Peculiar R.E.M. Cycles


Who would have thought that one of my eerier nightmares of late would get interpreted by Jessica Zafra.

Here’s what I wrote:

The other night I had this nightmare that I was Sweeney Todd’s daughter and that he was dead set on slashing my throat. He chased me all around town (I’m not sure what town it was but it looked provincial) with a bloody razor hanging from his neck. He clearly wasn’t Johnny Depp because he looked old and shrivelled. Anyway, the townsfolk ended up rallying against him and a pregnant lady shot him multiple times with a machine gun.

I’ m not sure if this even needs further interpretation but the weird thing is I watched Sweeney Todd over a month ago.

Here’s what she wrote:

About eilish’s dream. Do you feel that if people knew who you really are, they would turn against you/hunt you down? Initially anyway, because at the end of the dream they go over to your side. Who’s the pregnant lady? Are you “incubating” an idea that might be controversial?

Of course, I may be very wrong.

And mind you, she wasn’t entirely off course with her interpretation.

Note: Alright…Alright…Cuff me up and send me to rehab because I have an unhealthy addiction to her work. I admit it now. In my defense, her stuff is the only tried and tested detoxifier when I get the urge to flambé people at work. Which is ironic in a way because she is a tad misanthropic herself.

Jess, our 17 year old quasi-resident, was tellling me about this dream she had. I was in it and so was Mae (the technical support haranguer). We were all in the apartment together and there was another kid there who we apparently introduced to her earlier. In the dream, they went to school together and but the other kid was only on her best behaviour when we were around. An apparent attempt to get on our good side and have Jess booted out of circulation. She was obviously perturbed by it for some reason. Several emotionally-charged adjectives were hurled across the room to embellish the storytelling. Then out of nowhere… Am I going nuts or is that the Richard Clayderman Lovingly Yours Helen theme song playing in the background?!

For a minute, I thought she was going to break into tears.

To avert the fiasco, I told her that if she ever has a dream like that again, she can change everyone’s appearance to the porcelain-skinned, chinky-eyed Oriental look and have our lips move unsychronized to the actual words being uttered. And right at the end she can have us all run through a field of yellow daisies in slow motion.

A full-on Korean telenovela dream. Wicked.

I was in the middle of a rice patty next to an isawan stand. I didn’t even question what it was doing there, I just went about like it was normal for people to set up business in the middle of nowhere (Talk about location!). We were having a gathering of some sort and among the people present was Joan, a friend from work who is 8 months pregnant. Behind the isawan stood a faceless rock star enjoying his snack (the oddities keep piling up!). Nobody mentioned he was a rock star. You know how in dreams we have this superhuman ability to discern who and what people are even if they don’t remotely resemble anything we’ve encountered in real life?

Here’s the part of my dream that made me question my sanity:

While clutching her oversized belly, Joan suddenly yelled at the rock star: “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about the music?!! Now look what happened to me!! Why didn’t you tell me the truth?!”

I’m open to whatever interpretation (or diagnoses of my mental state) you can throw my way.

The other night I had this dream. I was in Albay with a large group of friends. And there was this kid who was to be my tour guide. I asked her to take me to see the Mayon volcano. After a long walk, we get there and it wasn’t like we see it in postcards. Mayon volcano looked more like an 8 foot termite mound. And the houses around it were all perched on top of tiny hills to keep the lava from flowing into their livingrooms in case of an eruption.

I remember saying, “Hey I had a college friend who lives in one these houses, she said they had a view of the volcano.” (Bea, if you ever get to read this, I’m sure your house is not located on a hill of dirt like in my dream.)

And if that wasn’t strange enough. As I walked closer to get a better look, in comes this guy with a flatbed trolley. He lifts the entire volcano off the ground and takes it away. I asked my tour guide what he did that for and she said they were taking it out for cleaning.

Like you can take a volcano off to the drycleaners! That was one of the stranger dreams I had lately. It made me feel like the Little Prince. I wonder what it means though.