An old dream journal entry

Speaking of essays, check out this journal entry from my fall semester class. It's loosely based on a dream that I elaborated on for my and my teacher's entertainment. Enjoy!

The Ugly American (ized) Roommate: Reminiscence of Puddn’head Wilson

My roommates are really good people. I live with three foreign exchange students: a Romanian, a Bulgarian, and a Japanese guy (I know, it sounds like the opener for a joke or something). My roommates often ask if they can use my computer. Since no one has a computer and I trust them very much, I let them all use it. I’ve recently left some money in my drawer and when I checked on it later, it was gone.
Now this was about $200 in birthday money, and it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out what had happened. So I called out all my roommates into the living room and lined ‘em up. I said to them “alright guys, I had some money hidden in my desk and now it’s gone. So here’s what I’m gonna do,” I said in a practiced tone, “you give me the money now and I won’t report you guys to international services.”
Unknowing of my empty threat one of them said “c’mon, we didn’t even know you had any money in your desk” one of them said. I smirked at him suddenly “A-HA, then how did you know it was in the desk, hmm?”
To which he replied “uh…you just told us when you said you had money in your desk and now it’s gone…”
“ENOUGH, FOOL! QUIT STALLING!! Now someone in here is a thief. Who dunnit?!”
And I, playing the role of a British officer during the War of 1812, heavily impressed each one as if he were an American sailor. After no one responded I said “ok then, I’ll give 30 seconds for the guilty person to fess up then I’ll report all of you as culprits of the crime, and you know they’d believe me too….” With this I pulled out my pocket-watch. I don’t really carry one around with me often, so I try to make it a point to show it off whenever I do. Suddenly all three of them fell to their knees as if about to pray to the porcelain goddess… but alas no one spewed. “Alright, at least I know why it was so hard to get an answer before. So ok, cough it up now, all 200 dollars…down to the VERY LAST CENT!” I said accenting the last three words with my fist.
“Uh, we…” a long pause inadvertently ensued.
“Well?” I asked rather impatiently
“We ate it.”
“What the hell?! You ATE it? The money?”
They looked at each other nodding and said “We realized it’s eventually gonna end up there anyway, if we’re good consumers, so why not just eat it?” To this I could find no response. Who’d ever heard of eating money, anyway?
Suddenly the thought of so many people eating dozens of dollar bills rushed into my mind. And not just eating money either but smoking money (for instead of tobacco or any other controlled substance, it was shredded money), pumping cars full of money, and yes putting their money away into money wallets. Money, money, money all around me! I imagined myself eating a salad, heavily doused in olive oil just the way I like it, only to soon look down to find that what I was so dearly enjoying was indeed my money.

With a whimper at the sight I woke up hastily. Still gasping for air, and realizing where I was again, I rushed over to my desk and open the drawer to find my money, still intact!
Oh thank God, another dream! I thought, since it was not the first time that week a dream has gotten the best of me like that. Then I sagged down onto the chair with relief, cracked open my journal and began to write:

My roommates are really good people…

Caiteee's ESSAY of Themes

In the most fundamental pattern, few of my dreams are ever the same. They rarely take place in settings I'm common to in real life, and more often than not happen in made-up places. I think I form these settings in my head based on actual places I have witnessed or experienced. For instance, the hotel I keep bringing up, might be a bastardization of every hotel I've ever been to, super-exaggerated and very fantasized. But there are some areas I dream about that I can't possibly put my finger on where it came from.

It is easy to find symbolism in our dreams upon waking. We can find signifigance in everything, and there are different levels of meaning in any object. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Vultures make frequent appearances when I sleep, but is there some hidden signifigance to that, or do I just think vultures are really cool? What would the obvious symbolism be?

Another consistant element would be traveling. In my dreams, I am always moving around, as a vagrant, whether I am following something, or being chased. I stop in other people's homes, I see other places, but I'm never just at my own home. All the people are familiar, faces I've seen before and recognize or are constructed from features that have a prominent place in my mind. But they never stay the same for long.

I suppose this is the same for everyone, the lack of constancy in dreams. Nothing is ever solid. Everything upon closer examination becomes completely runny and squishy or smokey. The most lasting part of dreams are the emotions attached, like pure terror, or confusion, or bliss. Like when you wake up in the morning, feeling wonderful, even though you can't remember what was so satisfying in your dream.

Oh yeah...one other thing. For an some odd reason, I always have dreams where I am drunk. Or I will have been poisoned, and as the toxin kicks in I get real woozy and then black out. It's never happened to me, so I don't know why I keep dreaming about it.

EDIT: YEAH I know it sounds like an essay! I don't care I was bored.

A recurring one

I frequently have dreams about being stuck at home, as if some force impeded me from opening a door and leaving. Sometimes it's my house, sometimes its a blend of my house and the many different apartments I've lived in throughout my life. Anyway, I try my hardest to get out; sometimes I even resort to attempting to break though a window or glass door, usually to find myself bouncing right back.

When I do break through the glass, though, I often keep going, flying over my old apartment patio or some urban street. When I look down, I see some really weird, cool things happening. For example, this one time I saw this thing (I'm not sure it was human, it was just an entity) trying to hit a ball with a baseball bat over a wall. When it finally does make it over the wall, the ball become a bullet and it takes off to make someone else's life hell.

My dream started with me in the perspective of a student in a class auditorium kinda like at UGA. Suddenly I shifted to this guy who had it out for the teacher because he violated some scared honor we had a long long time ago. I get in the auditorium, we fight and I beat him up, taking his place afterwards. Then a bunch of ninjas jump out of nowhere, and all I can remember is fighting them in waves and working my way up to the ninja boss (prolly influenced by my playing video games all day yesterday). All I can remember is that I didn't get to finish fighting all the ninjas cuz I woke up before I got to the boss ninja, and that kinda pissed me off.

Matt Groening aka Che

Okay, lets see if I can remember this correctly...I mostly remember waking up thinking "OH NO WHAT IS THE SECRET?"


So, far far in the future, I was in an Art History class and the teacher was discussing an upcoming interview assignment. We had to hunt down and artist of our choice and interview them about their job and stuff. So eventually, the artist I chose was Matt Groening, the guy who did the Simpsons and This Life in Hell. Except, he had become a recluse, and an enigmatic figure whose location was shrouded in mystery since the Simpsons stopped airing on FOX. No one had seen him in years and it was rumored that he was part of some FBI international espionage program or dead. This did not phase me.

Ultimately, after loads of searching and stuff I can't remember, I get finally directions to this bar on the skirts of town. It is a seedy looking place, of course. When I talked to the barkeep, he said I had to pronoune the name of the man I was looking for correctly or he would never talk to me. "Grenning" I said. The man grinned and took a seat. He had this nasty looking, long braided ratty beard and he smelled like every bad habit on the planet put together.

I take out a memo pad and lick my pen (no clue why) and start asking him questions. Where were you born, What is your occupation, stuff like that. Then I start viewing all these flashbacks of this mans life (he is not Matt Groening anymore), and they are all black and white and people are wearing trenchcoats and it looks like an old detective film, where the banter is all fast and witty. It is revealed that this man who is a barkeep in disuise, who was Matt Groening in one life, and Che Guevara in another, was countless other people who had nothing to do with each other except that he was them. And I saw (like watching a big screen TV) the beginning of mankind, all fast forwarded and recorded on satellite. There were these big rocky giants that looked kinda like Bob from the Prometheus and Bob show. And then, the man guffawed and said that I could know the Big Secret now. And my alarm went off.

I'm not making it up. That was my dream this morning. I thought about how silly it was all day at work today.

Remembered Dream

I was in art class, in AP with Ms. Gaither. There was going to be a class trip, to a small island in France, because the view there was beautiful and it would take a cruise ship to get there. The class was really enthusiastic, but I was sad because I couldn't go, and because I didn't know anyone. Plus, the classroom was full of kites, and I kept hitting my head on them. When they found out I couldn't pay for the trip, the teachers (Gaither and Aiken) asked me to wait outside in a field for a day or two while they prepared space for me in the basement of the ships. I did that, and the field had a wonderful view of the sea and the ships in the harbor.

The ships were not normal ships. They were giant snails that glided across the water, with decks made of pearl that really glowed in the sunlight, and radiated light at nighttime. It took two 'ships' to carry our class, and when we finally left port, I had to sit in the steamroom for the endurance of the trip, because I could not pay. But I didn't listen, so I started exploring the ships, and walked into some of my classmates' cabins. I ran into this guy from school, who I never paid much attention to but whom I thought was attractive, but he was busy with his girlfriend so I walked away. Immediately, the boats stopped, because I wasn't where I was supposed to be, and they had to take a detour to some neighboring island to discuss the damages and leave me.

At the island, there was this massive hotel, with huge glass walls, gaping gargoyles and great steel entrances. On either side of the entrances were pedestals with little robotic cats. They talked to you when you entered, and could determine if you were a guest in the hotel or not. They had bionic limbs and lots of wires and lights covering their bodies. For some reason, I was really angry, because the hotel was advertising that they were robotic cats, but only I could tell that they were in truth cyborg, and the hotel experimented on these cats since they were babies. I think what upset me more was that they lied about it, and so I screamed and shouted at them to take away the robotic cats, because I knew the manager and he would fire everyone.

Finally, they escorted me into the hotel, took me to the highest floor, and threw me through the glass window. I fell of course. The manager of the hotel happened to be Eric Idle. That's all I remember.