Field Of Dreams

On an aside note from the art and current dreams, I wanted, also, to type down two other strange dreams that I recently remembered from all of this "I'm gonna write my dreams down!" bullshit. The two of them contain a sort of common aspect that I'll write about later in the second dream description (SPOILER: The title denotes that aspect!!)

The first dream is responsible for my current fear of Bob Kane's nasty little superhero creation, the Batman. Not to insinuate that every time I see the bat symbol I lose it, but after you experience a dream where this borderline (totally) insane rich creep who dons a big black leather suit, imitating a bat and swinging around the city taking on criminals because of some deep-seated issue involving the death of his parents, you learn to view the character in a different light (or, with Batman, a lack thereof). How else to explain this emotion? The Bat has, for better or worse, invaded my life, ever since I've known Jeff and moved in, most of where I look involves Batman (who is in the form of a Bear, a stuffed doll, a large 3-foot tall plastic doll, all those goddamn movies, a shirt, a comic book, and that enormous poster where he looms over you while you sit on the desktop computer). I could theorize that Batman is my mind's way of telling me that cutting myself off from my parents entirely could be a bad thing, although that seems forced and pretty much retarded. Batman has just invaded my life, that's all. Believe me, he's shown up at some pretty strange times to remind he still exists.

The dream started out as I am landing a small, sleek gyrocopter-like craft (like James Bond's!) on this long airstrip. Although I'm coming with the plane as part of a demonstration on behalf of Sony for this large air show, I'm also bringing in on my person a load of highly illegal computer chips from the corporation as well. I land the plain and enter the airfield, which is where the link between this dream and the next occurs. The airfield is unlike a real airfield, really. It's more like a hangar, I suppose, but it's only a gigantic field of airplanes on concrete covered by a tin roof in the middle of the Midwest. There are no roads to or from the hangar, just air strips for taking off and landing, and no control tower. I land and bring the load of chips in with myself, ready to meet a group of men who are going to pick the chips up from me.

Now, this is a world where Batman certainly exists, but it's also a world where capitalism exists as capitalism always would exist. Everybody knows about Batman, and everybody has their own opinion of Batman and what he does, but one thing is for certain -- Batman is a profitable trademark, and because of his own secrecy, there's nothing that Bruce Wayne can do about the use of his own symbol as a means of profit for others (unless he decided to dress up as Batman and kick their asses, which I might not hold against him, but then, Bruce is a man of money himself, is he not?).

At this particular airshow, there just happens to be vendors selling Batman themed paraphanalia, some of which involves plastic Batman masks. As I stroll through a small market section of the air show, past one of these vendors, I notice that just about everybody is wearing these plastic Batman masks -- they're a popular item. But as I continue on through the area, it occurs to me that, although perhaps a paranoid suspicion, I believe that one of the people wearing the masks really is Batman. And, by dream rules, this belief is true. Among the mass of plastic mask wearing show-goers, one of the people is not just a normal American present to see some shiny new aircraft -- it's a disturbed freak who's stalking me and watching me, moving around where I can't see him and intent on dispensing his own form of personal justice when the time is right. Now, not to shit on the image of Batman -- he's cooler than your average superhero. But when you're doing something wrong, and he's doing what he does best, which involves hunting you down like a goddamn animal and kicking your ass when you're all alone, he becomes something else entirely. Look at Superman -- amazing to watch him hunt down the bad guys, but then again, if he's coming after you, he becomes an indestructible killing force. That's a bad a dream. No matter where you go, no matter where you hide, this thing continues to come after you, with x-ray eyes and the ability to jump over shit and it has no weaknesses? I have nightmares like that all the freakin' time.

Throughout the airshow, he continues to do this. Hanging around, always near you, and I knew it. Sometimes I saw the figure of a bat hanging out in the rafters of the hangar, real dark. The entire place was a big shadow. And it was like nobody else ever saw it. Just me. This freaky guy, dressed like a bat, running up and down the rafters of the airport hangar, watching only you, and then waiting for you to be alone, so he could descend upon you. In a morally objective sense, I suppose what he is doing is right and what I'm doing is wrong. But that sense of terror -- too much. And what's coupled with this dream and another dream is one theme in my dreams that I can never quite figure out.

More than once I've had dreams involving huge fields, usually accompanied by a feeling of absolute terror. Nobody's ever around, and there's no sense of impending danger -- I suppose it's not a usual nightmare. I consider the Batman dream a nightmare because it involves a sense of being followed and paranoia. I knew I was being followed, or at least I was certain of, and, in a Rosemary's Baby sort of scenario, nobody would've believed me or could've believed me that the Batman was tailing me, even if everybody knew he existed and bought shit themed after him. The MINES OF THE DEAD and ENJOY PAVAOLI dreams are not conventional nightmares because they never involve me -- instead they're just sequences I dream up as a viewer.

The dream involves myself in a large field of grass the slopes downwards, like a quarter bowl, sloping in at two angles to meet at one lowest point at the far corner, perhaps about two miles wide. Although the walls slope up to a fence, continuing to rise beyond my sight, I cannot for the life of myself climb up to the fence. It's night time, and there is a single flourescent street light in the corner farthest from me that, despite it's lower power and the large distance, manages to adequately light everything in the field. There are small patches of snow, and to my left is the beginnings of a dark forest just beyond the fence. Back aways behind the corner where the light is (the northeastern corner, I should remark -- I'm in the southwestern corner), I can see through another spot of trees the distant lights of traveling vehicles along a major highway. There is nobody else present -- just myself.

Perhaps a strange set up, the dream was disturbing in that it was only an experience of terror that I can't quite explain. Watching those cars pass by so far off in the distance scared the living shit out of me, and although the field was also significantly terrifying, I found the image of the sloped grass just beyond the fence even more frightening. I never really moved from where I was, and although I considered moving to the other side of the bowl, away from the dark corner where the creepy forest began, I never actually did it.

I'll update this later as well with some pictures.