I'm still trying to get up that hill, you see, but NOW I'm inside this huge department store... Okay, but I'm up on the 30th-something floor (it's a skyscraper), and I'm up in this special room, where everyone is trying to get up the hill. 

Wow, this is so hard to explain... 

But the thing is, in this room, everything is miniaturized, so there's like a giant train-set sized model of the bottom of that big mountain, and running all over the model are these TUBES. What are the tubes for? Why, that's where we are supposed to be driving our cars, don't you know? SO, it's like, now I'm in this room, no windows, but we're up high, and I'm supposed to be driving a Hot Wheels-sized '77 Cutlass Supreme up that interchange of I-71 and the Watterson (only steeply uphill, in the rain) and into the tube that will take me to the top of that mountain in HK... and my problem is, I keep driving into the wrong stupid lane!!! It's like, I can clearly see this one tube that goes INTO the mountain and then UP through the ceiling (the mountain is too big to fit into this room, see?), but every time I barely make it past that bozo in the minivan, and THEN I get in the wrong lane, and end up just going through the tube that shoots out into empty space and then ends. That's right, it ends... and I do a full-speed Dukes Of Hazzard out the end of the tube... "Ya-HOO!"... but I never land, obviously... perpetual falling, you get the idea...

Okay. End of part one of the dreaming. 

NOW, the really, really FREAKY part. And this is easier to explain, I think, but it's pretty freaky.

In the second and truly disturbing part of the dream, I am here in Japan, in Sagamino church, and I go to the room here where there's a sink -- and I'm gonna wash my face, see? 

But I get up to the mirror, and I see that my entire head -- face, neck, everything -- is covered in small green leaves -- almost like moss. And I'm looking in the mirror, and I mean I can barely see my eyes -- but I blink, and yeah, there are my eyes, but I mean COMPLETELY covered in tiny plants or something. So obviously I freak out, I mean I'm such a MONSTER, you know? But I turn on the water, and -- thank GOD -- it all just washes right off. It's like, as soon as I splash some water on my face, the rest just starts falling off -- like scales you can say -- and I'm back to normal. 

ONLY, and you can guess this one -- it's not ME in the mirror -- I mean, it's ME, but it doesn't LOOK like me -- and it's NIGHT suddenly (it was daytime before this moment), and I can hear someone in the background saying, "He's totally lost it! He's mad!!" -- and then I see this face, it's supposed to be ME but it's MUCH better looking than me -- and I just let out this guffaw, "Ha!" -- just a mono-syllabic laugh -- and it's like, hearing them say I'm crazy (for having just imagined my head covered in miniature clovers) just makes me laugh uncontrollably, but it's the laugh of madness, if you see what I'm saying... 

And I'm left standing there, in the dark, looking in the mirror at a face that's MUCH better than my real one, realizing that I truly am insane...

And THAT, my friends, is why you shouldn't eat a battered, deep-fried pork chop with onions and egg just before bedtime.