Strange and Vivid Dream

I have heard somewhere that the average dream lasts about 30 seconds. If this is true, I must be an exception to the rule, else I have many 30-second dreams strung together. I had, in effect, one long dream last night that was very vivid. I can’t remember the last time I had such a dream; it’s one of those that you walk around thinking about all day, even if it nonsense. Rarely do we share dreams publicly, as it would have been odd to tell your second grade friends of dreaming about showing up to class embarrassingly nude. In a rare and nauseating endeavor, I will share the dream I had last night for your reading…pleasure/experience, whichever is more true.

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All the sudden, I was in a town that I realized was my hometown. I did not recognize it, but I knew that it was my hometown. I apparently felt like I’d seen all the buildings before. I also had one or two friends, with whom I would go around doing mischievous things. The first major event I recall was being in a little prison cell; I assume that one of my mischievous deeds with one of my friends got me there. It was an Andy Griffith prison cell, just the friendly lock-up in a rural mid 1900s town. I didn’t feel undone or alarmed by being there. About this time, while in the cell or just as I was coming out, I found myself having a foreign desire. The desire to love. Love someone…who would love me in return. Just as in dreams the exact moment of action is always hazy, as in at what point I started loving, also in dreams the desire is almost immediately followed by a realization of the desire. I instantly came across she. I don’t remember the meeting place, but I remember loving her and instantly feeling myself insane that she didn’t notice me. Trying to speak to her, the words came out all weird. I realized that when I tried to converse with her, I sounded, literally, like a mentally retarded case! Needless to say, she didn’t like me at first. I aggravated her, but she gave me the time of day. Eventually I started getting “smooth,” I wasn’t babbling like an idiot, and I could tell she’d been holding out. She started acting more like putty in my hands than sand in my eyes. Suddenly (a lot of suddenlies in dreams) we were in a beautiful garden. (Here’s where I make some nauseating admittances.) We started, in cinematic fashion, to run around looking at each other lovingly, gazing into each other’s eyes. And eventually we kissed…a lot, apparently. I remember thinking, “Ooh this is kinda…good!” I also remember her saying something about how good my lips tasting or something; I also remember wondering if she was making that up because I’m around my mouth a lot more often than she is and it doesn’t taste good to me. Anyway, continuing the fast pace of the dream, we instantly started talking about marriage!...and suddenly I felt the pain of loving her dearly but realizing our families wouldn’t like it for some reason if we got married. We argued for what seemed an hour about how it work out, but suddenly (we’re still in the garden mind you) every member of both sides of our family show up…to marry us on the spot! For a minute, it felt like a scene out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Next thing you know, completely different setting, probably another dream started, but my mind didn’t know the difference. My love and I were suddenly at some sort of party or social or something. I started to feel sick, and went into the bathroom. She followed me in because I was acting really sick. She was rubbing my forehead or doing something to ease the pain, and in that instant I realized how much I loved her. We kissed. When suddenly the scene changed again. Apparently whatever this sickness was had hospitalized me. I was looking at myself spread out upon a surgeon’s table in a creepy dark room, with somber-faced doctors spread around. I watched as a doctor grabbed an implement and cut into my skin from my abdomen all the way to the top of my chest. He ripped both flaps of skin apart and revealed…well, my insides. I remember thinking (as I’m watching my own operation) I’ll just watch and grit my teeth and bare it, I’ve seen bloody R-rated movie operations before. But soon I realized this far exceeds the allowable viewing level of carnage. Doc made several other incisions and cut around here and there and eventually he started digging around and doing God knows what! to various organs. I remember thinking that his methods looked a little “unsound,” when he started ripping various body tissues out of my body left and right. That’s the last thing I saw because I literally turned my head, feeling sick.

Next think you know I’m apparently out of the E.R. but in some kind of recovery hospital. My Grandpa is there with me, we’re walking together down a hallway. I remember the first thing I wanted was to be with my love. Where is she? We walked past rows of people in rehab and I realized I’d been in this place a lot longer than I realized originally. As I talked with my Grandpa I also realized that I had some sort of bad speech impediment. Apparently I’d had a stroke or something. I didn’t make any sense. I felt very embarrassed. Talking with my Grandpa, I learned of how my wife had gone off and left me for another man. I felt betrayed and violently angry. I started running around the place in anger, and the more hurt and desperate I felt, the more passionate I felt, the more the effect of my speech impediment left and I began to speak clearly. I felt like I could win my wife’s affection back. I grabbed my Grandpa and we walked over to tell someone at this rehab center that I was okay, that we were leaving. Just as we did, there started to be an earthquake or something. We looked out the window, and the building was sliding across the landscape, eventually until we noticed the whole building was about to be dumped into a ravine. As my Grandfather and I jumped out the window all the sudden I remembered hearing the words of a familiar prophecy: fire would burn everything and no one would escape. Fire would burn everything and no one would escape. (I hadn’t heard this earlier in my dream, but it was as if I had.) I remember thinking I had to disprove this prophecy. My Grandpa and I ran fast, but it was like we were being sucked down into this ravine with a fireball coming right at us, until suddenly God picked us up, literally. I remember thinking that God must be about to supernaturally spare us when all the sudden literally I felt God’s hand pick us up and we shot at the speed of sound straight up through the clouds till we were looking down at a map: earth’s surface.

At this point, my Grandpa disappeared. I was alone, but now I was plummeting down toward earth. I realized I had a parachute strapped to my back. I ripped the rip-cord and my chute opened. As I got closer to earth I remembered hearing that I needed to bend my knees to land without injuring myself. I strained my eyes to see where it was I was going to land. It looked pretty good, as if I was going smack down in the center of a field, when suddenly the wind blew me aside and I was right on top of a highway. I landed in the center of the road. I sort of crash landed and ended up lying down in the road, but I quickly got up and ran out the road because there was a car heading straight for me. I realized that the rest of my parachute was in the road, so I quickly reeled in it just before the car sped past me. I cut myself free of the chute and started wandering around. It was dusk and I was on the outskirts of some major city. I thought longingly of my wife again. The desire to fly came upon me. I wanted to parachute upward this time, but I knew that wasn’t possible. But as I started walking along this highway toward the city, I realized that there was a small parachute strapped to my back. I got the crazy idea to get a running start, and maybe if it was windy enough, I would be able to get carried up a little bit…maybe like a kite…

After several failed tries, I caught a good gust of wind and was airborne, about 3 feet above the ground, just gliding over the road. I landed and then ran and tried again. This time, I discovered that tugging on this thing attached to my back, like you would with a kite, I could gain a little more altitude. Suddenly I was able to climb to being about level with the second floor of some businesses I glided past. The more I tugged on this flying thing on my back the more wind I caught. Mainly, the more I desired to go higher, the higher I went. I remember thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” All the sudden I had a sort of a flashback. I was still flying but it was like I was also talking to a group of people on the ground. It was like a local street gang. But this gang’s main pursuit was doing what I was doing: using this parachute thing to fly around the city. Apparently they’d mastered the art, and the head gang guru guy instructed me about how to climb back up into the atmosphere. The only thing I plainly remember was hearing him say, “Man, you gotta get above the city lights. If you can do that, you’re free.” Free. The flashback ended, and sure enough, I was downtown, and I was almost to the height of some of the skyscrapers there. I just had to get “above the city lights,” above the top of civilization, the tallest of skyscrapers. I was almost there. I felt gravity trying to pull my chute down, but the more I wanted to be higher, the higher I went, and I was almost there, almost free, back up in the sky again…

“Josh,” my Mom said. “Wake up, Dad and I are going to Baton Rouge and I need you to take business calls while we’re gone.”