So, I've been having another series of dreams that appears to be trying to tell me something. I have these types of dreams, which can most easily be describe as lucid dreams, but actually seem to be something more than that, for the past thirteen years. The first series of dreams was what led me to Florida and the whole Tina deal and all that three queens business I'm often on about. The latest is in the same vein but seems extremely focused on getting a specific point across, or maybe that isn't what it is doing. Sometimes it is hard to tell.
The dream sequence usually starts with a party. I'm in a large mass of people in some kind of big house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Everyone is very well dressed and mingling in a very superficial way. This all suddenly ends and I find myself standing in a shell of a building. It appears to be an abandoned warehouse or burned out apartment building, depending on what angle I'm looking at it from. The room I am in has that smell like it was fairly recently set on fire. I am standing in the center of this room and someone enters through a doorway just ahead of me. When she approaches I see that she is Sandra Bullock, and I have no doubt that is who this is. She is holding something. She looks around, as if making sure there is no one else about, and then hands me the item. It is a very greasy motor of some kind, about the size of a toaster oven, and when I accept it from her I have this urgent desire to put it down and clean my hands. I'm generally more interested in washing my hands than I am in the motor itself, which mostly seems to annoy me.
I don't put the motor down, however, as there is nowhere to put it. The room has no tables or counters or any furniture at all. The floor is rather nasty, seems to be covered with ashes, trash and other things I'd rather not contemplate. I look at Sandra Bullock, who has this expression on her face that reads, "Yeah, okay, I got you the motor. Are you going to say something?" I don't say anything, I look all around me, mostly seeking somewhere to put the motor down so I can wash my hands. I see a young boy in the corner, trying to sleep with a dirty painter's drop cloth of some kind he is using as a blanket.
So, most nights the dream sequence just plays out the same, but the last couple of nights I've tried to manipulate the sequence. My actions in the dream are fairly predictable, and seem to mostly be the result of inaction rather than action. At no point do I actually move from my position, whether at the party or in the burned out building, I stand still. Things happen around me and I don't really do all that much.
The first thing I attempted to do was to refuse the motor. Well, Sandra Bullock didn't like that very much and got pretty pissed off. It was apparent from her reaction that she went through a great deal of trouble to get this motor for me.
The burned out building is a familiar setting in my dreams, one of three venues that general host the dreams I have of this kind. The others are a cabin in the woods and Rancho Nuevo. The burned out building tends to frame a landscape of war, chaos and destruction, what is generally known to me as "The War of the Zealots," a total war in which everyone has banded together or turned on each other and are fighting by any means possible so that their band survives while all other bands are destroyed. So, given that this dream happens in this setting, there are other considerations for the special delivery of this motor.
My role in this war tends to be one where I am seeking resolution of the conflict, and I am usually older than I am now, with a full head of gray hair. In previous sequences in the setting people have come to me seeking advice or help, and I am generally holed up in this same building, usually in this same room. Sandra Bullock is not asking for my advice or help, she is bringing me this motor and does not appear to need anything from me in return. The motor is somehow important to some element of the cause of stopping the ongoing chaos, but the dream sequence does nothing to explain how. There is nothing around that the motor could be used to power. Other than trash, there is only the young boy and myself in the room, so last night after I accepted the motor from Sandra Bullock I walked over to the boy and showed it to him. He opened his eyes, looked at it and smiled. Then he rolled over and pulled the drop cloth over his head. He knows about the motor but isn't directly involved in its use or purpose, but both the boy and Sandra Bullock seem to feel I should have no questions regarding the motor, that I have been waiting for it, that I need it, and that this is an important thing.
The problem is, I have no idea what the motor is for and no one is telling me because they believe that I do know and that the idea of me not knowing what it is or what it is for is simply absurd.
Which leaves me at the most basic explanation. I am being given a motor. The purpose of a motor is to power something, enable it to function, more or less. There is something that has not been functioning because it is lacking a working motor. Whatever that is, I have now been given the means to restore functionality to it. Maybe it isn't important to see that something in the dream, maybe the motor is merely symbolic of being something I needed to make something work.
Of course, I still have no idea why Sandra Bullock is the one giving me the motor. Or why she's always wearing pants.
At the beginning of the movie, they know they have to find each other.
But they ride off in opposite directions.
Sharkey says:
"I turn around, it's fear.
I turn around again, and it's love.
Nobody knows me.
Nobody knows my name."
--Laurie Anderson
Sharkey's Day
"You realize you're in a situation you can't control, don't you?"
"You suppose I'm trying to control it."
"You are trying to think of this in rational terms. The idea that everything is just fine because Christine said you have no obligation to each other until you move and because Victoria knows you are leaving her in October might look good on paper, but it isn't going to work that way. All you are going to do is end up hurting both of them."
"Yeah, but there is no way out, and the truth of the situation is that I have something else I need to do when I get to Florida and the last thing I need is to have a girlfriend when I'm trying to figure this out."
"So, you expect to lose both of them."
"In the sense you mean, yes, but in the sense I mean, I won't lose either of them. I just haven't quite figured out what I mean quite yet."
"Two women in two different places and you in the middle trying to balance the equation. I suppose I could envy you and pity you at the same time."
"They're both Scorpios and so am I. Does that help?"
There are reminders of a time long ago, a good ten years ago when things were somewhat different in my life. It was then that I was far more daring in everything that I did. It was then that I never needed an exit strategy from any situation I entered into, no matter how dangerous it seemed to the casual onlooker.
A motor. A way to power something. I haven't had my "powers" truly engaged for some time. Sandra Bullock seems to be obsessed with telling me that I am being given back the motor I lost along the way. The motor she is giving me is obviously not new. It is greasy and leaking oil like a son of a bitch. I can tell just by looking at it, this motor has been through a lot but it is still capable of functioning. Maybe this dream is a lot like being handed your bleeding heart and being told it is okay to put it back in your chest.
Guarded. Everything has been very securely guarded these days. I've been very careful. And who wouldn't after being dragged 1,500 miles away from the place you call home under false pretenses, used and abused and tossed aside like an old newspaper wrapped around a fish? I'm being told something in this dream. I'm being told I am being given back that which was lost, the motor is a symbol of this, and yet I am all too cautiously dancing around the edges and not throwing myself into the work that is my calling.
A noder I haven't spoken to in quite some time showed up yesterday and thanked me for something. And then she reminded me that although she rarely makes an appearance here these days it is very important that I continue to preach Give everything you can to everyone you know. And I thought on this for some time and realized, yes, it is true. I've been on cruise control, holding back and not reclaiming the person that I was before I left Florida two and a half years ago. I survived. I faced the most destructive force I will ever face in my life, a person I deeply loved who sought to destroy me, ever so slowly, through a growing pattern of emotional abuse. That is behind me now. I survived and I came full circle. I am back where I belong.
And I'm being given back the motor I lost. And yet, I still have no idea why it is Sandra Bullock who is giving it to me, but hell, I guess it wouldn't matter who was giving it to me. I'd still ask the same pointless question.