"No Exit" (or, Escaping Infinity)

Sometimes my dreams are incredibly metaphorical. Last night I had one of those dreams. I dreamed I was on the run from an enemy in hot pursuit. To evade them I dove into a heavily wooded ravine and fell deeper and deeper through the foliage uncertain if I would survive the fall or even be able to get back out of the ravine once I hit bottom.

I "landed" inside a brightly, lit rectangular room with walls, floor, and ceiling made of perfect mirrors. And I mean perfect! The reflections were so clear that they did not look like reflections at all, and of course they reflected each other "infinitely" in all directions.

I could move, or rather, "fly", in any direction, but when I reached a mirror, instead of being obstructed, I could pass right through (and hence into my own reflection) and come out into another "room" that appeared exactly as the room I had just left.

I immediately realized I was "trapped" (but did not realize the metaphor of being "trapped in infinity" until after I woke up and thought about what just happened). So I started trying to find a way out. I reasoned that if I could find any sort of flaw in the reflection then that would be my way out (because a flaw would by necessity have to take me someplace "else"). So I began closely examining the corner looking for any imperfections where the mirrors edges met.

I found some "glitches" in the mirror around the edges, and I was in the process of trying to figure out how to use the "glitches" (distortions) to effect my escape when I woke up. I realized right away what a metaphor the mirror room was for life itself, and am now wondering if maybe there are "glitches" in reality (around the "edges" where "mirrors" meet) that could be used somehow to "escape from infinity", which as I understand would mean becoming "enlightened"" (in the Eastern sense). In other words, must I some how seek the "edges of the mirrors" in life? And if so, what does that mean?

[J.D. August 10, 2017]

P.S. I often think of other people as "mirrors" that reflect our own image (especially the ones we like least). So I'm wondering if maybe this dream is an unconscious attempt to help myself find an "exit" (existentially) by looking around the "edges" of my relationship with other people. Definitely something for me to think about!

Two-Headed Troll

This morning I dreamed that I was with a group of rebels fighting for a noble cause in an urban setting. We were a small guerrilla group on a specific mission moving covertly towards our target.

But the group was not rigidly structured, and the "leader" was more or less just making suggestions rather than giving orders. So, as we were moving through an abandoned building that provided some cover, I remembered that I had left my bicycle parked on a trail in some nearby woods, with a laptop wrapped in a blanket in a basket on the bike. It was no problem for me to "excuse" myself from the "mission", so I could retrieve the bike before it and/or the laptop was discovered, and stolen.

I left the group and made my way across a four-lane freeway avoiding being hit by the speeding cars (Note:). I then squeezed through a narrow opening in the freeway-fence and onto the trail in the woods where my bicycle was parked. I found the bike with no problem, and both it and the laptop were unmolested. It seemed I had concealed it a little off the main trail and down a small incline behind some bushes, which kept it safe.

But, as I was pushing the bike back up the incline towards the trail, I saw someone coming through the trees in the distance. It was a dark shadowy figure that appeared to be wearing a black cape --- even in the dream, I though that seemed silly. But the figure was clearly a grown man, and he was on the same trail, heading in my direction.

So, I stopped moving, and crouched over the top of the bike, which was lying down on the incline, still out of sight of the main trail (some ten meters away). As long as I stayed low, I knew the man would not be able to see me as he passed, but I would be able to watch his every move.

But, as the man passed, another man, who seemed to have been with me all along (so he knew me, and he knew my "mission": to retrieve the bike and laptop), suddenly ran up the incline beside me and after the man on the trail. He had a gun, a small rifle of some sort, that he fired repeatedly at the man in the black cape. The caped man ran, but, as I watched, he began to realize that the gun was apparently ineffective. The caped man stopped, and turned to confront the man who was with me.

The man with the gun pressed his "attack", even though the other man was no longer running away, but stood to face him. When my man reached the taller shadowy figure, he pressed the barrel of the gun directly in the other man's face - right in the eye, in fact - and pulled the trigger; but, nothing happened. Now my man turned, and ran away, back towards the location where I was still hiding.

The caped figure gave chase. Physically, he was much larger than the man with the impotent gun, and could easily outmatch him. But, he had to catch him first. The man with the gun ran directly back to me and yelled for me to help him! I realized this was his plan all along; to get me in the fight by forcing me to defend myself.

The tall, caped man spotted me as the shorter man ran past me, yelling. I was much bigger than both men. In fact, I was suddenly a large two-headed troll with a massively muscular body and long, capable arms. I could see myself now from a few feet away, the way you can sometimes only in a dream. One of my heads was larger than the other and wore a gold kingly crown. Both heads were hideous ogre-like monstrosities, but they seemed to have no problem thinking and working together.

Then I was back in the troll's body, MY body. The shadowy man was upon me, but it was instantly clear that he attacked only out of fear. He had no advantage. The smaller man goaded me from a safe distance. He shouted, "He is the one who made you into a troll!" I became enraged, and I wrapped my long, powerful arms around the dark man's neck. I could have strangled him easily, but I was so angry that I crushed his spine instead with brute strength. And as I did this, I became very emotional and said to the man I was killing, "You make monsters like me to do your thieving and killing, and so now you must die (according to your own work)."

After the man was dead, I released his body and collapsed to the ground, crying. I hated killing, even though it was something I could so easily do. I especially hated killing out of hatred, as I had just done. But the other man now came forward to comfort me with words. He said, "This man deserved to die..." and, "You did what you had to do."

I looked at myself (reflected) and realized how pathetic I was for feeling bad about doing what I did. I realized that it did not matter how I became a "monster" (killer), it only mattered that that is what Ii was for a reason. Then I woke up, still pondering all the confused emotions and clear messages that this dream seemed to evoke.

I think the dark man represents "government" and "authority". The smaller man is my "soul-mate" and "companion". I don't know what the kingly crown represents, but the two heads clearly represent the two minds in me that see things differently, yet still manage to work together when necessary. This is a real dream, as honestly portrayed with words as I can make it. It is dreams like this that force me to admit that my knowledge of the world is worthless. The best I can do is submit to the one who makes such dreams, and who makes the dreams we call "reality". 

[J.D. May 4, 2017]

(Note:)
The only time in real-life that I ever crossed a freeway on foot was the night before I invaded the Groene's home in Idaho. I crossed the freeway (which was also four lanes, like in this dream) and into the woods on the other side, where I hid in a location on an incline that gave me a clear view of the Groene's house. I believe this is to be a very significant correlation between the dream and the reality, because, at the time I was "being" the "two-headed troll" that I had been turned into by the "shadowy" government authorities in preparing to attack the Groene family as I did the next night.

When I stopped killing and turned myself in several weeks later, I was "snapping the shadowy man's neck" by refusing to kill for him anymore.

The Killing Floor

Last night I dreamed that I was attacked and stabbed by several inmates and the police in a jail holding cell because of my crimes (kidnapping, raping, and killing children). I wouldn't call it a nightmare or even a "bad" dream, though, because at no point was I really scared or upset by the events it depicted. In the end, in fact, I was more concerned about the "truth" of what happened than I was with any injuries I or anyone else had sustained in the dream.

It started out in a jail holding cell where I was being held anonymously with about eight to ten other "detainees" (i.e. no one else in the cell knew about the crimes I had been charged with). But then a police officer walked through the cell and, when he saw me, it was clear by the sudden hate and disgust on his face that he recognized me. But, instead of saying anything, he just continued through the cell and out into an adjoining room where the police "secured" their weapons before entering the jail.

Because of the way he looked at me, I decided to move to a slightly different position where I could defend myself better if he returned (it is normal for me to think "defensively" at all times when I am confined, especially with other prisoners --- I constantly evaluate potential threats and calculate my "position" accordingly --- it is just "old prison habits" to do so).

No sooner than I had sat back down in a better position, just a few feet away from where I had been, the wall adjoining the gun room where the policeman was suddenly exploded outward at head level exactly where I had just been sitting, making a fist-sized hole right where my head had been. A moment later, the policeman re-entered the room, ostensibly to see if anyone had been hurt. He had "accidentally" fired his gun into the other room (an "accidental discharge" as they call it in police parlance to make it sound like an ordinary hazard of their occupation). He was plainly surprised to see me sitting in a different location and unharmed.

The cop then addressed the entire cell and told everyone who I was and that it was "too bad" that I was not hit by the "accidental discharge". This, of course, suddenly brought the entire focus of everyone's attention onto me, and away from the "accident" that had just occurred. I knew instinctively that I had a few seconds to act before the information "sunk in" and the other men in the cell began formulating what they believed to be the expected behavior in such circumstances (namely, violence).

So, first, I moved to the center of the cell and sat on the floor. This was a counter-intuitive move designed to disarm potential violence by making myself appear as harmless and defenseless as possible. I could have moved to a more naturally defensible position, such as a corner, but I knew that doing so would have been expected and hence would have only encouraged an attack. I needed to show that I was not afraid (and I wasn't) in order to keep the men (animals after all, especially the cop) from becoming dangerously aroused by the smell of fear.

This worked for a moment. The other prisoners asked me if what the cop said was true. I told them yes, but I was only attacking children as men have throughout history in order to inflict as much pain as possible upon my enemy, "the System". I was trying to invoke the "common enemy"-argument in an attempt to gain at least some sympathy, perhaps enough to dissuade any actual violence. This also gave me a few seconds more (as the new information was being again processed) to try strengthening my argument with an admission of regret. But, as soon as I admitted that I had been wrong to attack children, I realized this was a mistake. I had misread one of the detainees sitting behind me (perhaps he had been abused himself as a child and my mere admission that I had "attacked children" was a trigger for him).

But, before the man behind me attacked, the cop moved in to spur on an attack by trying to kick me. I easily pushed his kicks aside, but they accomplished what the cop wanted and spurred the man behind me to move in. I felt him hit my shoulder several times from behind (incidentally, he hit me in the exact same place where I've been having a lot of unexplained pain in my shoulder in real life --- so maybe my dream was taking advantage of the real life pain?). At first, I thought he must be weak, and not a threat, because his blows were effectively painless. So I turned my attention to one of the other men who were preparing to attack. I stayed low in order to use the floor itself as a kind of "wall to put my back against" (i.e. if I tried to stand up, I would have to defend against hands and feet, instead of just one or the other).

The cop had stepped back, predictably, in order to let the other men do their thing (unlike their heroic antics of T.V.-fantasy-police, real cops are trained and lawfully required to wait for back-up, so he would have been perfectly justified for stepping back and letting the assault happen, even after he started it). I easily deflected the first few kicks that came at me from two different directions, but I noticed that they seemed to oddly defer to the man hitting me, he was stabbing me with a sharpened pencil (apparently aiming for my neck, but only managing to hit my shoulder as I instinctively "scrunched" my shoulders to protect my neck)!

I turned my attention to him, deflecting his next blow and somehow wrestling the pencil from him and putting it in his eye. While this happened (it took several seconds, which is a long time in any melee), a couple more men must have realized that they were equally "armed" (with pencils) and attacked also. The only blows that landed through were those from the two men trying to copy the cop by kicking me. But the kicks were landing on my legs and butt, safe to ignore. Instead, I focused on defending myself against any further stab wounds, and managed to wrest another pencil from one of the men, who now "unarmed" decided to back off (weak), and used it to stab the other "armed" man in his dominant shoulder. As soon as he realized that he was wounded, before he could even land a blow of his own, he also backed off.

That left the two "kickers" and one other man who had decided (correctly) that as long as I was free to move around, the attack was going nowhere. So he pounced on me, taking advantage of his greater size and weight, and tried his best to immobilize me so the "kickers" could get some work in. This made him (the "wrestler") the biggest "threat", so I used a simple high school wrestling "reversal" move on him, which put me in a good position to start stabbing him in the head with the pencil I still held. I knew I'd never penetrate the skull, but I didn't need to. I only needed to let him "see" his own blood streaming off his head and the "fight" was over (the "kickers" were only in it half-heartedly and not nearly enough to sustain the melee on their own).

I was relatively calm the entire time. I'm not sure if I'd be so calm in a similar situation for "real", but I like to think I would be (and some experiences I have had in "real life" seem to favor the possibility, like when I took down a drunk who was larger than me, using  a wrestling move like the one I used in this dream, after he entered my apartment uninvited in Fargo, or the time I thwarted a rapist who grabbed me with clearly violent intentions in a park in Seattle; in these cases, and many others like them, I instinctively kept a clear head and acted with deliberate intention, just as I did in this dream).

In the dream, shortly after the melee ended, or at least the first round, the jail guards came in and began sorting out and tending to the wounded. And, since the three I stabbed were all injured worse than I was, they were tended to first. And, in the meantime, I heard the cop telling one of the guards about the "attack" (leaving out his role, of course), and I remember being concerned at this point that people (the "public) would be told only that another "child killer" was attacked in jail, and not the truth, that the "child killer" successfully defended himself against an attack. Instead, "the System" would make it seem that the attack occurred regardless of its best efforts to "protect the child killer", once more promoting the illusion of a functioning "justice system" where there is none. My own injuries seemed trivial compared to the lie I knew would be perpetrated as a result of what happened.

[J.D. February 8, 2017]

Twisted Sister

I dreamed last night that I was visiting my family --- which was a bit odd because since my arrest in 2005, my family has disowned and shunned me, except for my mother. In the dream, my middle-older sister, Cheri, found a letter I had written where I complained about the food we get in prison. I called it "Ramen and garbage" in the dream letter, which is pretty close to my "real-life" assessment of the food we are served here, though not quite factually true.

So, in the dream, my sister, Cheri, was outraged by the audacity of my complaint. She became quite upset, which is her bent to do even in "real-life": Apparently, she felt that I had no call to complain, because she knew for a fact that the food we were served in prison met the highest nutrition standards, and was considered very palatable by most other standards. Even in the dream I could not argue with her "facts".

The truth is, in "real-life" the food we are served is "compliant" with many rigidly set "standards". But that does not change my personal assessment of the general quality or palatability of it. This dream made me realize that it's not really the food quality that offends me so much; it's the complete lack of any "caring" involved in the way it is prepared and served.

The potatoes are usually unwashed and never peeled, much less do they ever have the "bad spots" cut out the way even military standards require (which I know well because I received military training as a cook in a summer-youth employment program as a teen, and I also worked as a cook in prison in the 1980s, back when we actually used Army recipes and procedures to prepare and cook prison food). The fruit is usually over or under ripe, bruised and damaged, so that as much as I like fruit, even damaged fruit, I end up throwing about half of the "fresh fruit" we get in the trash. The "hot" food is almost invariably barely even warm, and is frequently served at room temperature (against well known serving standards). And on, and on...

I could write pages about everything they do "wrong" with the food here, but the point that this dream seemed to emphasize was that it's not that the food is so "bad", as much as that it could be so much BETTER! If "they" only cared enough to prepare it and serve it correctly. But, they don't. So, I call it "Ramen and garbage", because that's how it makes me feel when I get the trays they hand me and remove the lid. It's like removing the lid of a trash can in some alley behind a nice restaurant. Yes, the food is "perfectly good", and even "good quality", as any experienced dumpster-diver will tell you. But it's still garbage. And in prison these days it is also garbage, simply because of the lack of caring in how it is prepared and served. But, like the dumpster-diver, I am genuinely grateful to have it; sad, but true.

[J.D. December 28, 2016]

P.S. On the small metal desk (15x30 inches) bolted to the wall in my cell, where I usually sit to eat from the "garbage pails" they give us, there is now a bruised banana from breakfast, and two mismatched halves of an unripened "seasonal fruit" pear of some variety with red skin that we got in the lunch pail. I washed the pear halves and wrapped them in plastic hoping they will ripen a bit before the air spoils them. The pears were served inconsiderately on top of sliced onions, with the open flesh of the pears directly against the onions, so even if they do ripen enough to eat they won't taste very good --- like what you'd expect them to taste if they came from a garbage can.

And the banana is so badly bruised and turning black along the sides, probably from being handled roughly in the crates, that it is unlikely there will be a piece inside when I open it large enough to make a mouthful that isn't pure mush. Again, this is exactly what you would expect to find in a garbage can where a restaurant or grocery store disposes of the food no longer usable for serving their customers. And I'm saving the banana, and the pear, for the same reason; because when I get hungry later tonight, I know they'll both be much more appetizing, and I'll be all the more grateful to have them.