Lucid Dreaming
I had some sort of anime open on my computer screen. I felt like I had something else to do so I paused the anime and turned my computer screen off, but it wouldn't turn off, it just dimmed. I was confused, and wondered to myself, "Is this some sort of weird image burn in?" I tried to turn if off again, but the image still wouldn't go away. It then started twisting into horrifying demonic terrible images, and I became terrified, ran to the corner of my room, and started blinking my eyes rapidly in an attempt to wake up. I was repeating to myself in my head, "It's just a dream! It's just a dream!" and that's when it hit me. It is just a dream. So, I walked back over to my computer, pushed the power button and made a "Blip" noise with my mouth. It turned off like an old TV screen, because I thought it would be funny. You know, with a white line fading into a tiny dot. Then I sat at my desk, and just looked at things for a bit. Some of the old figurines that I used to keep on my desk were there, but I didn't realize they were out of place. I looked at them very closely, marveling at my own attention to detail. I looked very closely at one of them, and there was dust on the top of it's head. This really made me question if I were still dreaming. I blew it off, and watched a tiny puff of dust move away. I thought, this had to be real. Maybe I had fell asleep at my computer desk, and was jolted awake by the nightmare? I got up and looked out the window. Perfectly normal day. All details normal. I was certain I was awake. Then I see a big, blue and white umbrella coming down the side walk. The person carrying it comes into view. A woman in a pale yellow dress, in a pose like someone lying on their bed, on their side, and she was hovering down the street. I grinned to myself. "Oh yeah, you're most certainly still dreaming..." I pressed my face to the window, and forced my way through, slowly. At first it was slow going, and it got hard when I got past my torso. I couldn't get my legs out, but I thought, it's ok, I'll just try flying now. I flew up, but I ended up back in my room somehow and I hit my head on my ceiling. Didn't matter, I knew it was a dream now, and I make the rules. I forced myself through solid wall, something I'd never done before, and I was outside, hovering a few feet above the ground. I started flying up, but I kept being oddly attracted to my apartment building, as if by some kind of magnetic force. I put my legs on it and kicked off, and I was truly flying. The odd thing about the dream is that ever since I noticed it was a dream, all the sounds were my own vocal sound effects, such as turning the screen off with a "Blip". Now that I was flying, I was making a "Whoosh!" noise, and the louder I did it, the higher I would fly. I made what I thought was a super man pose, but I had trouble remembering exactly what he did, and I started flying up. I realized I was headed straight for the power lines, so I tried to make myself fly in between them. I hit one, so I grabbed it and released it like a rubber band with a "THWAP!" As I flew above them, I thought to myself, "You can't hurt me. This it my dream." and I smirked. As I flew higher, more of the scenery came into view. It wasn't Tech. It looked like some sort of suburban small town. I flew higher, and I saw a sprawling graveyard to my right. It creeped me out, but I didn't care, because this was my dream, and I was in control, and I was flying. I saw a plane go by, and it passed close to me over head. I turned around really fast, experiencing many G's in the process, and flew right through the plane as fast as I could. I made a "POW!" noise when I went through it, and then it exploded. This was when my alarm clock went off and ruined the most fun I've had in a long time...
For those of you that don't know, Georgia has had an unusual cold snap, which, when mixed with precipitation, means it actually snowed in Atlanta. I don’t mean a couple of flakes fell from the sky. I mean it actually snowed, and stayed on the ground for a couple of days. It began snowing last Thursday night, which is when I snuck up to the roof of my building and took a bunch of photos and made them into a panorama for proof.
My loan refund came in on Thursday as well, and there was a fur lined leather coat that I saw at Lenox Square that I wanted earlier in the week but didn’t have the money for at the time. Also Phil and I needed to go to the Georgia Tech book store and take pictures of the barcodes for our textbooks so we could order them from cheaper sources from the internet.
School would begin the following Monday, so we knew we needed to get this mall trip and the book store trip out of the way this Friday, weather be damned. However, I have lived in Georgia my whole life, and am not used to driving in these conditions, plus my gas cap had frozen closed…
We decided we would take the Marta train to the mall. It was only a few stops north of our campus, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I stayed awake eagerly all night, waiting for the 10:00 am open time of the Lenox Square mall. When it was 9:30 am, I knocked on Phil’s door to wake him up. And I knocked again. And again. Then I quietly walked into his room. I picked up one of the manga he had just laying on his bed and hit his foot with it. He didn’t budge. I hit him repeatedly. Then I shook him by the shoulders several times. He finally stirred and blinked his tired Asian eyes at me (which is barely any movement at all I might add) and asked some sort of odd question like, “What am I doing?” I replied, “You’re getting your clothes on so we can go to the mall!” He just grumbled and I left his room. He banged about and groaned for awhile, and then came out dressed. We put on our warmest gear, and left the apartment. It was like 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, which for us is very cold. We had no gloves, or earmuffs, or scarves or anything of that nature. We buried our hands in our pockets and set off. We immediately began sliding on some ice, and learned that we would probably have to choose between numb hands and falling flat on our faces. So we waddled like ducks across campus towards the Marta station. By the time we got to the Tech Square Publix, all of our extremities were numb, so we decided to loiter around Publix long enough to get our feeling back. Then we headed to the Marta station, and caught the train to Lenox. From the Lenox station, we had to slip and slide to the mall. By the time we were in the parking lot of the mall and I could see the entrance, I guess I felt that we were close enough to have it made, and I stepped right on a patch of black ice and my feet swept out from underneath me and I fell directly on my left shoulder. The most serious injury was to my dignity, so I quickly got up and headed into the mall.
When we got into the mall, the first place Phil wanted to look was the huge Gamestop at Lenox. I let him look around as long as I could, but I got really anxious that Macy’s had sold out of the coat I so had my heart set on, so I dragged him out and told him we could come back. We quickly headed to the Macy’s, and I headed directly to the men’s department. I found my coat; luckily they still had a few, and got a large and a medium to try on. I also found a cool pair of pants that I just wanted to try on to see how it went with the coat. They were a 32 34, which isn’t the easiest to find. Usually it’s hard to find a length that is longer than the waist. I really could use a 36 length, but I looked all over and they didn’t have any. So I handed all my stuff to Phil because I didn’t want anything to fall out of my pockets while I tried on pants. While I was trying on clothes, apparently Phil was playing with my camera:
I only found that when I got back home. So I tried on the coat and the pants, and they looked really good on me.
So I decided to get both. I never buy clothes, and for once I would like to look nice. So I bought both, and both happened to be on sale, so I got a $50 pair of jeans and an $80 coat for $70. Nice. After I had gotten what I came for, I turned the trip over to Phil. We went into the Sony Store, and looked at TV’s that needed loans to ever be able to afford. That is, they were all more expensive than anyone’s paycheck that I know personally. The place was pretty boring, so we went back to the Gamestop. Phil bought himself an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and so far he only had one game. We each bought a game, pretty much complete polar opposites of each other.
The salesman seemed to love Resident Evil 5. Then he just looked confusedly at the box art for Beautiful Katamari. This was a fun situation because since Phil didn’t have the ID to buy the M rated title, I was buying both of them and he was paying me back. The salesman looked like he couldn’t figure out why someone would be buying both of these. Of course, that is because they are both awesome, and you shouldn’t judge a game by it’s cover, Mr. Judgemental Gamestop Employee…
After this we both admitted we were tired and could use some caffeine, so we headed to the food court. We ended up getting Chick-Fil-A. We both got Delux Chicken Sandwiches and Dr. Pepper with no ice. When we were done with our meals I showed Phil how to play Flip Cup. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, it’s traditionally a drinking game where you drink the contents of the cup as fast as possible, then you sit the cup down on the edge of the table, and tap it on the bottom to make the cup land upside down on the table. It’s harder than it sounds. We both practiced until we were pretty good at it, then Phil decided to try to start upside down and get it to land right side up, which is considerably harder. We played for awhile until we got good at that too. Then we sat a cup in the middle of the table and tried to land another cup into it. We played that for awhile, laughing whenever an interesting shot was made. We had a lot of fun. Then I started sitting the cup on the edge of the table, and building tension in my finger against the bottom of the table, then flicking the cup, sending it a good five feet in the air. This was a lot of fun no matter how the cup landed, so I kept doing it. After awhile, this short black lady, maybe 4 feet tall, with an ass at least as wide, waddles over to us with such a fiery sense of purpose in her eyes that it strikes fear into our hearts. We just know we are about to get kicked out of the mall. She comes up to us, and in a voice like you would expect out of Aunt Jemima,
she asks, “You boys wanna refill?” I am in such shock that she didn’t just scream “GETCHO CRACKA ASSES OUT DA FUCK DIS MALL” That I simply reply, “What?” She says, “Well, Iz figud you boys looked mighty bored, so I figured I’d come an axe you if you wanted me to refill yo cups.” And gives us a big ol’ grin. Her grin was contagious, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her and thank her for her generosity. She asks us what we wanted to drink, then waddles off with our cups. Phil immediately starts cracking up, and it’s obvious that he is extremely embarrassed at having been caught in such a juvenile act. I’m not bothered, because with as many boring people as there are at Lenox Mall, at least she will remember us when she goes home. She brings us our cups back, and says, “Now you boys remembuh, dees cups fulla liquid now, so dontchoo go flippin’ um now, ok?” and grins again and waddles off after we thank her once more. Phil and I spent the rest of our time at the mall that afternoon laughing and enjoying ourselves, discussing how funny it would be to flip the cups now that they were full.
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2009 27 August :: 3.15 pm
:: Music: Klaxons - Atlantis To Interzone
God, this is going to be a rough semester... Shit keeps piling up, and I already feel like I am way behind, even though this is only the second week I've been here. Normally I'd be getting frustrated and depressed.... I probably wouldn't perform very well.
Heather changes everything.... whenever I start getting annoyed or apathetic or feel like I'm burned out, I can think of her, and I'm inspired to try harder. I want to succeed here, so that we can have a wonderful life together doing what we enjoy. I want to impress her with how hard I work and how well I do... I want to make her happy with me as a person. This school is not easy, and this could be my hardest semester here, thanks to a heavy course load and Calc 2... but I think I can do fairly well. As long as she is with me, I can think of her when I'm feeling down, and everything feels ok again. She is the only one that ever liked me for who I truly am... I think she knows me better than anyone else ever has.
She is such an amazing person. She is so creative and artistic... She is passionate about life, yet at the same time very rationale and logical in her thought process. She is such a hard worker, I've never seen anyone work as hard as she does. She has a wonderful personality, and the way she acts is so cute... Plus, she's brilliant. Conversing with her is actually interesting. This is a rare thing with most people. She is my best friend, and she is my girlfriend, and I value the special relationship we share above anything else in the world.
On top of all of this, she is so beautiful.... she has the cutest face, and an amazing body. We agree on all of life's major issues so far. We just work together so well. I know we can make it. She is the one I want to spend my life with. I'm sure of this. I hope she feels the same way...
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2009 20 August :: 11.24 am
:: Music: Slint - Breadcrumb Trail
I remember a dream I had last night. Heather, Sam, and I were all at my house very late at night. I was walking up my stairs, and happened to glance out the window above my front door. I caught a glimpse of the full moon, and what I saw frightened and amazed me. The moon was covered in a spider web-like lattice pattern. I called my friends outside to see what I was seeing. At first they didn't even notice. When I pointed it out to them, Heather was amazed, Sam seemed unimpressed. I started musing about what could cause such an amazing phenomenon. It was confusing my eyes to see such a thing, so I covered one eye to try to get better focus on the moon. As I was staring at the moon with my hand over one eye, my vision began to fade. All I could see was a psychedelic mixture of colors and patterns, sort of like Milkdrop or something, but much, much more vibrant and wonderful and amazing and confusing. Every now and then coherent images would come into view, the only specific one I remember was our former president JFK, but he had turquoise hair, and he was grinning broadly like he held an important secret that he wouldn't tell any of us, and he was rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Many of the psychedelic patterns were made up of vibrantly colored and rotating paisley designs (You have no idea how long it took me to figure out what that design was called, but that is definitely what the things in my dream looked like). It was all amazing and new and super natural to me, and I was so happy that it was happening. An adult male appeared at my side, and said that the design on the moon was the result of the sun beams passing close to the earth on their way to the moon and passing through a large cluster of electrical wires to form the design on the moon. This idea seemed so stupid to me that I began to mock him for offering such a lame explanation for such a wondrous phenomenon, and I was actually irritated that he would try to explain what was happening in such a grounded, logical way, like there was any natural way to explain this occurrence. After mocking him mercilessly, I told him about the covering your eye trick and asked him to explain that phenomenon. He refused to try it at all, instead asserting that whatever I was explaining was all in my head and had nothing to do with the moon at all. I realized he was too trapped in his iron cage of rationality to ever admit when something truly amazing was happening, and instead of enjoying a miracle, all he would do with the opportunity would be to try to explain it away. I dismissed him, and went on to ignore him, enjoying the amazing light show in the sky, and the last thing I remember, I was exclaiming to my friends, "You guys, oh my God, if I was on DXM right now, I could not take this. I would be freaking the fuck out. This is just too much! It would be amazing to behold though...."
This is not the first of such dreams I have had about this sort of thing. I often dream of supernatural occurrence in the sky. Celestial bodies doing strange, unbelievable things, holes opening up in the sky with psychedelically colorful borders, the sky changing from night to day rapidly, as in day and night each lasting only about a second each. I remember in that specific dream, the transition sped up, until it seemed as the sky had broken, and there were patches of night and day in the same sky, but the borders were very strict, like pixels. It reminded me of a cartridge game glitching up, and you get two overlapping backgrounds. It was like that, but with night and day. I also have dreams of seeing UFO type objects often. I wonder where this fascination with the sky comes from? I'm always so amazed and excited in these dreams. I always feel like I am appreciating the occurrence more than any one else around me seems to be. In fact, most people never seem to notice. I still am impressed by celestial objects in waking life as well. The moon is an amazing object, and I feel a connection to my deceased grandfather when I look at it sometimes. We used to gaze at the moon together, and he'd tell me about the face in the moon, and he'd sing me a song that went something like, "I see the moon / the moon sees me / God bless the moon / and God bless me." I remember as a very young child, sitting in a car seat in the back of our car, on the way home from my grandfathers, or anywhere really, I'd see the moon chasing our car, always keeping up, and I always felt that the moon was some sort of friend. A powerful friend who was always watching over me and keeping me safe.
Now, after what Heather showed me in the telescope, and our mutual appreciation for the moon and it's beauty, I feel a deeper connection to her, knowing that she appreciates the sky and its wonder and mystery the same way I do. I've never had a dream in which she ignored a phenomenon. In fact, when I walk with her at night, she always understands when I want to just stop and gaze at the moon. It's so amazing.... and so is she. Her appreciation for natural beauty and finding mystery and intrigue in things science has "explained" already is one of the many, many reasons I love her. I needed to find someone that could think logically and mystically simultaneously. A world without mystery is a very boring place indeed.
Yesterday was my first day of classes. Mondays are going to suck. I have classes from 10am-3pm, and then from 4pm-7pm.This semester could be rough. All of my classes seem to be pretty difficult. My first class was Japanese 2. I have remembered very little Japanese. I hope I pick it back up fairly quickly... My next class was Calculus 2. We jumped right into Taylor Polynomials... Those are confusing as hell. Next class was Modern Physics, which will be rough because it seems to revolve mostly around programming in Python, and I am not so good at programming, Never used Python before. Also the professor has a thick Spanish accent. The next class, in the same building, is CS 1372, a C language programming course, which WILL suck, but I'm ok with that. I'd accepted that long before I even got in the class room. At least I got the best possible professor for this course. After that is my ECE course, which doesn't seem as killer as my earlier four classes, but it could still be very difficult. It all sounds pretty complicated... The professor used to be on the mars rover team. After that I had a one hour lunch, so I made my way back to my apartment, had a quick lunch, and got to talk to Heather some before my lab. I couldn't find my lab building, so I was late to lab. The lab sucked pretty hard, as we were all expected to work on something in lab to prove we were there, but there weren't enough computers, so I spend most of my lab trying to fix one of the computers so that I could get a grade. The lab itself was vectors, which I have no idea how to do since I have never been in Calc 2 before, and Python, which I have no experience of. So that sucked, but after it was over, I made my way back and watched Brazil (Very strange movie, but I'd recommend it) and talked to Heather some. She always cheers me up.
Today I only had one class, Calc recitation. My TA is a Chinese guy who speaks very little English. In fact, he speaks like my most brutal Engrish impersonation. No word is a one syllable word. For example: X = EH KE SU, Prime = POO RI MU, Dot = DOH TU.... I wonder if this is Karma... You know what? Instead of trying to describe this, I'll just let you hear for yourself. I took a video in class, I couldn't get a visual, but you can hear him clearly enough. He's trying to talk through a part of one problem.
After that was over, it was raining of course, and I have no idea where my umbrella is, so I walked back to my apartment in the rain. Oh God, my apartment. Such a nice change. It will make all the difference. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I am always all by myself. My own room! It's so nice... I love it. I can work, play, and sleep all completely on my own schedule....
Today I slept from around when I got back from class to about 9pm. What is wrong with me? I guess I just need to get back on the day shift.
Heather makes all of this worthwhile. I love her so much. When I talk to her I am happy. I miss her so much. She is always on my mind. God she is wonderful... *happy sigh* <3
Here is my schedule for anyone who may be interested:
I have a very confused sleep schedule and I don't know what I'm going to do to fix it, although I have certainly tried, no one can deny that.
I went to sleep 3 days ago at 1:00 pm, I hadn't slept yet that day, and I was very, very tired. My thought was that I would sleep through the night, or at least late enough into the night so that I could be on a decent sleep schedule. I woke up at 12:00 am, and I couldn't sleep anymore.
I decided that I could stay up until midnight the next day, since I have stayed up 24+ hours on many occasions. As it turns out, you feel like shit when you stay awake through the night no matter what, as the entire next day I had a headache, sore muscles, and all the lights seemed way too bright. I feel really bad for my dad now, knowing that this is the life he leads. Although most summers I easily end up on his sleep schedule and am never tired during the day like he is... Perhaps it is less about when you sleep and more about having a steady sleep schedule.... I'm getting off topic though.
I went to Noah's ark, a neat little donation driven animal rescue shelter near where I live. I couldn't walk that fast as I felt I had zero energy, and my back hurt. I generally felt like hell.
Later, we went swimming, just my brother and my father and I. This was a welcome break from all the new people in my "family" that I generally despise. I had fun, but once again, the whole time I felt like hell. In addition, when I am tired, I am constantly cold, and the water was cold that day, so I was shivering the whole time, but still I enjoyed myself. After all of that, we went to Kuma, my father, my brother, (regrettably) Amy, her daughter Addie, and I. That was a fun experience also, but the rest of Amy's kids were dropped off in the middle, and Jackson is a brat. Amy gave Jackson some of her steak. (yes, she got steak. I really wanted steak, but it is the most expensive thing there, so I got the cheapest thing there, Chicken, but no, she has to have the best, she always has to have the best...) Jackson continuously yelled for more steak, and I do mean yelled, as in "MORE STEAK!!!", loudly, in a fairly nice restaurant. Anyway, after all of this was over, I went home and Heather and I played some Ghost X together for awhile. I eventually went to sleep around 1:00 am.
I woke up at 5:30 pm the next day.... That's right, I slept for 16.5 hours. My sleep schedule is so messed up, and I don't know how to fix it...
My brother will be leaving soon, and I feel I should spend time with him more. I also want to spend time with Heather. I am conflicted. I wish I had more time...
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