(no subject)
Dec. 27th, 2006 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI think that to some extent, the paranoiac streak that infests a lot of the entertainment aimed at my generation has its roots in the movie E.T.. That flick left a psychic scar across the minds of thousands if not millions of children, starting with the image of faceless, shapeless men with flashlights searching the countryside. The astronaut invading Elliot's house, the cars and men chasing down the boys on bikes- these images seared their way into more children of my generation (myself included, of course) than I can count.
Sometimes, they resurface.
I wish I knew what the setup was, what the premise was- but last night I dreamed that I had discovered or done or found something that tipped the government's hand to the fact that I knew about something very, very secret and very, very dangerous that they had done. Not involving aliens, mind you. I think I would remember if aliens were involved. Some kind of super-science, maybe, or merely some kind of well-advanced science involving human experimentation- I don't know which. But they were looking for me, and not in the way where they just send two people in suits to your door with ID cards in their wallet, oh no. There were suit-wearers, yes, but they were the kind who have been paid for a very long time to forget how to smile, and there were the men with dogs. Not vicious dogs or killers- German shepherds, yes, but they were along as trackers. Just in case they got close and they didn't know which way I'd gone. They were asking after me first, before the hunting began.
There are very few recurring themes in my dreams. When I was in college I used to have the 'my teeth! augh!' kind of dream a lot, along with dreams involving terrible things affecting my contact lenses (I didn't have LASIK until I was 25). The one genuinely recurring dream theme I know of has been: something awful is chasing you, and you are running, but you are too clever to merely run forever and so you hide until it passes you by. Most of the time this results in watching the thing that was chasing me shoot right past blindly. Once or twice I've been able to circle around afterwards and confront it, which happened once when it was the Smoking Man from X-Files who was chasing me. This time.... I didn't recognize it as a chasing dream, I don't think, because the pursuit was slow and careful. I remember in the dream that I was in a multi-storey apartment building at night and that I happened to glance down from one of the higher apartments and see the men in suits and the men with dogs coming in the front way. The thought of trying to get out did not occur to me, possibly because there were enough people altogether to put one in each stairwell and elevator, so instead I quietly made my excuses to whoever was in the apartment and said I needed some fresh air. I slipped out and went up- onto the roof- and sat down to watch the ground below as best I could. There was someone else there, some hockey fan freshly come in from a game; we talked for a little bit about inconsequential things, which I mostly remember because I think I was trying to establish my cover in his mind before trying to move on again.
And then the hand fell on my shoulder from behind and a very un-amused voice said, "Ms. $REAL_NAME, we've been looking for you."
The scene ended there, not because of him hitting me or tranqs but because even my subconscious likes theatrical elements like cuts and dissolves. It came back up on a bright and sunlit building thronging with people; to be honest, on the inside it rather resembled some of the EPCOT exhibits I remember from the last time I visited Disneyworld, years ago. There were displays of different kinds of super-science all around the one main room, with people lined up or just milling around to get a better look; the one I remember being propelled towards was initially fascinating, then rather disturbing, as it started to show displays of what were either human skin abnormalities or independent lifeforms that had taken up colonizing human skin. (Yes, I know there are disease organisms and commensal organisms that do this all the time. These were unknown varieties that they suspected were not of Earth.) The one that produced something about the size of a golf ball cut in half that started moving around without leaving a blood trail gave me more of the squicks than I wanted to display in front of the suited men, who I could still feel watching me, so I went over to the side a little and started trying to read a magazine article on a Florida couple who'd produced octuplets somehow. That was in an area that turned out to have normal people in it- people who talked to me who I realized weren't part of the organization at all, and whose purpose there I did not know but could begin to guess. I started wondering how I could communicate with my friends back home somehow, because I knew I was expected to do some kind of work for the suited people now, and moreover that they would not let me anywhere near my old, known haunts on the computer. Not that I objected to learning the secrets of the place- but people had to know where I was, that I was all right and that I might need rescue somehow.
And then it occurred to me that all of this fear on my part was rather impractical and that if I really thought I was trapped trapped, I should force myself to open my eyes. And so I did, and I woke up to my cat trying to walk around on my ribcage.
I strongly suspect that this was inspired by my speculation last night as I walked home from the train station. I had been listening to the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's solstice carol albums, and my speculation involved looking at the buildings around me in the city and thinking: Lovecraft put all manner of horrible shadows and secrets into the old New England towns he loved. What would I put in you, if I wanted to have the same impact? Combine that with talking to someone last night about a possible Carl, from Sneakers, showing up at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
milliways_bar and you're halfway there, because the discussion involved him being caught hacking. In the running-away dream where I met the Smoking Man, he offered to teach me what he knew before he could be vanished or retired; unfortunately I woke up just as he started talking about Neanderthal Man. The theme of learning from that which I had been fleeing is therefore clearly present in my subconscious already. And on more than one occasion, I've dreamed of a central place or building thronging with people in which all manner of scientific and sometimes magical wonders may be learned- although usually one has to get on a train and travel fantastic distances down the corridors to learn them, because it's generally a damn big building.
I don't, for the most part, fear the supernatural. I had an absolute terror of many spooky things after seeing Poltergeist, to the point where I had to mentally surround my bedroom with the Ghostbusters if I was to get any sleep at all, so I will not say I do not fear it at all. There may be some chord in my subconscious yet to be touched. I fear... things that may happen in the everyday. The horrible unwholesome thing that went squish underfoot being, not dog doo, but something (or part of something) that had once been alive. I fear the things that can happen to the human body, the things that most people prefer not to know about and of which I will not speak here. I fear what can happen when a person of no conscience catches a person of no particular defenses alone, far from the hearing range of others. I fear what people do when they have convinced themselves that something needs doing and never mind the methods or the consequences.
HP Lovecraft wrote of cosmic horror and the ultimate insignificance of Man, and in that he was very much a product of his time. Humanity was only just beginning to really understand how bloody vast existence was, and how little of it really pertains to us. I have read enough, I think, both in fiction and in nonfiction to understand that the human race is an infinitesimally tiny dot clinging to the back of an equally infinitesimally tiny dot in the midst of an unbelievably vast ocean. The prospect of this does not bother me. The rest of the cosmos may never notice nor care that we exist, and that is fine. I do not dream of chthonian horrors welling up from the dark places of the Earth, or of things unmentionable erupting from the ocean. They are quite acceptable, and quite fascinating- and anyone who has ever heard me talk about Cosmos as a series knows how I feel about the stars.
The horror in my head, which I define as the stuff which not only produces fear but results in a desperate desire best verbalized as an undirected "Make this not to be!", is entirely a thing of this world. And I think nearly all of it is born of betrayal- of the thought that a human being can turn on a fellow human being and do unspeakable things, of the idea that a doctor or a scientist can use his or her position to pursue unconscionable lines of research, of the idea that trusted animals or foods or drinks or, yes, organizations can suddenly become monstrous in their purpose. That the merely normal can turn out to have been a thin skin over the outright hideous, whether physically or mentally or spiritually...
Not that I don't appreciate a good cosmic horror from beyond the stars, but that's not what comes welling out of my brain when I provoke it to tell me what causes it to quail in fear. I suppose it makes sense that I got a bigger case of the bahoogies from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward than from "The Call of Cthulhu" or "The Dreams in the Witch-House", although the latter was really rather interesting. But when it comes right down to it, the biggest creepy-making, for me, is what happens when something that should have been trustworthy turns out to be unspeakable instead.
Sometimes, they resurface.
I wish I knew what the setup was, what the premise was- but last night I dreamed that I had discovered or done or found something that tipped the government's hand to the fact that I knew about something very, very secret and very, very dangerous that they had done. Not involving aliens, mind you. I think I would remember if aliens were involved. Some kind of super-science, maybe, or merely some kind of well-advanced science involving human experimentation- I don't know which. But they were looking for me, and not in the way where they just send two people in suits to your door with ID cards in their wallet, oh no. There were suit-wearers, yes, but they were the kind who have been paid for a very long time to forget how to smile, and there were the men with dogs. Not vicious dogs or killers- German shepherds, yes, but they were along as trackers. Just in case they got close and they didn't know which way I'd gone. They were asking after me first, before the hunting began.
There are very few recurring themes in my dreams. When I was in college I used to have the 'my teeth! augh!' kind of dream a lot, along with dreams involving terrible things affecting my contact lenses (I didn't have LASIK until I was 25). The one genuinely recurring dream theme I know of has been: something awful is chasing you, and you are running, but you are too clever to merely run forever and so you hide until it passes you by. Most of the time this results in watching the thing that was chasing me shoot right past blindly. Once or twice I've been able to circle around afterwards and confront it, which happened once when it was the Smoking Man from X-Files who was chasing me. This time.... I didn't recognize it as a chasing dream, I don't think, because the pursuit was slow and careful. I remember in the dream that I was in a multi-storey apartment building at night and that I happened to glance down from one of the higher apartments and see the men in suits and the men with dogs coming in the front way. The thought of trying to get out did not occur to me, possibly because there were enough people altogether to put one in each stairwell and elevator, so instead I quietly made my excuses to whoever was in the apartment and said I needed some fresh air. I slipped out and went up- onto the roof- and sat down to watch the ground below as best I could. There was someone else there, some hockey fan freshly come in from a game; we talked for a little bit about inconsequential things, which I mostly remember because I think I was trying to establish my cover in his mind before trying to move on again.
And then the hand fell on my shoulder from behind and a very un-amused voice said, "Ms. $REAL_NAME, we've been looking for you."
The scene ended there, not because of him hitting me or tranqs but because even my subconscious likes theatrical elements like cuts and dissolves. It came back up on a bright and sunlit building thronging with people; to be honest, on the inside it rather resembled some of the EPCOT exhibits I remember from the last time I visited Disneyworld, years ago. There were displays of different kinds of super-science all around the one main room, with people lined up or just milling around to get a better look; the one I remember being propelled towards was initially fascinating, then rather disturbing, as it started to show displays of what were either human skin abnormalities or independent lifeforms that had taken up colonizing human skin. (Yes, I know there are disease organisms and commensal organisms that do this all the time. These were unknown varieties that they suspected were not of Earth.) The one that produced something about the size of a golf ball cut in half that started moving around without leaving a blood trail gave me more of the squicks than I wanted to display in front of the suited men, who I could still feel watching me, so I went over to the side a little and started trying to read a magazine article on a Florida couple who'd produced octuplets somehow. That was in an area that turned out to have normal people in it- people who talked to me who I realized weren't part of the organization at all, and whose purpose there I did not know but could begin to guess. I started wondering how I could communicate with my friends back home somehow, because I knew I was expected to do some kind of work for the suited people now, and moreover that they would not let me anywhere near my old, known haunts on the computer. Not that I objected to learning the secrets of the place- but people had to know where I was, that I was all right and that I might need rescue somehow.
And then it occurred to me that all of this fear on my part was rather impractical and that if I really thought I was trapped trapped, I should force myself to open my eyes. And so I did, and I woke up to my cat trying to walk around on my ribcage.
I strongly suspect that this was inspired by my speculation last night as I walked home from the train station. I had been listening to the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's solstice carol albums, and my speculation involved looking at the buildings around me in the city and thinking: Lovecraft put all manner of horrible shadows and secrets into the old New England towns he loved. What would I put in you, if I wanted to have the same impact? Combine that with talking to someone last night about a possible Carl, from Sneakers, showing up at
milliways_bar and you're halfway there, because the discussion involved him being caught hacking. In the running-away dream where I met the Smoking Man, he offered to teach me what he knew before he could be vanished or retired; unfortunately I woke up just as he started talking about Neanderthal Man. The theme of learning from that which I had been fleeing is therefore clearly present in my subconscious already. And on more than one occasion, I've dreamed of a central place or building thronging with people in which all manner of scientific and sometimes magical wonders may be learned- although usually one has to get on a train and travel fantastic distances down the corridors to learn them, because it's generally a damn big building. I don't, for the most part, fear the supernatural. I had an absolute terror of many spooky things after seeing Poltergeist, to the point where I had to mentally surround my bedroom with the Ghostbusters if I was to get any sleep at all, so I will not say I do not fear it at all. There may be some chord in my subconscious yet to be touched. I fear... things that may happen in the everyday. The horrible unwholesome thing that went squish underfoot being, not dog doo, but something (or part of something) that had once been alive. I fear the things that can happen to the human body, the things that most people prefer not to know about and of which I will not speak here. I fear what can happen when a person of no conscience catches a person of no particular defenses alone, far from the hearing range of others. I fear what people do when they have convinced themselves that something needs doing and never mind the methods or the consequences.
HP Lovecraft wrote of cosmic horror and the ultimate insignificance of Man, and in that he was very much a product of his time. Humanity was only just beginning to really understand how bloody vast existence was, and how little of it really pertains to us. I have read enough, I think, both in fiction and in nonfiction to understand that the human race is an infinitesimally tiny dot clinging to the back of an equally infinitesimally tiny dot in the midst of an unbelievably vast ocean. The prospect of this does not bother me. The rest of the cosmos may never notice nor care that we exist, and that is fine. I do not dream of chthonian horrors welling up from the dark places of the Earth, or of things unmentionable erupting from the ocean. They are quite acceptable, and quite fascinating- and anyone who has ever heard me talk about Cosmos as a series knows how I feel about the stars.
The horror in my head, which I define as the stuff which not only produces fear but results in a desperate desire best verbalized as an undirected "Make this not to be!", is entirely a thing of this world. And I think nearly all of it is born of betrayal- of the thought that a human being can turn on a fellow human being and do unspeakable things, of the idea that a doctor or a scientist can use his or her position to pursue unconscionable lines of research, of the idea that trusted animals or foods or drinks or, yes, organizations can suddenly become monstrous in their purpose. That the merely normal can turn out to have been a thin skin over the outright hideous, whether physically or mentally or spiritually...
Not that I don't appreciate a good cosmic horror from beyond the stars, but that's not what comes welling out of my brain when I provoke it to tell me what causes it to quail in fear. I suppose it makes sense that I got a bigger case of the bahoogies from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward than from "The Call of Cthulhu" or "The Dreams in the Witch-House", although the latter was really rather interesting. But when it comes right down to it, the biggest creepy-making, for me, is what happens when something that should have been trustworthy turns out to be unspeakable instead.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 05:30 pm (UTC)Yeah.
Also:
I started wondering how I could communicate with my friends back home somehow, because I knew I was expected to do some kind of work for the suited people now, and moreover that they would not let me anywhere near my old, known haunts on the computer.
Oh, of course, it's the Foliage Census.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 05:46 pm (UTC)The Technocracy made us, we are willing pawns of antibiotics and electricity and computers and commerce.
To go against the Technocracy is to go against what we are.
Those anti-globalization protestors, they protest for protesting. They are like college students who want to think of themselves as activists.
They like disorder, not anarchy, disorder.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:03 pm (UTC)Oh, thank you! I thought I was the only one whose dreams play out like movies.
The horror in my head, which I define as the stuff which not only produces fear but results in a desperate desire best verbalized as an undirected "Make this not to be!", is entirely a thing of this world. And I think nearly all of it is born of betrayal- of the thought that a human being can turn on a fellow human being and do unspeakable things, of the idea that a doctor or a scientist can use his or her position to pursue unconscionable lines of research, of the idea that trusted animals or foods or drinks or, yes, organizations can suddenly become monstrous in their purpose. That the merely normal can turn out to have been a thin skin over the outright hideous, whether physically or mentally or spiritually...
Agreed. 200% agreed. And yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly on the subject of Lovecraft, too.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:07 pm (UTC)Someone asked me once whether I dreamed in colour or black-and-white. I had not been aware that anybody did black-and-white before that, so I stared at them blankly and asked if that included sepiatone- I'd had a sepiatone dream once shortly after watching Young Frankenstein. There were brains in jars involved. It was interesting. That's as close as I ever got to b&w, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 08:09 am (UTC)Usually it's an oppressive authority, rounding up people, or trying to control people. And I'm either getting away, or trying to help people escape. Or fighting back against them.
And I only recently got into Lovecraft more, though I think all those distopian books like 1984, Brave New World, and so on in high school (Read them for fun, not required, mind you) probably helped on that end.
And at home, my cat does that on my ribcage at times too. This morning I woke up, lying on my stomach, and I couldn't move my knees because the cat had curled up there.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 05:36 pm (UTC)For years now, whenever I have a dream that's somewhat plot-driven, invariably it ends up breaking the fourth wall at some point, in effect telling me 'write this down so you can write a story about it at some point.' Which is nice when it otherwise might have been a scary-type dream, but also kind of annoying because it makes me feel like I'm a spectator in my own dreams