Wednesday, November 24, 2010

WEIRD DREAMS I REMEMBER HAVING WHEN I WAS A WEE CHILD!

I must have been about four or so...maybe even three...when I had this one. It takes place during the middle of the night, perhaps at the time I was dreaming this around four in the morning. There's a gathering of women in our parlor, mostly older women dressed as they did at the time, still kinda Mamie Eisenhowerish, as well as this one woman who looks suspiciously like an older cousin of mine who was then attending college (I remember her teasing me to no end like rubbing my balloons and sticking them on the ceiling so I couldn't get them back!). Only this woman looked more...cro-magnon-esque or something like that, with exaggerated facial features. Anyway, I'm in the room with these older women and perhaps my mother and this prehistoric woman (who otherwise had a typically sixties hairstyle and dress) sat down at the piano and played this very heathen-styled, feral music. Feeling very ominous already, a strange pallor of fear began to overcome me...

Another one I recall had to do with this photo at my grandmother's house hanging on the wall which featured my by-then deceased grandfather and some workers which was taken way back when. For some reason, the photo becomes animated with the skeleton falling out of my grandfather with his flesh just sagging down to the ground. Naturally this was one to have me wake up screaming like anything.

Not quite as weird but odd enough was another dream set at my grandmothers', this one also taking place early in the morning like around five or so. A strange old book is found in her attic which I thumb through in her kitchen, a book with seemingly mystical powers and illustrations that look as if from a bible but perhaps something more ominous.

How about the one where I'm the the back seat of a 1956 Ford that's speeding down some curvy highway and I discover that NOBODY'S DRIVING IT!!! I'm the only person in the car and I'm like six so what could I do other than panic??? I think this was one of those dreams where I woke up and hadda run to the bathroom with a brimming full bladder, something which has become a common occurence as of late.

Of course later on I remember having a dream where I formed a group similar to the late-sixties Mothers of Invention, me supposedly being the leader although the rest of the group (made up of high school classmates) take over and I'm relegated to playing FRENCH HORN in the act, an instrument I don't even know how to play!

I still have weird dreams usually while under the influence of a fever or cold medicine. Many of them are "time-warped", taking place in the here and now but the look, feel and situations are definitely of the past. One recurring theme in dreams that I had, frequently during the past though with less frequency these days, was that I'm back in grade or high school, either at my advanced age (which usually hits me in the middle of the dream, like I'm too old for this!) or once again young only I know everything that's gonna happen and with my more advanced mode of thinking I can handle myself in a way more professional manner. Or else people from the past will pop up into my dreams and feelings I had as a youth but not anymore will infest themselves into my psyche. (I really enjoyed the dream where I was cursing out a particularly irritating teach of mine, though I woke up before I could get expelled!)

Some dreams deal with television, like I turn it on and it's fun like it used to be when I was young with reruns of old shows and cartoons I haven't seen in ages, as well as commercials and graphics that reflect that old time easy goingness that was still intense even if subdued. Sometimes the syntax short circuits a bit, like in the dream where I'm watching an old episode of BONANZA only it's a real old episode from 1956 back when Shemp Howard played the oldest brother on the show! I remember one dream where I was jogging (which I haven't done for ages after finding out it was a sick yuppie way to exercise) and I went past a house where some girls I remember from school were now living and I really liked 'em and wanted to start up some sorta relationship with at least one of 'em but somehow or other wires got crossed and nothing happens leaving me feeling real empty even after waking up. Strangely enough, none of them aged a bit!!!

Another neighborhood dream had the family stopping in at a dive, a sorta bar and grill that's located a small block away from the house with a gravel parking lot and typical plastic table cloth decor. I had a slice of thick crust pizza which was really good too, showing that you can experience a whole lotta sensations in dreamland as well! (Naturally in reality a standard house sits where this bar and grill would have been!) Neighborhood dreams are common, like the area looks different or the house does or even stranger still is that a block or so away is a huge steel, or a railroad track with a small general store nearby.

Speaking of railroad tracks, another recurring dream has me driving around the area coming across railroad tracks with trains approaching, me beating the train only to find another track with another train coming on and on and on...

One of the more grotesque dreams of the past few years had me going to an old cemetary where some people, mimicking the actions of Spanish Communists during the civil war of the late-thirties, dug up the corpses though didn't affix them in sexual positions as was done in real life. It was rather disturbing seeing half-decayed bodies spread around like that. Come to think of it, for some reason there was large bound volumes of old newspapers like the kind you could thumb through at the very newspaper office for years scattered. Needless to say the dream was rather jarring.

But as far as really strange ones go none can top the one I had Monday night. In the dream, I was reminiscing about the time I saw VON LMO as the musical guest on an early 1979 episode of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE! I guess he and band were promoting the FUTURE LANGUAGE album which didn't come out until '81, but it was the LP version of the group decked out in spacesuits that was performing. I remember Lmo doing "Ultra Violet Light" pretty much like the album version and him introducing the group afterwards. The response was rather muted, as if the audience was stunned by the entire affair.

And on that note...HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY!!!

5 comments:

Shep said...

I have currently dreamed of Handsome Dick and Andy Shernoff doing a wild talk show in the 70's (Ron Asheton was a guest), An Iggy and the Stooges cartoon where Iggy is a zany Tex Avery kind of character, and I'm walking in a ravine and I come across a cardboard box of cool fanzines and comics which don't exist (but I sure wish they did).

Serena WmS. Burroughs said...

Wow, I would really like to see those "Bonanza" episodes that feature Shemp, as I am a real Shemp partisan. Happily, I just got back from the library with a Three Stooges DVD collection that includes a slew of Shemp, as opposed to a token one or two on the single DVD collections. It includes "Brideless Groom," which I recently told a friend was based on Marcel Duchamp's "Large Glass." To go along with the Three Stooges, I also got out "Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed." "Sing a Song of Six Pants," where they play cleaners, is on now. I wonder if you can really make pancakes on a steam press?

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The two inventions that I really wanted when I was a kid were a machine that could record TV shows (because it always seemed like something good was on when I had to go to sleep) and a machine that could record dreams. Thankfully, technology did catch up to my first wish, but, alas, no luck on the second. A while back, I was maybe going to have a sleep study done, and the paperwork specified that the doctors could not read my mind, see my dreams, or record them. Cue Kevin Ayers's "Why Are We Sleeping"...

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Von Lmo on SNL: if only!

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Did you see the bugmelater post about "The Gift"? Also, check out the new blog tonguing2010, for the band Tonguing...

Have a good Thanksgiving. Maybe there will be a Nancy float.

Christopher Stigliano said...

A Nancy float...I'm still mad about the deflating of the Bullwinkle one a good twennysome years back!

Anonymous said...

Happy Thanksgiving Chris! Hope you didn't have too much indigestion! Best, Phil(thyRex)

Christopher Stigliano said...

The only thing that gives me indigestion these days are Dave Lang's and Jay Hinman's blogs. Otherwise I have no need for the bismuth given my comparatively stringent diet.