Duck Soup (A Dream)

Duck soup. I didn't know how to make it. I had no idea!

"Go, Kevin! Make it!" they yelled at me. I was holding an aluminum foil bag, packaged in the shape of a ramen packet. Inside, presumably, was duck soup. I cut open the the top of it, and saw the yellow-orange pre-cooked broth. It was disgusting.

"I don't know how to make it," I whined to their glee. The more whiny I sounded, the funnier it seemed to them. "I don't know how!"

I could feel something forming in the bag, but it felt like it was supposed to be there.

"Someone get it away from me!" I whined. They continued to laugh. I began to feel the thing inside the bag hardening into a shape. It was the skeleton of a duck.

"I can feel the bones!" I whined. They laughed. The duck began to move inside the bag, sloshing around inside the uncooked, pre-made soup. I set it down in a cabinet. They laughed.

I was the duck, I thought, and I was forming, and I am different parts, but they're all jelly-like and separated, and I'm forming now, and I am almost solid now, the jelly parts coalescing together, and I need to get out of this water, and...and... I'm Kevin Arnold, a character from the hit sitcom The Wonder Years, and I was walking along in ocean water, sand beneath my feet. I was walking maybe knee-deep in water at night, but as far as I could see, there was no beach. There was just that area on a beach where you're about knee-deep in water, except there was no deeper end and no shallower end. Waves were coming from...somewhere.

My best friend Paul was with me. We were walking together, and we see Natalie Portman, but she looked really young, like she was our age, about 12. No girl should be walking alone, this young, without someone to walk with her. Her hair was so beautiful, too. It almost didn't look solid so near to the water. It looked gelatinous. If I touched it...no. It wasn't my hair to touch.

"Are you lost?" I ask her. "I'm Kevin. This is my friend Paul."
"I'm Natalie," she replied timidly.
"Come with us. We know where we're going," I said. We did? Where were we going? Why am I Kevin Arnold?

We could have taken advantage of her in her fragile state. She really was quite beautiful, and honestly, no one is around. We could have, but we aren't men like that. Still, she seemed oddly inviting to men in her vulnerability. We walked along the beach that wasn't a beach for a few miles, three 12-year-olds, one almost angelically beautiful and vulnerable, like she had fallen from heaven and was left to the whimsy of Man. Except as far as I know, things didn't look like the land of Man.

We were in a restaurant, the three of us, and Natalie was crying and falling in the arms of every man around. She must have kissed many of them, but promised nothing more. She didn't seem like a 12-year-old, I thought, but then again, neither did I. Maybe she was 18, I thought.

I pried her away from a middle-aged man.

"I'm so sorry," she said, and I knew it wasn't her fault. She was just too beautiful. It's okay, though. I was there to protect her from being temptation for men. We left.

I called my dad to pick me up when we were on the beach that wasn't a beach. I sat in the back seat, and she sat in the front. My dad was driving and talking to her.

"So, you're a friend of Kevin's, huh?" he said in his distinct tone. It was flat and inviting at the same time.

"Yeah, Kevin's real nice," she said, smiling back at me. I returned my own proud smile.

"Aren't you a little too young to be walking around?" he asked. Don't embarrass her, dad. Don't make this poor angel uncomfortable.

"Well, aren't you a bit young to be a father?" she countered coyly. My dad chuckled. Was she flirting with him? My dad was an old man. Why would she...

"I guess you're not that young after all," he chuckled. He figured out what took me a few hours to figure out. This Natalie Portman lookalike was definitely not 12, even though at a certain light, she could look like it. She might even be as old as her mid-twenties, I thought. How old am I?

They talked for a few more hours as we drove in the waters of the beach that wasn't a beach, no surf nor tide in sight. We saw a few trees and large rocks, but they served as monuments to me, not necessarily indicative of a natural road. It's okay, I thought, my dad always knows where he's going. She probably told him.

"We're here," he said abruptly.

"Oh, thanks, Jack," she giggled.

"You know, you have a gift," he told her. "You could look as young as 12 and as old as 30 all in one glance."

She just smiled. That hair of hers, like the slimy skin of an eel, so elusive and yet shimmering so beautifully. I just wanted to know if it felt like it looked. But I didn't. I'm a gentleman, I thought.

The three of us walked along the beach that wasn't a beach some more, miles away from where we were.

"He's right over here," she told us.

He? I thought. She must mean her boyfriend or something. Eventually, we see a middle-aged man. His pants were rolled up to his knees to accommodate the water. The three adults talked together, and I followed, not knowing what they were talking about. They seemed to be getting along, I thought. She was much older than I thought she was, this angel I found wandering. It's a good thing I protected her, I thought, but I couldn't help but feel a little betrayed. She was supposed to be my age. My friend. My angel. I could feel the pangs of youthful jealousy sprout in me, but I suppressed them.

"Here," the man said after we walked a few miles. He was much older than I thought at first, his hair graying and frayed. She was old too, and her hair was so beautiful and long. I honestly couldn't tell where her hair ended and the water began.

"Just lay down," he instructed my father and me. We complied. These people were nice. We laid down in the water.

My body felt...distant from itself. Slowly, I could feel parts of my body separating, becoming more dissolved in the water and more gelatinous. What was happening? Let me stand! I thought. I tried to get up, but my body wasn't under the same control anymore. Let me stand! I shrieked in my head. I was in full panic. Where was my father? I thought. He would know what to do.

I somehow managed to turn my head. What was once my father's body was now separated gelatinous blobs suspended in the water. Natalie looked at me and laughed. The old man laughed. Natalie began drinking my father. NO! NOOO! STOP IT! I screamed, but I could do nothing. I watched as she drank him, and she became him. Her body was replaced by his and shifted back to hers.

And I could feel my vision shake, as the old man drank me.

"This is delicious," he said. "You make a good duck soup, Kevin."

They laughed.

Dreamlog

I think I'm going to start posting my dreams on my Tumblr. It'll be an exercise in the bizarre and uncomfortable, and I think it'll be extremely interesting.

I was in the library at Pacific, but as is the case in some dreams, it wasn't set up exactly as the setting in "real life." In fact, this library seemed to double as a dormitory of sorts. There were bathrooms with a few sinks where some of the study rooms would be on the second floor. Down the hall, if you're walking with those study rooms on your right hand side toward Dave Brubeck, are tables. Except in my dream, these tables also had computers and were formed in an L.

I was just "getting settled," meaning I had scoped out a place and put my stuff there and started walking around, chit-chatting and making small talk to my studious companions. But very noticeably, I was getting no studying done. The majority of the time, I was just kinda exploring this dreambrary. I felt a lot of emotions, too. I encountered people I didn't know, as you do sometimes at the library, and as a mimicry of reality, I ignored some of them and talked to some of them. It was surreal and realistic simultaneously.

In my dream, Craig was about to get some Taco Bell, a common late-night run when people are studying all night at the library. It was well after midnight. Then, as I was sitting with all the AXΣ people, a bunch of KΨ kids were being loud, just beyond the bookcase. We all turned our heads and got annoyed.

Now, this is a common phenomenon at the library in real life, too. When a group talks and all of a sudden the all get mad that another group is talking. It is extremely hypocritical, and altogether hilarious in my opinion.

But these Kappa Psi kids were being disproportionately loud. This wasn't some amusement park. Obviously, I was in my sweats and turned around to mug them. They couldn't quite see us because they were over yonder bookcase, but a few of them walked out to the side and saw all of us looking at them. Naturally, we outnumbered them and they were silenced by our intimidation factor (yeah, right).

Then later on, someone came over and got mad at me for some reason I can't remember. I don't even know what I was doing with the group of AXΣ people. Again, my spot was elsewhere, and I was just loitering (another uncanny resemblance to reality). This guy grabbed my collar and I exclaimed angrily, "Get your fucking hands off me!" making sure everyone heard. He see that I have drawn attention and lets go.

At this point, I think I am half-awake, because as he lets me go, I walk away, only to turn around and get him in a headlock and smash his face on the desk. Then I orchestrate a fight. I know I wasn't fully asleep because I kept changing the scenario in my head. In one case, I grab him by the ears and drag him to a security officer. Then I tell my sleeping self that there's a lot of anger and that I need to calm down, so I do. That's when I wake up.

The first thing I noticed was my empty wall. Then when I turned to see the other side, I looked at my frogs, Kermit and Miss Piggy. I noticed something was floating in the tank, though. I wasn't scared, because if it was a frog, it would definitely have been bigger.

I walked over to see what it was, and to my dismay it was a bubble that didn't pop. I wondered why the bubble hadn't popped yet. Then I looked at my frogs. One of them looked really pale, and so I thought to myself, "You must not be getting enough sunlight." Then I thought, "How come the other one isn't pale?"

My heart sank.

I opened the lid, tapping the sides, knowing that it usually scares them into movement. It's how I let them know I'm about to feed them every 3 days or so. One of them flits off haphazardly, but not quite as quickly as he usually does. the other one just stays still.

"Hey!" I called out, hoping vainly that my voice would waken him. "Hey!" I called out again. I felt stupid, yelling at a dead frog. The bubbles were still unpopped.

I changed the water in the tank and flushed Kermit down the toilet. Miss Piggy seemed a little sluggish but wouldn't eat. I want to think it was sadness, but more likely, it's probably because those same conditions that made it impossible for Kermit to survive are making it difficult for Miss Piggy to survive.

I changed the water and put the lid back on.

Dreams, I Guess

The other night I had a dream that some good friends of mine and I were hanging out. All of a sudden a friend of mine said to me, "I bet you can't carry me on your back." Of course, knowing that I can carry someone who weighs about 250 pounds pretty easily on my back, I took the challenge.

However, much to my dismay, I found that this friend of mine was too heavy for me. He was on my back, and as I tried to walk forward, I found that he was too heavy. He kept telling me, "It's okay, dude. It's not a big deal," but the more he said it, the more determined I was simply to take a few steps, just to prove that I could walk with this weight on my back.

It wasn't a big deal, I guess. It just means I couldn't walk around with something that heavy on me.

However, when I remembered the dream yesterday as I was on the toilet, I thought to myself. Is it possible that there was a deeper meaning to that dream? Maybe this whole dentistry thing is a little bit too much for me. Maybe I won't make it after all. Maybe I'm in over my head with all these ambitions.

Then I reasoned that regardless of whether I make it or not, I will still try. I'm not going to let a dream phase me when so many other things haven't.

It does make me a bit nervous, though.

Here's a video of a song I used to like, by Kirsten Dunst.

Strange Things Are A-Happenin'

I think this may be the strangest dream I've ever had. I left out some stuff because it was a bit too personal. Honestly, most of you won't ever understand why it's as harrowing as it is, but feel free to read along if you wish.

While sleeping, I remember waking up and going to school. In my head, I knew I had already graduated from high school, but for some reason I was walking into St. Justin's, a parochial K-8 grammar school in which I was enrolled from third grade until graduating after eighth. We were in my first classroom there, but the desks were arranged like my high school, in rows facing the the wall with the door. It was a bit eerie returning to this place, but it was a dream, so I don't really remember questioning my discomfort.

As I'm sitting in class, I see people around my age. I guess in this dream I was of high school age again. Guys and girls began to sit down. A teacher came in, dressed formally but still looking young. He looked like he was Latino and had a goatee of some sort. He looked like a confident teacher, and he knew I didn't belong.

As it turns out, even though I was at St. Justin's, the school was Archbishop Mitty. I was confused because I knew the architecture of the school to be of my alma mater, but the students were all high school students that went to Mitty. I don't know how I knew this, seeing that I don't know many Mitty kids, but I knew. I also recognized one of my old classmates from St. Justin's who also went to Mitty there, and she was old, thereby confirming that these students were, in fact, from Mitty.

The teacher started going over something. I have no idea what class it was, but he'd periodically ask questions. I knew I was new to the class, but the rest of the class wasn't. Apparently it was my first day at Mitty, and it was already midway through the year for the other students.

The teacher went over a worksheet, which I didn't bother to follow because I knew I only had to get through one class and the day would be over. I don't know how I knew this, but I knew that the whole day was only this class. After, I would be done and I could wake up and return to normal life.

But he made me go over the worksheet anyways to turn it in at the end of class. There was some math involved, but it definitely wasn't a math class. I distinctly remember answering a question.

"So here," the teacher said, writing something on the board as the other students took notes, "This letter represents something for the calculation. I don't know if you guys would know this, but...anyone?" He stopped and looked around, searching for an answer within one of our minds.

I ventured a guess, since I was bored.

"Is it growth hormone?" I asked.

"Yes!" he smiled, then writing it on the board. He turned around. "How did you know that?"

I shrugged. I think my ability to answer the question made it seem like I was following the lecture and also very intelligent, or at least quick. It made him expect me to be able to fill out the worksheet. I didn't, obviously. At this point, I knew it was a dream, so I didn't bother filling out the worksheet before turning it in.

But I turned it in anyways, and I stayed back. He started grading them right away and saw mine. He looked at me and just shook his head. I'm thinking to myself, Why do I feel guilty? This is a dream!

He then proceeds to look at me and say, "I know it's your first day here, but your work ethic isn't enough to help you here. That's not how we do things at Mitty."

And I tell him, "It's ok. I only planned on being here for one day only."

He just looks at me with a knowing smile, as if he's thinking, Sure thing, kid. Whatever you say.

I ignore this and leave, still knowing it was a dream. I wake up and check the clock. It's 7AM. I just think to myself, that was so weird.

So I go back to sleep.

And I'm back at "Mitty."

I walk into the class, and this teachers just looks at me and says, "Welcome back."

The rest is even stranger. His name was Hay Gale, or Mr. Gale. Suffice it to say that I met with my old priest and Father Joe was not happy with the way things were going. Also, I woke up at 9 and went back to sleep and came for a third day.

It was terrifying.