I have wild and bizarre dreams often, but I very rarely have vivid dreams. Unlike most of my bizarre adventures, vivid dreams get stuck with me. Be it a conversation with my mother, with my ex, with my “other” self, or with my partner, etc., they linger. These dreams are often conversations, played out in the setting of an arts house movie with surreal, hazy lighting and pretentious dialogue. I ponder their meanings. I wonder what my underlying subconscious brain is telling me. Here’s the one I had last night.
(Dark stage. Dim hazy overall light)
Me to my partner: “Are you going to do the things that you told me you’d do last week?”
Him: “No”
Me: “Will you?”
Him: “When is the absolute deadline for it?”
Me: “April 15th”
Him: “I’ll do it before April 15th”
Me: “That’s not what you told me you’d do”
Him: “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal”
(Lights out. I am now all alone, standing in a spotlight. Other side of the stage, my brother flickers in the flashing lights of the TV, playing his PS5)
I ponder what it means for him (my brother) if I leave this place*.
*This place, at this point in time, feels like this physical space, but also this mental space. This place feels like the state of the world, the state of my relationships, the state of my being. Of being here.
I started to scream. My body is not moving. But I screamed. This rage-filled, anxiety-ridden, desperate scream to the void. I screamed and I screamed.
(Spotlight behind me. I wasn’t looking. A voice came on. My partner’s)
Him: “I had no idea it bothers you this much. Why does it bother you?”
I continued to scream.
I woke up. Not from screaming. I woke up in this weird, surreal way. It was calm and quiet. And I lay there and I could not fall back asleep. And I started to think about the world, and the things that bother me, and what that weird imagery means.
“Why does this bother you?” “Why is this such a big deal?” I asked myself.
In all fairness, and this is important, I have explained this to my partner and to people many times before. It’s not about the act or the deadline itself. It’s about trust. I don’t trust people often. I don’t often ask for help. But when I do and when a commitment is made, I hope, no, I expect, that it will be honored and it will get done. I get paid pretty well for being a Project Manager. I don’t get paid for all this emotional labor for management people and things in my life. So I know why the conversation in the dream bothered me.
But why is this such a big deal now? Maybe in the constant anxiety state of the world (you know, the rise fascism in the US and the threat of sovereignty in Canada), my anxiety made these weird leaps about “If I cannot rely on this person to do a simple thing they said they’d do right now, can I rely on them during a nuclear apocalypse?” I grew up listening to my mother’s story about the Vietnam War, when a day delay or a night delay, or even a few minutes delay, meant you were stuck behind, without your property, thrown into jail, etc. Can I really trust someone who can’t log on to a website and do a few clicks?
And then there’s the imagery about my brother, and this is important.
I wanted to leave. I could have worked harder to leave in December. Maybe I could have worked harder for that opportunity in Vietnam. But I hesitated. “Who is gonna care for my brother?” “How is Mochi going to adapt to the Vietnamese heat and the long flight?” “How is Dan gonna adapt to the Vietnamese environment?” I could have worked harder to leave *this place.
And maybe this is why in the dream, I screamed. I screamed because that’s what I really wanted to do. But I can never do it in the real world (because I will look like a lunatic). The spotlight is important. Because it means I will be seen, and I will be heard. Which I feel like I don’t.
So what now?
I don’t know. I tried to meditate and sit with this feeling in the morning.
My real partner: “This version of me in your dream is not real. He doesn’t exist.”
I know that. But a version of that person exists. And the version of me screaming into the void exists.
Just like how I am typing this into the void of the internet now.
Pace Fine Arts 