The Nature of Insanity, a Nagging Dream, and a "Tri-dream"

So, today is Friday, almost Saturday, as my dad, his friend Jennifer, her two boys - Evan and Smith -, and I just came back from a Martina McBride concert. I didn't know who this singer was until tonight, but Jennifer received free tickets from someone - and who can pass up a free concert? We ended up leaving after Ms. McBride's first song, due to Smith's exhaustion. Both of Jennifer's boys are really cool - Evan reminds me a lot of how I was when I was in elementary school. It was great getting to hear him talk about Whitaker's urban legends and the tendency of obnoxious kids to pop their chip bags in the cafeteria each day (I remember this). Overall, it was a really fun night - now tacked to it is an inside-joke from the night's events. My dad, who had been eagerly awaiting McBride's appearance on the stage (partially because he found her attractive), was disappointed when she spent the majority of her first song demonstrating her vocal prowess by repeatedly hitting the same super high note, "WAAAHHH!", with intervals of about ten seconds between each instance of this. This irritated him to the extent that, on the way out of the Greensboro coliseum, he made sport of her stage presence, singing, "I'm Martina McBride - WAHHHHHH! - I wear black leather pants - WAHHHHH! - I like to hit the same note over and over again - WAHHHHHH - I -" until we finally convinced him to stop. But all the way back in the car, whenever it got too quiet, either Jennifer, my dad, Evan, or I would suddenly yell, "WAHHHH!"
The other inside joke was a reference to the urban legend that Evan told us about Whitaker. "A fifth-grader," he said mysteriously, "once told me a story about this creepy house in the woods behind Whitaker. Apparently, there were these four girls, and they were playing with a ball or something when one of them dropped it and it went rolling into the woods behind the school. Well, when the girls went to go get it, they saw that it had landed in someone's backyard. One of the girls walked over to pick it up when - suddenly - an arm came out from the back door of the house and pulled her inside!" The story continued in this fashion, with the girl never reappearing and the sinister ending declaring "and that's why no one ever goes into that forest." My dad, finding this story amusing, began to end all rambling stories that anyone would tell from that point on with the conclusion of - "and then an arm came out and grabbed them, and pulled them inside!" Even trivial stories were treated the same way; for example, I was talking about one of my trumpet lessons, on the way back from the concert. I told about how Ms. Rheder had emerged from the office as I was playing and said that I sounded really good for someone just starting - I suppose I was trying to make a point about Ms. Rheder being a nice lady or something along those lines - when my dad interrupted and said, "and then an arm came out of the office and pulled her inside!" and we were all thoroughly amused.
Moving on, from inside jokes to the nature of insanity, which we were discussing just the other day. I was provoked by dreams (on which I'll soon elaborate) to state my thesis on self-imposed insanity (a theory which I learned from the psychoanalysis book that Patrick gave me for Valentine's Day last year) at lunch the other day, the theory being this: most "neurotic" or crazy people impose their insanity on themselves. The most relatable thing that I can think of to compare this theory to, having never considered myself clinically insane (at least not to the point where reality mingles with imagination), would be the whole concept of "not being able to get a person out of one's head," particularly if this person is beloved or fancied of the "neurotic." Though said neurotic claims that fancied person is "driving them insane," it is partially their fault because they are the ones thinking about the person and at least some twisted part of themselves wants to think about that other person, in spite of the pain that this causes. I'm sure that this is probably true for other, more serious things as well - one might approach a traumatic past experience with these mixed feelings, similar to the feelings that Harry Potter feels in The Prisoner of Azkaban when he hears the last moments of his parents' life through his encounters with dementors (yes, I know I just made a Harry Potter allusion in reference to psychology) and is saddened, but yet intrigued and even overjoyed by the sounds of his parents', whom he has never heard speak outside of this experience.
So, therein lies the basis for self-imposed "insanity," a theory which did not seem to interest my fellow lunchers, as we soon moved on to another topic.
However, I did find it odd that, a few periods later in Biology class, the topic of insanity was mentioned again by Dr. Findeis. We were discussing, of all things, isolation- or sensory deprivation-tanks (I think the latter is what they were once called), which were instruments utilized by the Soviets at one point to "persuade" captured spies to confess useful information. Prisoners were tossed into a pitch-black, sound-proof tank filled with water at body-temperature and given a snorkel or some means to breathe. Then they were left there for however many hours with no socializing or external stimuli - completely left to their own devices. If the prisoners didn't break down and confess, they almost certainly all crumbled to some odd inward insanity, having been subjected entirely to their own thoughts with, essentially, no physical senses. Spooky. In any case, this would of course be an example of externally-imposed insanity, dealing with the social habits of human beings, and I think that this hypothesis is just as valid as the self-imposed insanity hypothesis. My conclusion is that there are just too many ways for someone to become insane nowadays.
In any case, now to the dreams. One night, I can only recall one portion of my dream, in which I was walking into the cafeteria of my school to dispose of trash from my lunch. At the trash can, I was encountered by some school official whom I vaguely knew but had never spoken to. They engaged me in a conversation about a girl in my French class, instructing me to carry her books on certain days of the week. I left to reluctantly assume my responsibilities, though when I woke up, I wondered about the dream's implications, as I had been wanting to speak to this girl for a while now, though it is difficult because of our mutual "quietness." From what I know of her, she seems like a really nice girl; she's new to the school, and seems to be, as my dad would say, "wicked-smart." I plan on engaging her in conversation at some point, though the trick with talking to any new people involves how to do it without being awkward. But, in any case, enough about that.
The next night I had a series of three disturbing dreams, a "Tri-dream" if you will. This was the dream which really made me begin to question my sanity on a superficial level. The first dream lasted for the majority of the night, though it lacks content and plot. In the dream, my father and I were sitting on the couch, watching this interminable movie starring Johnny Depp, Kathy Bates, and two other famous actors whom I cannot remember at the present time (whether or not such a movie exists is beyond my knowledge). This movie, besides being tedious, was also very depressing, in a way that makes one question the purpose of life. The only part that I can remember about it was that Johnny Depp played a father in the film of a seven-ish-year-old boy and was married to Kathy Bates. The film focused on the imperfections of the relationship, their separation at one point, and the little boy's methods of dealing with this sort of life. My dad remarked at some point in the dream that he had once met Johnny Depp (he hasn't in real life) and that Johnny Depp had said that his role in this movie had been his least favorite to play of all the movies he'd been in. That was the entirety of the first dream.
The second dream was a recurring one which I won't describe in excessive detail for that reason. In the dream, I was with Saoirse and Kiki at Reynolds Auditorium, and we were looking for seats from which we would view the Symphony concert, due to start in about 10 minutes. Unlike what happens in most of these dreams, we were able to find awesome seats about ten rows from the stage, and we took great joy in finding these seats. People filed into the auditorium from both sides, chattering, and the stage was empty at that time. Reluctant as we were to desert our seats, we had to find my father, as he was wandering around outside of the building for no particular reason. We pulled him back into the auditorium, fearing that our seats would be stolen by the time we returned. Luckily for us, they had not, though they had somehow moved since we had left. These seats were now located up on the actual stage, behind a boundary designated by vertical poles with rope hanging between them. We went and sat with the other people on stage, of which there were about 20, waiting for the musicians to emerge. They eventually did, to tumultuous applause from the audience, and took their seats in the arc of chairs just within the roped boundary. I stood, holding the rope and scrutinizing their facial expressions. The thing which bothered me in the dream was that they did not seem responsive at all to the audience - it was almost as though an iron curtain hung between the Symphony and the rest of the people. It was a queer feeling - and then the dream changed.
The third dream was most depressing, and will therefore not be told in much detail. My mother went into labor finally, delivering my baby sister. I rushed to the hospital, too late to see my sister born. My grandmother was there as well, and we sat on either side of my mom's hospital bed. While sitting there, my mother, clothed in her hospital gown, proceeded to tell us that she was terminally-ill, that she had been diagnosed two years previously, and that she had neglected to tell us for those two years. I awoke from the dream asking myself why she would go through with having the baby if she knew that she wasn't going to be around to raise it. I awoke from these dreams feeling deeply saddened by their content and my ability to be so deeply saddened by their content simultaneously. It's a trippy effect, if you think about it. I also dreamt last night, though I don't quite remember what it was about.
In other news, my grandparents should be arriving tomorrow for my confirmation banquet, and my sister will be born any day now, hopefully without complications.

The Big Week, Southern Gothic Lit, and Dreams

So, this week is the week of ultimate suspense leading up to two events which, coincidentally, are due to occur on the same day, Sunday, May 2nd. The most important of these events is, of course, the scheduled date of my sister (I say sister, but we're really not 100% sure due to the uncertain sonograms). Though my mom is due this Sunday, it's very likely, considering the size of the baby at this stage, that she'll go into labor any day now - I keep feverishly checking my cell phone in case I receive a call from my mom saying that she's on her way to the hospital to deliver, in which case I would use any means to travel from my current location to the hospital so that I could be with her. I'm rather hoping that the baby comes early, as the other big event on Sunday is my confirmation, which requires my presence particularly for the baptism. My grandparents will be coming up on Friday in order to witness this event, and I must prepare a speech in response to the prompt, "Who is Jesus to me?" to present to the elders of the church on Saturday night. Going along with confirmation Sunday, this past weekend served as our preparation weekend. The confirmation class went on a retreat (without their mentors) to this obscure little camp in Clemmons. Here, we spent the night, completed our written review, and spoke about our faith with our youth leaders. It went well, and I spent the majority of the night hanging out with these cool seventh grade girls in my class, Emma, Emily, and Anna.
I am super-excited, by the way, because we've started to read my favorite book of all time (let me say that again, of all time): To Kill a Mockingbird. I would give a review of it here and now, but I have the feeling that I've already done this at some point last year, and I wouldn't want to bore my avid readers with a repeated entry. I'll be content to say this: if I were thinking of being an English major, perhaps even on the college professor level, I would want to write my thesis paper on a comparison of this masterpiece with another like it of the Southern Gothic Literature genre: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, another one which I can recall reviewing with much fervor at some point in the recent past. There are so many things that are similar which one could point out. Of course, there's the obvious inclusion of racial prejudice in isolated Southern towns in the Great Depression - which can be seen through the trial of Tom Robinson as well as in the character and motives of Doctor Copeland. In each book there are extremely autobiographical characters who exemplify the theme of maturity through their change in the novels (Scout and Mick) and whose maturity solidifies around their meditations upon the mysterious, yet arguably most crucial character to the plot (Arthur "Boo" Radley and John Singer). Each book even has a Calpurnia character who is discussed far more than the actual mother in relation to Scout and Mick. I could keep going, but I won't.
Now, a few days ago, I had some more interesting dreams; one thing that I neglected to mention in my last entry is that I've embarked on a mission - to dream lucidly, or in other words, to become conscious of the fact that I am dreaming while dreaming, but to remain asleep. The last part is key, and arguably the most difficult part of the whole process - this is coming from someone who has never accomplished lucid dreaming. But, in any case, the whole point of doing this is the fact that once you have reached the lucid state, you can apparently manipulate your dreams at will, which is pretty awesome. Just think of the possibilities for a moment: you could fly, you could become a cat, you could transform into Glenn Gould, you could bring Carson McCullers back from the dead, you could become the smartest, funniest, most attractive person (of your gender) alive and age twenty-five years and. . .just think of the possibilities. Haha, just kidding about the last part.
Anyways, two nights ago (I think), I had two interesting dreams, neither of which were pleasant. In the first one, I was going to an amusement park with my grandparents and mother. My father was to meet us at the amusement park once he got off of work. The only clear part that I can recall about this dream is traveling to this amusement park by car, my grandparents in the front seats and my mother beside me. The weather outside the window was drab, gray, and smoggy, with polluted-looking smoke draping everything in a melancholy dullness. My mother and my grandfather started to quarrel, and continued in this fashion until we stopped for gasoline at a lonely station by the highway. He stepped out, slamming the door, and grabbed the gas nozzle; my mother, infuriated, exited the car right after him and resumed her verbal attack. Through the cloudy window, I could see her ripe, pregnant stomach thrust forth vehemently as she violently gesticulated. My grandfather dropped the gasoline nozzle and turned to face her, shouting. Suddenly, one pushed the other, with a similar response from the pushed person - but before the argument could escalate to a full brawl, the dream changed. In this next segment of the dream, I was in a bookstore of all places, going through all the motions of some creepy cat-and-mouse type game with a person who was stalking me, whose name I will omit from the entry. I had been wandering around the bookstore when I suddenly heard this person's voice, seeming to come from very close to me - the voice beseeched me to try to locate the person speaking, and conveyed that I was being watched. I'm not sure why I didn't just leave the bookstore, considering that I had a feeling of general foreboding which indicated that I was in danger - yet, I pursued the voice as it continued to speak to me, all the way back to the far corner of the bookstore, where a small hallway curved into the wall behind the bookshelves along the side of the store. Beyond the curve of the hallway, nothing could be seen for the pitch-blackness within. The voice sounded in my ear again, instructing me to enter the hallway and walk just beyond the curve - I was getting ready to be a stupid person and actually do it when I thankfully woke up.

Dream and an Attempt at Lucidity

I come on here, most importantly, to report snippets of quite interesting dreams that I've been experiencing the past three nights or so. Since I haven't gotten a chance to write in a while, a lot of the subtler points of the dreams will be forgotten, which frustrates me. Oh well - I shall have to do the best that I can.
Three nights ago, I can recall that (in the dream) my father and I were on vacation, staying in the house of some friends of ours. I'm fairly certain that we were somewhere in the south, perhaps in Florida, because all of the houses in the vicinity were painted in the characteristic pastels and variations of white. Palm trees also rocked in warm breezes along the sidewalks. I can barely remember this family that we were staying with, except for the fact that we don't know them in real life and that there were a lot of them squeezed into this quaint little house along with my father and me. I felt a certain amount of unease among the members of the family, and I spent a lot of time alone in the dark bedroom given to me which had one window looking out on a small, grassy meadow in the backyard. The yard was bordered on all sides by trees or other houses. In the room, I had a twin bed against the wall, my suitcase at the foot of the bed, and a piano by the window, positioned so that one might play and watch what was going on outside simultaneously. This proved to be good entertainment, for there was almost always someone outside the window, either my dad playing his guitar or members of the family throwing frisbees or balls back and forth. The contrast of the (almost-eerie) brightness and cheerfulness of the world outside of the window compared with the darkness and drabness of the room that I occupied was stark, like a comparison of a living, breathing man to a dead one.
I remember the mother of the house - she was an austere woman in her mid-forties, with a square jaw, beady eyes, and curly, graying-brown hair. She was short and plump, and walked around the house with a certain amount of authority, rapping on everyone's door to call them to the kitchen for breakfast, bustling around with her broom to clean up after the younger children who had knocked glass vases to the ground, and other motherly duties which would, under normal circumstances, put her in the same category as the typical stay-at-home mom. But this woman was different; though I cannot explain it, having not remembered one of the more crucial points of the dream, this woman had a touch of something sinister in her character - which probably explained my decision to spend the majority of our vacation in the darkness of my room (besides the fact that there was a piano in there).
At some point in the dream, I can recall trying to convince my father of this sinister quality in the woman. Of course, my father didn't believe me, and I was chastised for my rudeness. Though I had staged this conversation purposefully just beyond the boundary of trees in the backyard, I assume that we were overheard, because over breakfast the next morning, I had some sort of confrontation with the Frau of the house herself. This is the crucial point of the dream which I cannot quite remember - all I can say for certain is that all of the other people had already left the table and I was called to stay behind, supposedly to help clean up. After this confrontation, I locked myself in the bedroom and would not be called out of it. I must have stayed in there for hours, because at one point when I sat down at the piano to play, I could see that the purplish glow of evening had lit upon the grass outside. The sun had nearly set, and yet, the room that I was in was still somehow darker and gloomier. A barbecue grill had materialized in the middle of the lawn, along with another beautiful grand piano, at which my dad sat. The smell of roasting hot dogs drifted over to me as I paused in my playing to listen - my father was alone (he generally never plays the piano when anyone is around), which was surprising enough in itself because of the sheer number of people in the house who liked to dawdle outdoors at this time of night. His eyes were closed and he began to play the piece that I associate with him, the "Adagio Cantabile" of Beethoven's "Pathetique Sonata." It was here, at this random point in the dream, that I woke up.
The next night, I had another dream in which there seemed to be no resolution. Oddly enough, my father and I were also vacationing in this dream, though I remember that this time we were visiting the coast of North Carolina. We were walking along the beach one night, with the exhaling rush of the waves on our left side, when we encountered three people who greeted us with pleased surprise. One of these was a single mother a little younger (and very different) from the Frau in the previous dream. She was a dark, slender woman, with olive-colored skin and long, straight, black hair which fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were almond-shaped and wide, and she had a loud, joyful voice. Walking on either side of her and clutching each of her hands were her two children, a boy of my age with her dark straight hair and a kind smile, and a young girl with reddish curls and a shy, little-kiddish way of holding herself. She hid behind her mother's leg as the three of them approached us.
The mother greeted us both by name and embraced my father. He recognized her after a few seconds and both engaged in the typical, "It's been too long!" and "How've you been?" routine. I stood awkwardly to the side, trying to remember these people in case I was asked a nostalgic question along those lines. I couldn't place them in my memory.
However, inevitably, the conversation took that nostalgic turn, and my father began reminiscing about a time when we had vacationed to this same beach when I was three, when we had become acquainted with this family (they lived, I gathered, near the beach in a little cottage of sorts). I also inferred from parts of the conversation that the father of the family had passed away or left since that meeting. Soon, the part of the conversation that I dreaded came to pass. The mother turned to me and asked, "Do you remember that, Robyn? It was back when you and Andrew here were about this tall -" she indicated with her hand a point just above her knee, "and we had the barbecue on the beach and -" Suddenly, the expression of recognition halted her in her nostalgia. Gradually at first, and then very suddenly, a vague memory of this family came back to me. I remembered a warm night similar to this one, in which my parents and Andrew's parents had conversed around a barbecue grill and Andrew and I had run in our bare feet over the sand, playing tag and chasing fireflies. We had spent the majority of that day, while the sun was out, wading in the ocean and building sand castles. I was silently amazed at the intactness of this memory which had been forgotten for so many years. I answered the mother, "I do remember that. We ran around on the sand, chasing fireflies." Andrew nodded silently and smiled beside his mother. The rest of the conversation continued in a similar way, until it became very late and we had to part ways.
However, they didn't pass out of the dream completely - after a blank period in which I cannot remember what happened, the boy Andrew returned to my subconscious. It was the day of middle school graduation, and we apparently went to the same middle school (I'm not sure where we were in this dream, if it was near the beach, in Winston-Salem, or somewhere else). We had a festive party on the grounds of the school, and the students, dressed in fine dresses and suits, walked around with glasses of punch, discussing their future high schools; teachers walked around, shaking parents' hands, and musical entertainment was provided by the seventh grade band. I found Andrew sitting near the playground equipment (I don't know why this was at a middle school) with a group of other kids, clutching his punch. I had an odd restless urge in me, and I convinced this group of kids to accompany me to the mall, which was a few blocks away.
We all walked there, and entered the blessedly-air-conditioned building. In the mall (which was five times bigger than the Winston-Salem mall), there were tons of people because it was a Friday. There were also huge floats (I think that's what you call them) that you might see in a parade. These floats were made in the shape of large animals, like lions and elephants, built with wheels beneath them, and being operated by little golf-cart automobiles which were connected to the front of each. A man in each cart drove the floats around to various points in the mall. Little children that were standing nearby gazed at the gigantic animal floats in wonder.
I had, as I said before, an odd, restless urge. I convinced my fellow students to hi-jack these floats with me and to engage in a dangerous game of "bumper cars." We all set out on this mission, running up to each float, jumping in the passenger side of the golf-carts, and knocking each driver from it onto the floor (as cruel as this sounds, none of the drivers were injured because not only were the carts close to the ground, they were also moving at a very slow pace because of the people crowding around them). Once we had entered the carts, we slammed down the accelerators of the carts and zoomed around the mall, with shrieking people running away on all sides. We, of course, weren't trying to frighten the people or hit them - we were just making sport of the parade floats. But the people fled, in any case, and soon we were being followed by little mall patrol-cars. Using a mega-phone, one of the officers addressed us. "You need to exit the floats and leave the mall," he instructed, "before we call the police." Well, being under the influence of what might be called a "power high," none of us complied with this request. Increasing our speed, we thundered around the now nearly-empty mall, banging our decorative animals recklessly against the walls as we went. It was intoxicating.
Then the police arrived; they entered the mall in speedy motorcycles and chased us down to the far end of the main hall, where I expected an exit to be. Instead, we found ourselves in a dead end, blocked not only by a large glass window, but also by a line of mall-patrol people who had been waiting for us there. I was pulled roughly from my cart by a policeman and put in red handcuffs. He led me through a door that I had not noticed which led to the parking lot outside - then, I was thrown into the back of a police car. I watched as, all around, my fellow students were similarly shoved into cars. I woke up.

Weight

The irony of today is weighing upon me heavily. It is Thursday, April 1st, and so it is April Fool's Day, but it is also the Thursday before Easter, which - historically - is the day before Jesus Christ was crucified. It is the night of the famed Last Supper and the night that Christ stood in the garden of Gethsemane, praying to God to "remove (his) cup of suffering," though only if it were his will. What an odd juxtaposition.
I think that, on that note, I shall go to sleep now, because I am tired.