The Red Book (Liber Novus)

Sitting bored at work today, I was perusing Google News when I came across this article:

The Holy Grail of the Subconscious

It’s a lengthy read, but one that completely fascinated me. I’ve always been a fan of Carl Jung and his dream analysis, but I’d never heard of the “mythical” Red Book–an illuminated manuscript, bound in red leather, that he himself claimed was his greatest work. It has never been visible to the public at large and has never been studied by academia–it took a tremendous amount of diplomacy to convince the Jung family to retrieve the book from its secret location and allow high-res scanners to capture the elegant German writing and archetypal artistry of Jung while he explored the depths of his subconscious. The contents laid the groundwork for the Jungian method of psychoanalysis, but the family has been terrified that the never-before-published work would cast Jung as a madman, as its contents are creatively schizophrenic and at times disturbing. Jung did not hold back, and the Liber Novus (as he called the Red Book) captured all the gory details of his visions, dreams, and reveries.

I am going to try to procure a copy if at all possible–the first edition print run is only 5,000 copies, and each copy is already priced at over $100. Amazon has already sold out, and some other sites have started jacking up the prices… If this effort fails, I know what I’m going to request at Christmas.

This Bizarre Cranial Wiring Must Extend Even Into My Subconscious

So I’d dreamed all night about sitting in on various lectures about economic theory. I had split my time between a lecture that was offered by Milton Friedman and one that was offered by Mister T. This was surprisingly plausible in my mind, because I could tell T was simply reading straight from the textbook and using the canned PowerPoint presentation that came with the teaching materials.

After having spent all night dreaming about this, I found myself sitting in a small meeting room with three or four of my Indian colleagues. I was intensely curious about elephant poop paper, the physics of which I still wasn’t too sure about. Did the elephant’s digestion transform the cellulose into a substance not unlike the wood pulp used at paper mills? What color was this unusual paper? Was it grainy? Did it have visible variations in color?

Of course, all these thoughts crossed my mind but were not uttered to my coworkers. After one of them acknowledged that he used the paper, the question that immediately came to mind (and which I asked him) was: if you are printing on elephant poop paper and it gets stuck in the printer, do you have to use a plunger?

The room erupted into laughter, and I woke up.

Flexible Morality

My mind clung loosely, jostled and fluttering, just above my body
(Itself held in stoney dreams of loam and turf)
And it was, for a time, like their flag–

Five crippled men, never beaten but long forgotten,
their faces worn with deep grooves beyond flak, beyond shrapnel,
(the kind of erosion that only funerals can bring)
keeping vigil on the windy hill that overlooks the void

Long was the world their emotional laboratory
and every speck of creation bore the smudges of their acts:
Reckless, feckless, and full of consequence,
Creaky dogma giving way to flexible morality

The harvest came at life’s twilight
when the shining bones had lost their luster
and all the gold that grows within
had long ago been splattered on the ground

First teeth, then glass, then broken ribs
had brought them ’round to the hill of chaff
and all that remained were memories bound up in cloth,
seeking desperately to flee their makers

–tattered, faded, the worse for wear
the desire returned with a subtle flicker:
mind and body mutually assured

The Book Vault

It was the dawn of a dreary day in a standard hotel room. I got dressed and prepared my belongings; my cohorts, contractors for the company I work for, were already awake and preparing to leave town.

“Before we go back, I need to get a book,” I said.

“What book?” asked one of the contractors.

“The Catcher in the Rye. I was going to go to the bookstore around the corner.”

“They won’t have that there. They don’t carry books like that,” the contractor said. He was a large black man, obese and skeptical of the world. “You’ll have to go across town.”

“Well, I need it for my report,” I said. “I’m going.”

At this point I ditched them and left the hotel. It was a gray, rainy day, and my destination was a small establishment at the very end of a dilapidated old shopping center. I knew they were closed, so I had to go to the back door, behind the shopping center, where there were no cars and no clear indication of which door led to which building.

I entered the last door and a man with a closely-cropped beard approached, asking what I wanted. All around were old wooden shelves that had paperbacks and second-hand manuals, and a bare lightbulb with a pull chain was the sole source of illumination. I told him I needed a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” for my report.

My request seemed to stump him. He thought for a while, then motioned for me to follow him. He led me down a hall and around some corners until we reached a small room with wood floors and no windows. In this room were three or four large green units, somehow resembling a combination of trash compactor, vault, and furnace. Each had a hatch on top and a variety of other, unknowable pipes and rigging.

“You’ll have your best shot in here,” the man said, walking over to one of the green units. He turned the large wheel at the front of the unit, grasping a couple of the spokes that extended out from the wheel and spinning it. As he did this, the hatch at the top of the unit slowly opened up; the lid creaked as it moved back.

“In there?” I said. The man wiped his hands and started to walk away.

“Yes. There’s a ladder, don’t be afraid.”

I approached the big green vault and had to climb up on it to be able to even see inside the porthole that was now open. At first I could see nothing; there appeared to be a wooden plank blocking my sight. But I heard voices within, and soon I realized that I was staring at the top of a wooden ladder that was entirely too tall, as the topmost step came right up to the edge of the hole. I reached inside, grasping the plank, and moved it aside somewhat to a more usable angle, also taking the opportunity to look inside.

I found that the area inside the green vault was vast, wide open and lit by sunshine. It was as though I was looking down from the ceiling into a wooden-floored warehouse, with high bookshelves, plush sofas, and tall windows that were letting in daylight. I could see people sitting around inside; some appeared to be reading, while others seemed to be watching television… and saying something in unison. I could not make out what it was they were saying, but I decided to descend.

I had no difficulty entering what seemed like an entirely different place. It was alive with activity; people young and old were shopping for books, trading cards, and all sorts of things. My family was there, browsing the collection; I associated with them for a few minutes before resuming the search for “The Catcher in the Rye.” The books were all arranged strangely, and I saw categories that I did not recognize. I scanned the shelves, feeling as though I was in some kind of a hurry because it seemed wrong somehow.

I only paused temporarily when I saw a large Dragonball Z display, and I found myself down an aisle that specialized in fanboy nonsense. I stood there, unamused and frustrated that I would have to leave and continue my search somewhere else.

Restless sleep.

Three Dreams

Last night was an especially fertile time for my subconscious, as I had three bizarre dreams. I also learned that my subconscious does a piss-poor job at identifying people and objects appropriately.

-. In the first, my family and I were sitting in the choir (we have never sat in the choir) of the church I grew up in, and Steve Harvey (who I mistakenly identified in my dream as D.L. Hughley) had become the pastor of the church. I found myself about as interested in the proceedings as I was normally (i.e. not very). Everyone else in the church was still corn-pone white and backwards as usual, though there were muffled laughs as the pastor told jokes.

-. In the second, I was with a young, shaved Henry VIII and his “wife”, Marie Antoinette. (Stupid subconscious!) Marie was despondent over the fact that she was about to be executed, so she decided to “do what is best for the subjects”. Then, I have a vision of a modern-day American mail carrier delivering 5 or 6 dodgeballs (which I mistakenly identified as basketballs in my dream) to houses in the suburbs of France. An elderly storekeeper goes out, picks up the dodgeballs, and brings them inside. In the process, he hears something rattling inside, so he takes a knife and opens one of the dodgeballs. Inside is a handful of pink pearls, causing the man’s eyes to widen and him to utter praises to the queen. As he emptied the pearls, I looked inside the dodgeball and saw some shiny silver coins; I removed these and saw that these were extremely rare coins from ancient Rome, one of which was crudely dated 1066. Looking out the old man’s window, I saw the mail carrier delivering dodgeballs to all the houses up and down the street. The next thing I knew, I was back with Marie Antoinette and the father of Henry VIII, who had a long beard and long gray hair down to his ankles. The two of them hugged; she fixed his cloak for him, and I realized we were standing behind a curtain. Then the three of us walked out from behind the curtain, me leading the way. I found myself on a stage, with three chairs sitting in the front and a crossbeam over the three chairs. There was a large audience, which was mostly silent as we sat down on the chairs. A man came out and threw out three small stones and told us each to take one; the one I picked up had a large number “3″ carved into it. These stones apparently were to determine the order of the executions. It dawned on me that the audience was gathered to watch us all die, one at a time. I looked in front of the stage and saw two or three tables, mostly empty save for a few scraps of paper. For some reason, I was looking for a clock, or a timer, or a bell of some kind to indicate when the executions were to take place… but there was nothing. Next thing I knew, I was being told to stand up in the chair. Then, a man on my left (actually a guy from work) yelled at me and said “don’t worry, this will cut out before anything really happens.”

-. In the last dream, I was driving through a nearby city and was quite bored. It was night; I’d just done something impressive and I was slightly hungry for some kind of treat, so I decided to go to this hole-in-the-wall establishment whose name I cannot remember. Seems like it was something like “Ultra Mega Amazing Ice Cream and Milkshakes” or something hyperbolic like that. Anyway, I went inside and found the place to be a den of various ne’er-do-wells: a hipster guy wearing an old military uniform and rolling around on roller skates, a couple of misshapen good-ol’-boys, some loud frat pledges, and the like. I sat down and a guy brought me a menu, which I found to be full of all kinds of milkshakes. Milkshakes of very make and variety you could ever imagine, and some that you would never imagine. They had every fruit flavor known to man, they had savory (“dinner”) milkshakes that tasted like V-8, broccoli, and various other flavors, they even had milkshakes that claimed to taste like inanimate, non-edible objects (I distinctly remember the “broken glass milkshake” and the “monster truck milkshake”). I was joined by a couple of my friends, who were equally astonished at the milkshake varieties, but they devoted their energies toward finding beer-flavored milkshakes. As we scoured the menu, I told them “well, if they have jeep-flavored milkshakes, surely they have beer-flavored ones.” Sure enough, one of the employees got on the loudspeaker and announced that he would be giving out some free samples of shakes for people to try to help decide what to order. He then came to our table and brought us one of the fabled beer-flavored milkshakes. My friend was the first to try it… he pondered it for a moment, then snarled his nose and passed it to me. I tasted the milkshake and was quite impressed by it, intoning a Homer Simpson-esque “mmmmm… candy beer.” My other friend tried it and downed it. The next thing I remember, I was leaving the place and beginning to drive home, wondering if beer-flavored milkshakes were alcoholic.

What. The. Fuck.

Dream Notes

I plan on writing a story based on a dream I had this afternoon. I need to document the pieces before I forget them.

• The red slingshot and the portal (via displacement)
• Accidental firing through the Japanese gate, gathering on the platform at the edge of the field
• The friend’s explanation of the gray mirror world of opposite personality
• The 1840’s displacement self emerges and I step through
• Looking back through to see hostile overtures… “oh shit”
• The shaman/friend of uncertain name on the other side… “you’re mine now”
• Traversing the gray world, not talking to natives but seeing recognizable faces
• Hitching a ride on the children’s war train
• Conveyor deposit, rapid aging, gray Civil War/Holocaust style uniforms
• Children march off the train; friend and I follow alongside
• One line travels forward, while a conveyor belt carries children’s bodies back in the opposite direction (from where we came, toward the train)
• Emerging in bright grayness of war fog, passing familiar faces, muttering praises to unknown dignitaries
• Veering away from the march, into an ancient-looking establishment… saloon/restaurant of shuffling, utterly hopeless people
• The old man and the pork tamales that meet all nutritional needs, as mandated by “Gessitation Maxima”
• Bumping into the old woman, advising me to see a doctor; when asked who her doctor was: “Why, Gestation Maxima of course.”
• The mysterious old barkeep and the money… $20 for my friend and $6 for me, with the question of “will you come back every day?” (The friend advises against answering that question)

These sort of dreams are what happen when you have calamari salad at lunch.

Chitty Chitty Thai Thai

The other night, I dreamed I was flying along with Dick van Dyke on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with the kids from the movie. From the “camera angle” of my dream, it was as though I was riding on the hood.

The next thing I knew, we were at Dick’s place, sitting around his dinner table, he and the kids and I, and we were eating Thai food. Apparently we had just returned from picking up some Thai take-out. Dick was wearing his “Diagnosis Murder” getup, and we were all having the same thing: peanut chicken with white rice, and a glass of Thai tea. Dick explained that the take-out had been from the Thai place in Hampton, and that the proprietor of that establishment, along with her two sisters, made the best Thai food in the world. According to Dick, the three of them were constantly trying to outdo one another, and so over time, their food only got better and better. I ate my peanut chicken and nodded, fascinated with this hypothesis.

Just then, I looked to my left and saw one of the kids with green, leafy stuff on top of his white rice. I recognized this as being the loose tea leaves from the Thai tea. “You’re not supposed to eat that,” I told him. “Sure you are,” the kid said, “it’s actually really good that way.” “Wow, I’ll have to try that,” I thought to myself.

Then I woke up.

Answers Come in Dreams

If I am to believe the assertions made by Coil (and I really have no reason not to), answers come in dreams. Over the course of one week, I have had no less than three dreams about meeting Asa, with each being progressively better than the last. This is more or less parallel to how things have been going in our relationship lately; this may be a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or perhaps it’s the “writing on the wall” that I’ve been looking for.

In the first dream, I go to visit him at his place of work, and it ends up being this huge pet emporium; he is away on lunch break, and the receptionist points to a ledger, where written in bubbly cursive is the name “Meggy.” He does not make any appearance in this dream.

In the second dream, I actually meet Asa for the first time while I am on lunch break at work. We’re at McDonalds, and my coworkers talk me into eating meat, with the incentive that “they’re giving away free ribs if you make a lap around the seating area.” I do that, and they give me a “McRib”, which ends up being a whole slab of ribs on a bun. Asa is there, and he is much taller and jockier than I thought he’d be; we talk about it and deduce that he’s simply been measuring himself the wrong way all these years. When our lunch break is over, I ask him if he’ll kiss me; he rolls his eyes and gives me a quick peck, and that’s that.

In the last dream, it is a Wednesday, and I decide to blow off work entirely and go to Texas to surprise him. Through the magic of dream travel, I arrive in the parking lot of his vet clinic almost instantaneously, and I marvel at the ample parking that is available. I step inside; the clinic is much more realistic this time, with wood paneling and somewhat close hallways. A tall fellow I do not recognize is there; I tell him I’m here to see Asa, and he motions for me to follow him. We walk by several rooms with closed doors; one of them is slightly open, and I can see a doctor inside performing some sort of procedure. The young man tells me to wait a moment, and he goes into the room; I hear him say “someone’s here to see Asa.” The next thing I know, the fellow re-emerges, and behind him is Asa: appearing just as he always has, except wearing slightly used scrubs. We embrace in the hallway for what seems like forever.

Perhaps I should get ready to be delivered, and delivered in a hurry.

My Mind a Hive of Orange Insects

I have found myself often dreaming of insects these days. I have regaled my friends (several times now) about a very vivid dream involving a particularly disastrous trip to an Asian restaurant where insects like spiders and fire ants were featured prominently on the menu, as well as a dish that possibly contained roaches, the “pasado” (see picture at right). I am a fan of neither insects nor “mysterious meat from a far away land” (as the pasado was described in my dream), so I was a bit perturbed by that imagery.

The other night, I had another dream where insects featured prominently.

I was in a “theme park” of some sorts, in some sort of live-action, first-person game, and I was with the members of my nuclear family. The world was dark from fog and haze (not unlike Silent Hill), and we walked through an old and apparently abandoned industrial district. Tall buildings and warehouses, contiguous for as far as the eye could see, were directly in front of us, and I consulted my brother on which to enter. He chose one that he said he’d never been in before, and it was around that time that I “knew” what the game was about.

We were exploring different varieties of Hells, and each building was a different kind of Hell.

We had to navigate some iron fire escapes that were twisted and inaccessible, and the building first chosen ended up being cut off entirely, as we could not even begin to climb the fire escape. So we ended up in a neighboring building, which was another that had yet to be visited. Inside, we found the building was like a small, suffocating townhouse, with brown plush carpeting and a stairwell directly in front of us as we entered. My family and I entered in a single-file line and we went up the stairs without bothering to look around the first floor.

At the top of the stairs was a hallway, and immediately at the landing of the stairs was an open doorway (with no door) leading to small sitting room or den. We entered this room, and I found my aunt and uncle (the two most conservative members of my family) sitting in a wingback chair and a recliner, respectively. My family and I filed into the room and we all took a seat on an unadorned couch that faced my aunt and uncle, with me sitting leftmost on the couch. Idle conversation was made, but I paid no attention to what was being said, and I don’t know how much time elapsed there on the couch before I started to notice the insects.

As we sat there with my aunt and uncle, a variety of brightly-colored orange and white insects began to crawl into the room from the hallway, as well as out from under the couch and the chairs and tables. There were spiders, scorpions, and centipedes, all lethal and nasty-looking, and they slowly began to pile up in the center of the room. They stopped moving once they got to the center, and it was as though somehow my family and I were “playing the game” and succeeding, since the insects seemed to pose none of us any real danger. This continued for a while, the pile of motionless orange insects growing ever larger, until I noticed a lull in the invasion. As the last spider stopped moving, I looked around, wondering why they had stopped.

It was then that I noticed a single orange insect, about the size of a marble, emerging from the right side of the couch, starting to leap along the edge of the room. In my mind, I knew this was some kind of wicked flea. It leapt from the arm of the couch down to the ground, then back up to my uncle’s armrest, and in my mind, I somehow knew that this was a different kind of bug, and I didn’t know whether we could stop it, or if we even knew how to stop it. I was astonished to see my cat (!) appear and leap up into my uncle’s lap, apparently chasing the orange flea and trying to dispatch it. Unfortunately, Jake was unable to capture the flea, and it continued along its inevitable route, leaping from my uncle to an end table, then on to my aunt.

I watched in horror as the flea continued to leap counterclockwise around the room, approaching me, and I was unable to do anything about it. After the flea leapt onto the couch, I then felt it leap into my left ear, where I felt it get lodged. At this, I started screaming at the top of my lungs. I knew that this was a kind of Hell, so I knew that whatever was about to happen was not going to be pleasant. I continued to scream as I jumped up from the couch and ran out of the room. I found myself unable to descend the staircase; I was effectively trapped on the second floor. It was at that point that I resolved that I was not going to wait around to see what was going to happen to me. Still screaming at the top of my lungs, and still feeling the flea caught in my left ear, I frantically searched the second floor until I found a place with enough overhead clearance for me to clear the handrail. I then climbed up and over it and leapt, breaking my neck when I landed.

I laid on the floor, looking sideways toward the door through which we’d entered, and then I died.

That’s when I woke up.

Meat Zombies, Crossbows, Et. Al.

This image is allegedly of a Beijing fashion show, but this is so goddamned looney I’d be more inclined to believe that this meaty travesty took place in Japan. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “loincloth.”

“Hey guy, I like the cut of your meat.”

The whole reason I came across this picture in the first place is because I was looking for a picture for the phrase “meatface.” That’s the name that I’ve given to the stripped-down zombie that appeared in last night’s dream.

In my dream, Meatface the zombie was equipped with a crossbow with explosive bolts, and he knew how to use it/them. I think the giant talking holographic face that played the strobe-lit movie was probably being operated by Meatface the zombie all along, and I totally should have seen that giant, futuristic battering ram coming as it swung toward the box seats in the coliseum, crushing/incinerating us all so we all looked like Meatface the zombie. The coliseum was all a sham; it explains why only the box seats had anyone sitting in them, and the dull people standing around outside the central arena in “zombie costumes” were actually previous victims of this operation. Maybe Meatface was behind it all, maybe he was just a patsy, but the poorly rendered holographic illusion showed us the “frightening” show, and he was the one who summoned Meatface into the arena to fire his crossbow at the crushing device and cause something to ignite up there in the rafters, sending the thing careening into the box seats.

Yes, I could have explained that more eloquently (or even sequentially), but dreams have no sense of time nor any notion of order. Plus I’m still hung up on the meaty wardrobe up there.

I want to say “beef curtains” but probably shouldn’t.