This reminds me so much of a dream I had yesterday that I cannot help but to post here this observation because I just read this part and I wonder why I would have a dream now - why now - about something that seems so similar.
I mean, the issue is largely the same. It is about derivative works. How can I have a dream that is derivative of something that I have not read in months and why would I dream derivative details about that part? And why now?
The dream was yesterday I think. I have thought often about it and I have thought about writing it down somewhere but I never did, until now. I have been puzzling over whether is was associated somehow with the dream I awoke from this morning which was the second of two dreams, with the first probably more than two weeks ago, where I found myself falling a great distance and I knew there was no way I would survive the fall, in reality, but in the dream I did. As in the first dream, I was falling backwards towards the ground and I had fallen off, what seemed to be a mountain and I was in a pickup truck and the driver said something to me, which I do not recall now but his words were to the effect of "Oops" and as we fell straight down for what seemed to be at least a mile straight down I was thinking that whole way down and I had enough time to think about it and to begin to accept that I would splatter on the ground and, as with the first dream, I improbably began to see people standing on the ground come into my field of view so that meant I was only about three feet above the ground after falling for a mile or so and I knew the end was near. And then I knew the end was there. And then I sat up and looked around and there was nothing really scary about it. The fall was over and I was fine. I still remember how I felt glad afterwards that it was over. I dwell on that feeling more often as the day goes on today after having that dream this morning.
So anyway, in the dream I started off here to write about, I had that dream again about that house I used to own in South Carolina. This time, as with how certain details always vary, I was living there with a group of other people, which is a new detail. I didn't recall any of the people in the dream. So one person and I and digging a trench in the front yard that extends to the curb at the corner of the lot at the front yard. Then we are going to dig a trench that extends along the yard along the street in front of the house. At some point, I seem to be talking to someone about how there used to be a patch of juniper shrubs on each side on the inside of the circle driveway in front of the house. I was looking at it and the junipers were mostly gone and all that was left was some bare branches and I started to pull those up and removing them from the ground. I pulled up the first one and that was when I saw there was a hole in the ground. I started digging and I discovered what I thought over later was one of those big shipping containers and that was buried there. I found some stuff inside there and I think I forget some of the details now. Oh, right. Sports equipment. I saw maybe a bicycle. I definitely saw diving gear and a helmet for some deep diving gear. I remember I found a tiny FM radio of a type I remember owning long ago and it was about the size of a quarter but it was closer to cylindrical shape. A child was there near me then, who seemed to be part of the group living in the house with me, and I was showing her how the radio worked and I operated a slide lever on the side to turn on the radio. I might have found other stuff in there but I don't recall now. I do recall I found a stack of cash. It seemed to be all forty dollar bills though and after being awake for a while I started thinking that the color was wrong and that might now have been United States currency.
Then I found a second container next to that one and that was to the right-hand side if you were standing in front of the house and looking towards the street. That one made me start thinking after being awake that it was not a large metal shipping container but just a small brick structure. I remember having a hard time reaching into the back to get all the items but now I am not certain if I am thinking of the third compartment I found that was to the right of the second compartment, as though they were stacked side-by-side and buried underground on the slope of that hill that was my property.
What I do recall about the second container is that I pulled out a large platter of what seemed to be barbecued chicken portions. The metal platter reminds of what you might see in a large restaurant where a lot of the portions are being cooked at one time. The scenery is contradictory in my mind as I try to visualize and I seemed to have been pulling out other portions of various types of animals that were cooked for meals. The whole scene left me with an unappetizing notion about that food. Especially since it seemed to have been sealed in there for a few decades.
I forgot what all I found in the third container, and I think I am thinking of details about the third container but this all less clear now. I remember clearly pulling out a book that had "Senator" printed on it and I think there was person's name on it too, but I don't recall those details now.
The point of all this is that at some point, I feel certain after I discovered the containers and their contents, I was handed a piece of paper that was legal size and it had some similar to a manila folder page behind it, although it wasn't the standard manila folder color and it was the size of legal paper too, although slightly larger, and I think it was bluish-green.
I don't recall the precise words on that legal-size sheet of paper but the message was that some delivery company had attempted to deliver a parcel to me and they had left the parcel, or letter, or registered letter, or something that I don't really recall, at the house of my neighbor, which I shared a property line with, on the right-hand side from the front of my house and looking toward the street.
According to the details I became aware of in the dream, the occupant of that house was "Houck." That was the guy's name. I heard some dialog, including my own, about pronouncing his name as "Hawk."
As best I recall now from the dream, that sheet of paper informed me, of which there was a great more detail than could be associated with such a message, that the delivery company had attempted to deliver a package to my house but I wasn't there so they left it at the house of my neighbor, "Houck."
I looked over there at that house and all the lights were off. The message indicated, I don't recall the precise details, that the package was something from the AT&T company, and I have been left with the sense since being awake and after thinking about it quite a few times that it was some kind of promotional item from them and looking at the lights being off at that house, I thought of how trying to find out if anyone was home so I could get the package did not seem overly important at that time.
A few years ago, I would have wrote here about one other detail that in the context of the dream that the narrator had told me in that foreign dream that "Houck had something for me." I cannot now recall if that was precisely the words I had the sense of from the dream but that seems close enough. That sense was also present that what ever it was that had been left for me at that house wasn't all that important and for some reason I think that is just some kind of message in itself that was being communicated to my by means that I don't fully understand at this time.
I think that was the ending of the dream. I thought about it a lot because that was another dream about that house I used to own in Greer South Carolina.
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
“What’s funny?” Stu asked.
She stuck out her feet, which were clad in low-topped sneakers. On the soles were patterns of circles and lines. “He complimented me on my sneakers,” she said. “Isn’t that dippy?”
“You’re dippy,” Stu said, grinning.
Harold woke up just before dawn with a dull but not entirely unpleasant ache in his groin. He shivered a little as he got up. It was getting noticeably colder in the early mornings, although it was only August 22 and fall was still a calendar month away.
But there was heat below his waist, oh yes. Just looking at the delectable curve of her buttocks in those tiny see-through underpants as she slept was warming him up considerably. She wouldn’t mind if he woke her up… well, maybe she would mind, but she wouldn’t object. He still had no real idea of what might lie behind those dark eyes, and he was a little afraid of her.
Instead of waking her up, he dressed quietly. He didn’t want to mess around with Nadine, as much as he would have liked to.
What he needed to do was go someplace alone and think.
He paused at the door, fully dressed, carrying his boots in his left hand. Between the slight chilliness of the room and the prosy act of getting dressed, his desire had left him. He could smell the room now, and the smell was not terribly appealing.
It was just a little thing, she had said, a thing they could do without. Perhaps it was true. She could do things with her mouth and hands that were nearly beyond belief. But if it was such a small thing, why did this room have that stale and slightly sour odor that he associated with the solitary pleasure of all his bad years?
Maybe you want it to be bad.
Disturbing thought. He went out, closing the door softly behind him.
Nadine’s eyes opened the moment the door was closed. She sat up, looked thoughtfully at the door, and then lay down again. Her body ached in a slow and unrelieved cycle of desire. It felt almost like menstrual cramps. If it was such a small thing, she thought (with no idea of how close to Harold’s her own thoughts were), why did she feel this way? At one point last night she’d had to bite her lips together to stifle the cries: Stop that fooling around and STICK me with that thing! Do you hear me? STICK me with it, cram me FULL of it! Do you think what you’re doing is doing anything for me? Stick me with it and let’s for Christ’s sake—or mine, at least—end this crazy game!
He had been lying with his head between her legs, making strange noises of lust, noises that might have been comic had they not been so honestly urgent, so nearly savage. And she had looked up, those words trembling behind her lips, and had seen (or only thought she had?) a face at the window. In an instant the fire of her own lust had been damped down to cold ash.
It had been his face, grinning savagely in at her.
A scream had risen in her throat… and then the face was gone, the face was nothing but a moving pattern of shadows on the darkened glass mingled with smudges of dust. No more than the boogeyman a child imagines he sees in the closet, or curled up slyly behind the chest of toys in the corner.
No more than that.
Except it was more, and not even now, in the first cold rational light of dawn, could she pretend otherwise. It would be dangerous to pretend otherwise. It had been him, and he had been warning her. The husband-to-be was watching over his intended. And the bride defiled would be the bride unaccepted.
Staring at the ceiling, she thought: I suck his cock, but that’s not defilement. I let him stick himself up my ass, but that isn’t defilement, either. I dress for him like a cheap streetwalking slut, but that’s perfectly okay.
It was enough to make you wonder what sort of man your fiancé really was.
Nadine stared up at the ceiling for a long, long time.
Harold made instant coffee, drank it with a grimace, and then took a couple of cold Pop-Tarts out onto the front step. He sat down and ate them while dawn crept across the land.
In retrospect, the last couple of days seemed like a mad carnival ride to him. It was a blur of orange trucks, of Weizak clapping him on the shoulder and calling him Hawk (they all called him that now), of dead bodies, a never-ending moldy stream of them, and then coming home from all that death to a never-ending flow of kinky sex. Enough to blur your head.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pinkfloyd/nobodyhome.html
PINK FLOYD
"Nobody Home"
I've got a little black book with my poems in
I've got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in
When I'm a good dog they sometimes throw me a bone in
I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on
Got those swollen hand blues.
Got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from
I've got electric light
And I've got second sight
I've got amazing powers of observation
And that is how I know
When I try to get through
On the telephone to you
There'll be nobody home
I've got the obligatory Hendrix perm
And I've got the inevitable pinhole burns
All down the front of my favourite satin shirt
I've got nicotine stains on my fingers
I've got a silver spoon on a chain
I've got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains
I've got wild staring eyes
I've got a strong urge to fly
But I've got nowhere to fly to
Ooooh Babe when I pick up the phone
There's still nobody home
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pinkfloyd/anotherbrickinthewallparti.html
PINK FLOYD
"Another Brick In The Wall (Part I)"
Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
A snap shot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?
Daddy what d'ya leave behind for me?
All in all it was just a brick in the wall
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall
1973 film "High Plains Drifter" DVD video:
Lewis Belding: I want you to go to that meeting with me, Sarah. It's very important.
Sarah Belding: No. Not now, not ever.
Lewis Belding: They are still your neighbors!
Sarah Belding: Yes, they're my neighbors, and they make me sick. Hiding behind words like faith, peace and trust.
Lewis Belding: Good words. Damn good words.
Sarah Belding: But we hid a murder behind them.
Lewis Belding: Will you never understand, woman? That wasn't anything we wanted to do. When Duncan found out the mine was on government property - it was just a technicality, really
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
But now, in Times Square, he didn’t feel so cheerful. He wandered along, his wallet long since transferred to a front pocket. He paused in front of a discount record store, transfixed by the sound of his own voice coming from the battered overhead speakers. The bridge verse.
I didn’t come to ask you to stay all night
Or to find out if you’ve seen the light
I didn’t come to make a fuss or pick a fight
I just want you to tell me if you think you can
Baby, can you dig your man?
Dig him, baby—
Baby, can you dig your man?
That’s me, he thought, looking vacantly in at the albums, but today the sound depressed him. Worse, it made him homesick. He didn’t want to be here under this gray washtub sky, smelling New York exhaust, one hand constantly playing pocket pool with his wallet to make sure it was still there. New York, thy name is paranoia. Suddenly where he wanted to be was in a West Coast recording studio, making a new album.
Larry quickened his step and turned in at an arcade. Bells and buzzers jangled in his ears; there was the amplified, ripping growl of a Deathrace 2000 game, complete with the unearthly, electronic screams of the dying pedestrians. Neat game, Larry thought, soon to be followed by Dachau 2000. They’ll love that one. He went to the change booth and got ten dollars in quarters. There was a working phone kiosk next to the Beef’n Brew across the street and he direct-dialed Jane’s Place from memory. Jane’s was a poker parlor where Wayne Stukey sometimes hung out.
Larry plugged quarters into the slot until his hand ached, and the phone began to ring three thousand miles away.
A female voice said, “Jane’s. We’re open.”
“To anything?” he asked, low and sexy.
“Listen, wise guy, this isn’t… hey, is this Larry?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Hi, Arlene.”
“Where are you? Nobody’s seen you, Larry.”
“Well, I’m on the East Coast,” he said cautiously. “Somebody told me there were bloodsuckers on me and I ought to get out of the pool until they dropped off.”
“Something about a big party?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard about that,” she said. “Big spender.”
“Is Wayne around, Arlene?”
“You mean Wayne Stukey?”
“I don’t mean John Wayne—he’s dead.”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
“What would I hear? I’m on the other coast. Hey, he’s okay, isn’t he?”
“He’s in the hospital with this flu bug. Captain Trips, they’re calling it out here. Not that it’s any laughing matter. A lot of people have died with it, they say. People are scared, staying in. We’ve got six empty tables, and you know Jane’s never has empty tables.”
“How is he?”
“Who knows? They’ve got wards and wards of people and none of them can have visitors. It’s spooky, Larry. And there are lot of soldiers around.”
“On leave?”
“Soldiers on leave don’t carry guns or ride around in convoy trucks. A lot of people are really scared. You’re well off out where you are.”
“Hasn’t been anything on the news.”
“Out here there’s been a few things in the papers about getting flu boosters, that’s all. But some people are saying the army got careless with one of those little plague jars. Isn’t that creepy?”
“It’s just scare talk.”
“There’s nothing like it where you are?”
“No,” he said, and then thought of his mother’s cold. And hadn’t there been a lot of sneezing and hacking going on in the subway? He remembered thinking it sounded like a TB ward. But there were plenty of sneezes and runny noses to go around in any city. Cold germs are gregarious, he thought. They like to share the wealth.
“Janey herself isn’t in,” Arlene was saying. “She’s got a fever and swollen glands, she said. I thought that old whore was too tough to get sick.”
“Three minutes are up, signal when through,” the operator broke in.
Larry said: “Well, I’ll be coming back in a week or so, Arlene. We’ll get together.”
“Fine by me. I always wanted to go out with a famous recording star.”
“Arlene? You don’t by any chance know a guy named Dewey the Deck, do you?”
“Oh!” she said in a very startled way. “Oh wow! Larry!”
“What?”
“Thank God you didn’t hang up! I did see Wayne, just about two days before he went into the hospital. I forgot all about it! Oh, gee!”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s an envelope. He said it was for you, but he asked me to keep it in my cash drawer for a week or so, or give it to you if I saw you. He said something like ‘He’s goddam lucky Dewey the Deck isn’t collecting it instead of him.’”
“What’s in it?” He switched the phone from one hand to the other.
“Just a minute. I’ll see.” There was a moment of silence, then ripping paper. Arlene said, “It’s a savings account book. First Commercial Bank of California. There’s a balance of… wow! Just over thirteen thousand dollars. If you ask me to go somewhere dutch, I’ll brain you.”
“You won’t have to,” he said, grinning. “Thanks, Arlene. Hang on to that for me, now.”
“No, I’ll throw it down a storm-drain. Asshole.”
“It’s so good to be loved.”
She sighed. “You’re too much, Larry. I’ll put it in an envelope with both our names on it. Then you can’t duck me when you come in.”
“I wouldn’t do that, sugar.”
They hung up and then the operator was there, demanding three more dollars for Ma Bell. Larry, still feeling the wide and foolish grin on his face, plugged it willingly into the slot.
He looked at the change still scattered on the phone booth’s shelf, picked out a quarter, and dropped it into the slot. A moment later his mother’s phone was ringing. Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it. He thought—no, he believed—that this was entirely the former. He wanted to relieve both of them with the news that he was solvent again.
