Friday, March 22, 2013

Fragments of a strange dystopian dream

Dream I'm part of some fascist future state. I'm a young man, heir to great wealth, being groomed for some important position. I'm invited to a palace with a group of other students whose future is deemed important, just as violence breaks out - a faction of fellow students are rising up against the authorities. Ernest Borgnine, in a cameo, plays an official who interrupts the ceremony we're in to offer us a peek at these revolutionaries, encouraging those who want to go along with him to crouch down and follow... I go in a different direction, and see executions, violence, student revolutionaries shooting at people from my group as they skirmish in the bushes...

I return to my own residence, where, as part of a ceremony involving passage into adulthood (or something like that), I have to choose five white ceramic sculptures from a large set to represent me, which will be displayed in my home. The choice of sculptures is a custom of my society; whether it began as such I don't know, but it is actually now part of a government control system, and people who choose the wrong sculptures are re-educated or executed - we've just been learning about the past choices of historical figures and the consequences of wrong choices in the present day. There is pressure on me to choose conservatively - a helpful adviser who knows my sympathy for the rebels encourages me to pick symbols that will allow me to continue to have influence in the society, to pick "the right" symbols; but after hearing of some government massacre of the rebels, or such, I break down, reject the pressures to conform, and pick HONESTLY, five statuettes which will go on display and speak my personality to people.

I forget now what four of them are - though one represented writing, I recall. All I remember is that there were some that I knew were going to get me in trouble, especially the one that I do remember - a figure of a (flaccid) cock and balls.

In the dream, I recall explaining to someone that I'm not gay, that the cock was a symbol of potency, fertility, the creative spirit, and also to some extent symbolized my own cock, and its role in driving my life. I knew it was one of the symbols I was not supposed to pick, but in the end I could not help myself, had to choose from the heart...

My helpful adviser says he will honour my choices but is going to try to find a way not to publicly display the cock and balls, because it's going to get me in trouble; but almost as soon as he starts to place them about the house, trying to come up with an excuse for keeping one secret, a treacherous advisor - actually a government spy placed in the household - starts to demand he show him everything I chose. He tries to protect me, and I can hear them arguing, shouting at each other from different parts of the house. I come into a room from a place where I was told to stay, and start to shout myself that I will not conform or such, that it is my duty to myself to pick the symbols meaningful to me; my helpful adviser urges me to be quiet and go back to the previous room - but it's too late, I've given away my position, and the treacherous adviser explodes through the door, possibly firing guns: "I've got you now!" I wake on the violence of his action.

Somewhere in there, before I chose my symbols, there was another detail from the dream: I had bedbug bites on the heels of both feet, which I got from my overnight stay at the palace, and a kind nurse (?) put medication on them. Or something like that. That detail is more than a little foggy, but I remember the bites, because they itched. It is the first time I can recall feeling itchy in a dream.

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