DREAM

I'm not exactly sure  where this started, but here's the most vivid beginning I can give you:

There's a structure that I and my dream girlfriend (who looks very much like Kate Micucci from Garfunkel and Oates) decide to investigate. It looks like a derelict fountain with a passage down to some hidden room or enclosure that feels very illumanti (and what I mean by that is that it feels secretive, that no one should know about it unless you're deemed worthy). And somehow we've stumbled across this through rudimentary research.

So we have torches or phone lights, something that keeps us mostly out of the dark, and we're walking down a tight, confining spiral stone staircase without being able to see where we're going. I'm leading the way. Eventually, we see something akin to firelight and we know that this exploration isn't in vain. But when we get down toward the end of the first staircase, we're overwhelmed by the open area. It looks like the hanging gardens of Babylon, poorly lit and underground. Overgrown like some forgotten temple. It's massive and dark and we're not really sure were to go from there.

The dream jumps to having explored a lot of the temple cavern and knowing that some people do meet down there for various things, since there's so much room to do whatever. But these people are all part of a secret society of some sort. However, just discovering the place seems to be enough to not raise any suspicion. My dream girlfriend (we'll just call her Kate) and another male friend (let's call in Jeff) join me in going to an underground temple club, which is (ironically) a karaoke club. The room is huge and white, with tables scattered everywhere and a stage in the middle. The KJ is off to the side while a  live drummer sits in the middle of the stage and provides a live-esque appeal to singing. We talk to a few people who seem nice enough, but make me a little uneasy (which could just be the infiltration of an underground club) and we take our seat.

The karaoke begins and presses on into the night, while we never actually sing. We start having a good time and are trying to think of what songs we'd want to do since they literally play anything, but we can't figure out how to put in a song. That's when an older, balding overweight man lays a weird square reed parchment in front of Kate, then another and walks off. Some younger guy lays one in from of Jeff. And we realize that you have to be nominated, in a sense, to sing. So Kate's about to write her song choice down, when I grab the parchment and begin to read it. The front is an elaborate form, including song title, artist, performer and other various personal information, then
on the back is a contract that would bind her into doing live porn on the internet. So I grab the next parchment, it's a similar contract to the first. And the third (Jeff's) is one that sells himself as a slave to the young man for the next 30 years.

Needless to say, I wasn't willing to trade that much for a song. So we sit and wait out the night, not trying to leave looking afraid or suspicious. And at some point, they announce that all newcomers - in a very Fight Club fashion - have to sing if this is their first night. Though, I don't remember singing, there's a gap between viewing the contracts and the room being cleared out. Kate and Jeff were staring at me strangely, and I was really scared. I told them we had to leave immediately, the lights were on in the white karaoke room and they were cleaning up. The patrons had already emptied out and the workers were eyeballing us really hard. While rushing Kate and Jeff out, we caught up with other people walking slowly up a staircase (also renovated and white), the people were talking and laughing. Kate was in front of me, trying to rush up in heels. I tried to get her to pick up the pace, when she'd said something about twisting her ankles, so I lifted her up and carried her with one arm. Effortlessly, I started scaling the steps, which impressed some people we passed, as well as her.

Once we reached the surface again, it was night and slightly rainy. Kate, for some reason, was really into what little chivalry I displayed (I'd thought I was being an asshole) and wanted to go home and spend the night getting intimate. And for some reason, I turned her to Jeff and said I hated them both. When she turned around, I'd disappeared.

The dream continued, as I watched in third person. Eventually, a man that looked like Gus from Breaking Bad approached Kate and Jeff saying that he was looking for me. He wanted to ask me some questions and help me, as he was investigating what we were (though more intently) and thought he could help. Kate grilled him smartly (which is weird to say, but I know what I mean by it) and found that he was just a private investigator with no police or military ties, but he had led her and Jeff to a small house to discuss the reality of the situation. That was this: there were other powers at play in what we were looking into and dabbling with, which had apparently taken hold in me in some sinister way. My friends were reluctant to believe him at first, until his monologued about it a bit more and she his skin to reveal the monster underneath. During his monologue, he made it seem that he was a byproduct of some monstrous experiment. A man that had become something more, but still retained his humanity. However, in my omni-present dream self, I saw that some devil was still pulling his strings and watched as my friends looked on with horror at this creature in front of them, but did not run away.

And that's where the dream ends. It felt very Clive Barker-esque. I should probably develop it into some rad story.

I've been feeling pretty non-productive and defeated for the passed couple of weeks, and I'm not really sure why.

If I had to track it down, I would want to say it was the coding classes that are beginning to not make much sense, but I know that's just me being stubborn and not wanting to ask for help. I'm actually doing fine on absorbing the material and when I work in the medium, I get a good 70% in the thick of it before hitting a roadblock.

And to be honest, the funk started before that.

I've just wanted to absorb and do nothing. And I've not been in much of a mood to create anything. Maybe that's just the turn of the coin in who I am.

Today's been fine, I think I slept too much and I'm just feeling weird.

Tomorrow. It will be better because it'll be a brand new day.

"Would you find living in a nuclear apocalypse exiciting?"

I'd be hard pressed to say no.

And this isn't because Mad Max has once again become a topical name for the household, though he had a hand in my growing up.

There's been something romantic about a nuclear ravaged world that's been in the back of society's minds for a while. Especially noted with the Chernobyl meltdown. People find the aspect about it fascinating, or at least those of us with something a little askew in the well balanced and normal part of the brain.

I think of movies like a "A Boy and His Dog" or the Mad Max franchise, even the Fallout video games and always think - man, wouldn't that be rad. When in all actuality, I know it most certainly would not be. There'd be radiation poisoning. Shortage of food and water. Constant fighting and struggle for survival. Literally, it would be the least fun of anything, ever.

But for some reason, that world is tucked in the back of my head like a dream that I'll wait for to come true. It doesn't make a god damn bit of sense, but I think that's usually the case with things that we really love. We just like them. No real reason.

If I had to break it down, though, and make the ending of that last little thought hypocritical, I'd probably say that it's less about the death of everything and more about starting over. Fresh. Being able to become something you're not. To me, that means I'd have the possibility to become someone better than the person I am now. In a world with societal standards have broken down and people eat people in the radioactive sand dunes of the world, I'd like to think that I'd be a good person - and in that world, it would mean that much more than it does now.

Then again, knowing me, I'd either be the first to die or quickly turn on anyone around me for a quick sip of cold aqua. It's just the idea of not knowing. Especially when you look at the movies and the stories and everything we've fictionalized into these worlds. There's always a clear cut good vs. evil. Something that my generation has sorely missed, purpose. And interesting mutated characters, among those are the ghouls and super mutants from Fallout, or any rad Mad Maxian villain. The worlds get diversity. They have a hero. They have nostalgic easter eggs. But I'm off topic, creaming my jeans thinking about how tragically beautiful the dystopian future could be. Plus, leather armor and a V8 Interceptor wouldn't hurt.

I really want to go more into this, but my brain is getting mushy with infatuant thoughts about the wastes. I'll have to revisit this train another time.