Decisions and Changes

Hello All,

Here is a picture of Angie this morning, and a picture of me standing in front of my desk. The highest picture in the photograph is a picture I drew of the Julian and the Hurricane dream. Last night I had one of those dreams that presents itself in an annoying patchwork, but I'll try to make sense of it here.

The dream began with me in school. A war raged in the continental USA, so it was mandatory for everyone to be trained in the military. I was the teacher's pet in this program and expected to participate in a street battle in a part of the city not secured from the invaders.

I had ethical problems, both with killing people, and with risking my own life, which my parents, the school, and I had spent so many resources and time into teaching and training as an educated member of society. However, my commander (or whatever he'd be called in the military) was so proud of me I had planned to go ahead with the battle and not disappoint him.

Some of my class mates began to also question my decision to go on with participating in active battle. I had considered revealing my status as a sexual minority to have myself kicked-out of the military, but that seemed a very cheap and dishonorable way to go. A friend of mine laid-out an easy plan to go AWOL, and I decided that would be a better way to skip-out of military service because I wouldn't be using my minority status as a wild card to get out of a sticky situation.

It seemed in the dream I had already graduated, and this battle was just a graduating step as far as the military school went, so I just left the campus, and that was that. I thought of the surprise that'd swarm around my military associates and teacher. Now finished with school, and having made my decision to not participate in battle, I returned to my hometown.

My hometown had changed significantly. All the old buildings were there, but so many new buildings had been built, that in some places I had to concentrate to see the old neighborhood underneath. I decided to stay at a small motel operation on the second floor of some offices, and only had about two rooms. The offices seemed to be a place my parents would take me when I was little (such as a dentist office), so they remembered me after spending some time scrutinizing my face. I stayed in one of the rooms and visited my parents. I noticed how the suburbs began to have an urban feel, like row-houses in Baltimore.

I went back to where ever I lived by myself for a short awhile, and then came back to my hometown to visit my parents again. I went to the small motel above the offices again. The people recognized me, and let me walk around unsupervised, but I still felt put off by how quickly the people became unfamiliar with me again. I decided not to stay there. I felt it would be better to just make it a day trip.

I left the motel, and walked down the street, as the turn to my old neighborhood was only a few blocks away. The once quiet (and miserably dull) streets had become full of busy people. I noticed people I knew and talked to, only as long ago as a few years, but they already seemed to have completely forgotten about me. I just kept walking. The police and firefighters had cordoned off a house, and evidently someone was still on fire from the house fire, and they were trying to put this person out. Even though I saw all sorts of people I knew around me, only a stranger started to talk to me about the incident.

I continued to walk down the street, but it soon began to seem more like downtown than it should. I had missed my turn, evidently some building had been built where the turn once had been. I wanted to take the next turn possible, but the wall of buildings remained unbroken. I entered the inner city gates (kind of like a European city has a walled in "old town"). Finally, I saw a turn on the left, the way I needed to go. When I took that street, it came up to a gated tunnel. When I opened the gate, wind rushed out of the tunnel, blowing me backwards. The tunnel was actually an entrance to the old city, and the rush of air was meant to encourage people entering the area to keep on walking.

I kept on looking for a way to turn around and get to my parents house, and the dream ended somewhere around there. Well, I need to get myself ready to go to Cindy's house.

Thank you for reading,

Marc